Lone work isn’t only the night security officer or the pumper on a rural route. It’s the technician in a crawlspace, the cleaner on an empty floor, the driver between stops, the person who opens up at 5 a.m. and the one who stays to lock up. Most of them are fine almost every day, which is exactly why a plan matters: when something does go wrong, nobody is there to notice.
General guidance, not legal advice. Requirements differ by country, state, province and industry. In the United States, OSHA has no single federal standard for working alone in most industries, but the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s General Duty Clause requires employers to keep workplaces free of recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious harm, and some OSHA standards, such as the one for permit-required confined spaces, don’t allow certain work to be done alone. Several Canadian provinces, including British Columbia and Alberta, have specific working-alone rules. Check what applies to you.
1. Find out who works alone, and when
Start with a list. Lone work is often part-time: an hour at the start of a shift, a callout on a Sunday, the drive between two sites.
- List every role that works alone, even for part of a shift.
- Note when it happens: nights, weekends, early openings, late closings, callouts, travel.
- Note where: remote sites, basements, roofs, mechanical rooms, cold storage, vehicles, customers’ homes.
- Include contractors and temporary staff who work alone on your sites.
- Ask the people who do the work. They know when they end up alone.
2. Assess the hazards of each lone task
For each task, ask what could go wrong, how quickly help would be needed and how long it would take before anyone noticed.
- Hazards of the task: heights, ladders, machinery, electricity, driving, confined spaces, lifting.
- Hazards of the place: remote or public-facing, cash handling, extreme heat or cold, poor lighting, no cell signal.
- The person: training and experience, and any health considerations the worker chooses to share.
- How long a person could be hurt before someone would normally notice.
- Decide which tasks must never be done alone. Permit-required confined space entry, for example, needs an attendant.
3. Make sure they can call for help
A way to call for help only counts if it works where the person is, when they’re hurt or their hands are busy.
- Test cellular, Wi-Fi or radio coverage at every lone-work location, and write down the dead spots.
- Give each person a way to raise an alarm fast, ideally one-handed or hands-free.
- Charge devices before every shift, and carry a spare battery or charger on long ones.
- Make sure people can say exactly where they are: site address, building, gate, floor or mile marker.
- Where there’s no signal, plan an alternative (a radio, a satellite messenger, a buddy) or don’t work alone there.
4. Set a check-in schedule
Check-ins turn “nobody noticed” into “we knew within minutes.” Match the interval to the risk: the more dangerous the task, the shorter the gap. For example, a team might check in hourly for routine work and more often during higher-risk tasks.
- Check in at the start and end of every lone shift.
- Pick an interval for routine lone work, and a shorter one for higher-risk tasks.
- Add check-ins before and after the riskiest parts of the job.
- Decide who monitors check-ins, including nights, weekends and holidays.
- Write down what counts as a check-in: a tap, a call, a message on the channel.
5. Plan the escalation for a missed check-in
The plan fails if the person monitoring doesn’t know exactly what to do next. Write the steps down, with a time limit for each.
- Try the worker right away: call, message or talk on the channel.
- If there’s no answer within the time you set, alert a supervisor and send the nearest person to check.
- If you can’t confirm they’re safe, or you suspect an emergency, call 911 with their last known location.
- Keep each lone worker’s location, vehicle and route where the monitor can find them fast.
- Make sure everyone who might monitor, including night supervisors, knows the plan.
- Record every missed check-in and what happened, even false alarms.
6. Detect what they can’t report
Someone who has fallen, crashed or collapsed may not be able to press anything. Automatic detection covers that gap, as long as the device is on the person and everyone knows how it behaves.
- Consider fall (man-down) and crash detection for people who work at height, drive or work near machinery.
- Tell people how to cancel a false alarm, and never punish them for one.
- Run a drill: trigger a detection or miss a check-in on purpose and time the response.
- Know the limits: detection needs the device on the person, charged and connected.
7. Train and drill
People follow a procedure they’ve practiced, and skip one they’ve only read.
- Train every lone worker, and every person who monitors check-ins, on the full procedure.
- Include first aid and your site’s emergency plan.
- Run a missed-check-in drill, announced the first time, and time how long the response takes.
- Add lone-work procedures to onboarding for new hires and contractors.
8. Review and improve
Your first version will have gaps. Close them on purpose.
- Review after every incident, near miss and missed check-in.
- Revisit the plan when tasks, sites, staffing or equipment change.
- Look at your check-in records: how often are check-ins missed, and why?
- Ask lone workers what feels unsafe or unrealistic, and fix it.
Sources and further reading
- U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Section 5(a)(1), and the permit-required confined spaces standard (29 CFR 1910.146). osha.gov
- Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS): guidance on working alone, and links to provincial requirements. ccohs.ca
This checklist is general safety guidance. It isn’t legal advice and doesn’t replace a site-specific risk assessment by a qualified person.