Lone worker safety is a perennial concern for every EHS manager who has at least one employee working on their own with any degree of regularity. Plenty can happen out in the field, and if an incident occurs, a lone worker needs to have the means to be able to call for help. They also need the appropriate training to know how and when to signal for aid if required.
As the National Safety Council points out, “working alone can increase both the likelihood of incidents and the severity of adverse outcomes.” Given the risks posed to lone workers, plenty of safety training is required to protect them from injury. And all sorts of technological devices exist to help monitor individual workers, and to keep them in contact with the rest of the company.
But these efforts aren’t enough to fully keep lone workers safe. Many factors contribute to the risk levels of employees working in isolation, and three of them—ambiguity, human factors, and communication skills—are all too often overlooked.
Ambiguity
When workers are on their own, do they know what they’re supposed to be doing throughout their workday? Just as crucially, do they know what not to be doing? And are they aware of how they should respond to a range of potential adverse incidents, from environmental changes and equipment malfunctions to serious injuries? Lastly, when things feel unsafe, do they know how to react? If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then that means workers’ safety might be affected by ambiguity—a lack of certainty in what they can do or how they should respond to a specific event—at dangerously inopportune times.
In theory, safety training should cover all these issues. But in practice, plenty of gaps can occur. Lone worker safety protocols often cover the major hazards that a worker might encounter in the field. But it’s less common to emphasize the extent to which workers can—and can’t—deviate from standard protocols.
Additionally, as safety expert Tim Page-Bottorff notes, “ambiguity can directly lead to elevated risk levels in several ways,” most notably when it comes to stop-work authority. Like any other employee, lone workers need to feel comfortable in refusing unsafe work. The barrier to doing so can be higher for lone workers, as it is often more logistically challenging to adequately address unsafe work conditions for remote workers. They also need to know how they can report unsafe conditions, which can be a challenge given the more complicated communications situation that lone workers face.
Human factors
Ambiguity is generally classified as a human factor because it’s on the list of mental and physical states that influence how workers perceive risk and act in the workplace. But there are plenty of other human factors out there, and they all pose a risk to lone workers.
Every single worker is affected by human factors like rushing, frustration, and fatigue, which can elevate the likelihood of an incident or injury. But most employees have co-workers and supervisors who can remind them to watch out for these factors or can help mitigate their effects. (Of course, that requires a proper human factors management program to be implemented first.)
Lone workers don’t have the benefit of reminders from others. They need to monitor themselves for signs of fatigue or rushing, for example, and then know which practical steps to take to account for these human factors. This makes effective human factors training particularly important for lone workers.
It also emphasizes the role of supervisory communication skills—because while lone workers don’t have someone looking over their shoulder while they’re working, they should still be in regular contact with a manager or supervisor. And with strong communications, that manager or supervisor can bring the dangers of human factors to the front of a lone worker’s mind.
Communication
It’s no secret that supervisors with strong communication skills can play a major role in workplace safety outcomes. Less widely recognized is just how vital these types of supervisors are for lone workers.
Often, a supervisor is a lone worker’s only point of contact. This means that all the information, key updates, changes to plans, and safety reminders that they receive come from a single source. As a result, supervisory skills have an outsized influence on lone worker safety. This is even more true once you account for a supervisor’s ability to reduce or exacerbate the effects of ambiguity and other human factors.
The major takeaways here are that after baseline safety training, lone worker safety programs should focus on improving the skills and knowledge of both remote employees and their supervisors. By implementing human factors training and honing supervisory communication abilities, EHS managers can reduce the impact of the hidden risks that put their lone workers in danger of potentially serious incidents.