Lone working: An employer’s guide to protecting people who work alone

Lone working is any work carried out by someone who is by themselves, without close or direct supervision. That covers people working away from a fixed base and people working alone inside a building. What the law requires is that you manage the Health & Safety risks before anyone works alone, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. A small number of higher-risk jobs, including work in confined spaces and work near exposed live electricity, need at least one other person present.

This guide covers who counts as a lone worker, what the law expects, the risks (including isolation and mental health), how to run a risk assessment, and what a lone working policy should contain. It’s written for the person responsible for lone workers, including employers, HR leads or Health & Safety managers.

What is lone working?

Lone working means carrying out your job by yourself, without a colleague or supervisor close by to help if something goes wrong. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines lone workers as those who work by themselves without close or direct supervision.

That definition covers two different situations: someone working away from a fixed base, and someone working alone inside a building that other people also use.

Who counts as a lone worker?

Lone workers show up in almost every sector. HSE’s own examples include:

• Delivery drivers
• Health and community workers
• Engineers
• Security staff and cleaners
• Warehouse and petrol station workers
• People working from home

The definition goes wider than that list. It also includes contractors and self-employed people. HSE is direct on this point, and explains that employers must manage the risk to anyone contracted to work for them, including self-employed people, in the same way as they manage it for direct employees.

Home and hybrid workers count too, and this is the group employers most often overlook. If someone works from their spare room three days a week, they are a lone worker on those days, and you carry the same responsibility for their safety as you do for anyone in the office.

Is lone working legal? What the law says

Yes, lone working is legal. There’s no law that bans it. What the law requires is that the employer manages the risk before anyone works alone.

That duty comes from the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, backed by the general duties in the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. There’s no single “lone working law.” The obligation sits inside the same general risk-management duty that covers every other hazard in your workplace.

A small number of higher-risk activities are the exception. HSE names five types of work that need at least one other person present:

Outside that list, working alone is often perfectly safe. The job of the risk assessment is to work out whether, for your specific task and your specific worker, it stays that way.

The risks of working alone

The core risk of lone working isn’t the hazard itself. It’s the absence of anyone to help if the hazard causes harm. HSE points to several risks that particularly affect lone workers:

• No one to help in an accident. A slip, a fall, or an equipment failure that a colleague would normally spot or respond to.
• Violence in the workplace. Lone workers, particularly those dealing with the public, face a higher risk of aggression with no colleague present to de-escalate or call for help.
• Sudden illness. A medical episode with no one nearby to notice or respond.
• Road risk. Many lone workers, including delivery drivers and engineers, spend a large part of their working day driving. HSE flags work-related road risk as a specific factor for this group.

Isolation, stress and mental health

Lone working can cause work-related stress and affect a person’s mental health, and HSE’s guidance treats this as part of managing lone-worker risk.

HSE’s Stress Management Standards highlight the importance of relationships with, and support from, other workers. Someone who is regularly away from managers and colleagues can find it harder to get that support, and if contact from the business is poor, they can end up feeling disconnected, isolated or abandoned. That affects performance, as well as wellbeing.

Home and hybrid workers sit squarely inside this risk. It’s easy to treat someone working from home as low-maintenance because they’re not walking past your desk, but HSE is clear that you carry the same responsibility for supervision, training and support for homeworkers as you do for anyone else.

The practical fix is contact, not paperwork. Put a procedure in place for direct contact with each lone worker, so a manager can pick up on signs of stress early. A scheduled check-in, a named point of contact, and a clear route to support if someone needs it will do more than any policy document sitting in a drive.

Extra care for young workers, trainees and new starters

Some lone workers need more support than others. HSE flags that anyone who is young, new to the job, in training, pregnant, or managing a disability or health condition may need extra safeguards before they’re left to work alone.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern. HSE’s August 2026 lone-working bulletin covered a case where a company was fined £50,000 and its director given a suspended sentence after an apprentice joiner died while working alone at a property undergoing renovation. A stack of wooden board material fell on her, causing fatal injuries. HSE’s investigation found the company had failed to provide safe systems of work, adequate information, instruction, training and supervision, had no suitable lone working policy or procedure, no suitable policy for storing the board materials, and an inadequate risk assessment.

