Lone working comes with a range of risks, so it's important to identify and think through such issues. The nighttime shopkeeper, the care assistant, the machinery operators, the caregiver, the driver, the prison warden, the travelling corporate, the consultant, and so many more all work partially or fully alone.
Establish a Lone Working Policy
Companies must consider how to care for their lone workers and provide practical guidance on how to ensure the provision of a safe and healthy working environment for lone workers within the organisation. No matter what risk we are trying to mitigate against, we need to start the process through the completion of a risk assessment, which will ensure that we can write a policy that is specific and suitable to the conditions of our specific organisations’ lone workers.
All these documents then need to be examined and shared with your lone workers to double-check they are relevant and fit in with what they do. Here at HRLocker, all of our employees work remotely. They must have either a clean dedicated space to work in at home, or if that is not possible, we source a co-working space for them.
Here in Ireland, we have a housing crisis, so the lone worker is the future, with movements like Grow Remote putting the needs of lone workers in the public eye and the new national broadband scheme things are looking up for connecting our lone employees with their coworkers in new innovative ways.
If you are interested in being part of the HRLocker journey and the possibility of remote working, check out our careers page. We're always on the look out for more lone wolves to join our team!