The employer’s duties

The core duty is simple to state and easy to underestimate. You must manage the risk of anyone working alone before the work starts, not after something has gone wrong.

In practice, that means:

• Identifying who works alone, and what could realistically harm them.
• Putting a safe system of work in place for each task, not a generic statement.
• Training, supervising and monitoring lone workers appropriately for the risk.
• Keeping in touch with them and responding to incidents.
• Checking any risks and controls with the other employer, if a lone worker is on someone else’s site.

How to do a lone working risk assessment

Lone working risk is covered inside your general risk assessment, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. Once you employ five or more people, Regulation 3(6) of those Regulations requires you to record the significant findings in writing. Below that threshold, the assessment still must happen, but you’re not legally required to write it down (though it’s good practice).

A lone-working risk assessment follows the same steps as any other:

1. Identify who works alone and what could cause them harm.
2. Assess the risk: how likely it is, and how serious the outcome would be.
3. Put controls in place: training, equipment, a communication method, an emergency procedure.
4. Record the significant findings.
5. Review it whenever the work, the person, or the location changes.

A check-in and escalation routine turns this from theory into something a manager can actually run. For example: the worker checks in at set times throughout the day. If a check-in is missed, there’s a short grace period, say 15 minutes, to allow for a bad signal or a delayed task. If contact still isn’t made, a named person tries to reach the worker directly, and if that fails, escalates to a second named contact who can act, whether that’s calling emergency services or attending the location. Writing this down, with names against each step, is what turns “we’ll keep in touch” into something that works effectively when it matters.

What a lone working policy should include

A written policy is where all of the above becomes something staff can follow. There’s no legal requirement for it to be a standalone document. It can sit inside your general Health & Safety policy, as long as every element is covered somewhere and known to staff.

A working lone-working policy should set out:

• Why it exists: a short statement of intent covering what the policy is there to achieve.
• Who it covers: employees, contractors, self-employed workers, homeworkers.
• Risk assessment: when formal assessments happen and who’s responsible for them.
• Training: what training lone workers receive, and when.
• Communication: how contact is maintained (a buddy system, scheduled calls, an app check-in).
• Technology and monitoring: any personal safety devices or tracking systems in use.
• Emergency procedure: what the worker, their manager and the wider business do if something goes wrong.
• Support after an incident: time off, internal support, counselling or legal assistance if a worker is injured, taken ill or assaulted while working alone.
• Review: how often the policy itself gets checked and updated.

Training, supervision and monitoring

Training is one of the controls named directly in HSE’s guidance, alongside supervision and monitoring, as part of managing lone-worker risk. It’s not a box to tick after the policy is written. It’s one of the ways the policy actually gets delivered.

Good lone-worker training covers the practical detail a policy document can’t, like:

• commuting safely
• preparing for a job before you leave the office
• recognising and reducing the risks specific to the role
• looking after your own mental health while working away from colleagues
• knowing what to do the moment something goes wrong.

iHasco’s Lone Worker Safety Training course is built to cover exactly this, and it’s approved by RoSPA, CPD, and Institute of Hospitality. It’s a practical fit for anyone who spends part of their working day away from colleagues or supervision, whatever their role.

Frequently asked questions

What is lone working? Lone working is any job carried out by someone by themselves, without close or direct supervision. It includes people working away from a fixed base and people working alone in a shared building.

Who counts as a lone worker? Anyone working without close supervision counts, including delivery drivers, engineers, security and cleaning staff, home and hybrid workers, contractors, and self-employed people. HSE treats all of these groups the same way for the purposes of employer duties.

Is lone working legal? Yes. There’s no general ban on working alone. The employer’s duty, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, is to manage the risk before the work starts. A small number of higher-risk activities, such as work in confined spaces, need at least one other person present.

What are the main risks of lone working? The main risks are having no one to help in an accident, violence in the workplace, sudden illness, work-related road risk, and isolation affecting stress and mental health.

Does an employer need a lone working policy? There’s no legal requirement for a standalone lone working policy document. The content can sit inside your general Health & Safety policy. What matters is that risk assessment, training, communication, monitoring and emergency procedures for lone workers are all covered and known to staff.

Source: HSE, Lone working: Protect those working alone.

HSE ebulletin, Lone working: protect those working alone, 12 August 2026

HSE press release, Company fined and director handed suspended sentence after death of apprentice.