Quick Answer:
The risks when working alone fall into four groups: an injury or medical event with nobody to help, violence or aggression with no backup, environmental and travel hazards away from a fixed site, and psychosocial harm from isolation itself. The fourth is the one most often missed, and it carries the same work health and safety duty as the first three. Controls follow the hierarchy: remove the lone working where reasonably practicable before reaching for a device and a procedure. Employers have an obligation to provide a healthy and safe workplace, and that obligation follows the worker wherever the work is done.
In this guide
Employers have an obligation to provide a healthy and safe workplace for employees, contractors, volunteers and anyone else reasonably connected with the workplace.
Most of the attention goes to the regular place of work: the office, the warehouse, the site.
Lone work sits outside that attention, and it is not a small population.
It includes the retail worker closing up, the cleaner in an empty building, the community nurse on a home visit and the employee working from home, as well as the field technician most people picture.
This guide covers duties under the model work health and safety laws. Requirements vary between states and territories, and some industries carry additional obligations.
The 4 Risks When Working Alone
The risks when working alone are rarely about the task itself.
They are about what isolation does to the consequences when the task goes wrong. These four groups cover almost everything a lone work assessment needs to consider.
| Risk group | What it looks like | Why isolation makes it worse | Who it hits hardest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Injury or medical event | A fall, a cut, a burn, a cardiac event, an allergic reaction, a seizure | A survivable injury becomes serious when nobody applies first aid or calls for help | Field, trades, agriculture, cleaning, anyone working at height or with plant |
| 2. Violence and aggression | Verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, physical assault, robbery | No colleague to intervene, witness or call it in. The offender knows the worker is alone | Retail and hospitality, health and community services, security, transport. See occupational violence |
| 3. Environmental and travel hazards | Vehicle incidents, terrain, weather, heat, animals, remote breakdown | Distance from help, unreliable coverage, and often nobody expecting the worker anywhere | Field service, agriculture, delivery, utilities, community outreach |
| 4. Psychosocial harm | Sustained isolation, no support, fatigue, hypervigilance after an incident | There is no one to debrief with, and the effect accumulates rather than appearing at once | All lone workers, and especially long-duration and night work |
Groups 1 to 3 are what most assessments cover.
Group 4 is the one routinely left out, and it is covered in more detail below because it changes what a reasonable set of controls looks like.
The question that turns a task risk into a lone work risk
Take any hazard your workers face and ask what changes when nobody else is present. A cut that would mean a colleague fetching the first aid kit becomes a worker trying to stop bleeding one-handed while finding a phone. The hazard did not change. The consequence did.
What To Look Out For
These are the signals that risks when working alone exist in your organisation and are not being managed. Most of them are visible without an audit.
| Signal | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Nobody can produce a list of who works alone | The exposure has never been assessed, because the first step was never taken |
| Check-in arrangements exist but are informal | A text to a supervisor is goodwill, not a control. It fails the moment that supervisor is busy or off |
| No one is named as responsible for noticing a missed check-in | The most common single gap. Alerts go somewhere nobody is watching |
| Coverage was tested at the office | Signal at the depot says nothing about the basement, the plant room or the rural site |
| Lone work incidents are recorded as ordinary incidents | The isolation factor is invisible in your data, so the pattern never surfaces |
| Home-based workers are absent from the assessment | The duty applies and almost nobody has considered how long it would take to notice |
| Training covers the task but not working alone | Different skills. Check-ins, withdrawal and escalation are not part of task training |
If more than two of those apply, the practical next step is the working alone risk assessment checklist, which sets out the eight factors to work through and the communication duty under regulation 48.
The Risk Most Employers Miss
Assessments of the risks when working alone usually stop at physical harm.
The fourth risk group is psychosocial, and it carries the same work health and safety duty as the others because Safe Work Australia lists isolation and lack of support among the recognised psychosocial hazards.
| Psychosocial factor | How lone work creates it | What reduces it |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation and lack of support | No colleague to check a decision with, no informal contact across a shift | Scheduled contact that is conversational rather than a tick, and a supervisor who initiates it |
| Hypervigilance | Constant low-level alertness in unpredictable settings, which is tiring in a way task load is not | Rotation out of high-alert roles, and shorter durations for the most exposed work. Culture matters here too, as covered in building a risk-aware culture |
| No debrief after an incident | The worker absorbs a confrontation or a near miss with nobody present to process it | A structured check-in after any incident, not only after serious ones, with the record feeding your risk register |
| Fatigue | Long solo shifts, night work, and driving between sites with no natural breaks | Roster limits, mandated breaks, and travel counted as working time |
| Role ambiguity under pressure | Deciding alone whether to continue, withdraw or escalate, with no one to consult | Written abort criteria so the decision is made in advance rather than in the moment |
The last row is the one that pays back fastest.
A worker who has been told in advance exactly when they may walk away, and knows they will be supported for doing so, makes a safer decision than one weighing it up alone under pressure.
Why this belongs in the assessment, not in a wellbeing programme
Isolation is a hazard arising from the work design, which puts it inside the primary duty in regulation 34. Treating it as a wellbeing matter moves it out of the risk register and into a budget line, where it competes with the coffee machine.
What An Employer Should Do
Six steps for controlling the risks when working alone, in order. The order matters, because most organisations start at step four.
| Step | What it involves | What you should hold at the end |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Identify who works alone | Every role and task where a worker is isolated from assistance by location, time or the nature of the work. Include home-based staff | A written list. Most organisations have never produced one |
| 2. Assess the four risk groups against each | Injury, violence, environment and travel, psychosocial. Rate on the same scale as everything else | Ratings comparable with the rest of your register, using your risk matrix |
| 3. Decide what should not be done alone at all | Some tasks are elimination candidates rather than control candidates | A written prohibited list, because an unwritten rule is not a control |
| 4. Put controls in place, highest first | Work through the hierarchy rather than starting at devices and procedures | Controls that changed the work, not only the worker’s behaviour |
| 5. Provide a communication system that works | This is a specific requirement under regulation 48, not an optional extra | Verified coverage, a monitored response, and missed check-ins treated as an alarm |
| 6. Review on events | Regulation 38 triggers, not only an annual cycle | A review after every incident, change of site, roster or vehicle. This is continuous monitoring applied to safety |
Step 3 is the one organisations skip and later regret.
Deciding in advance that certain work is never done alone removes the judgement call from a worker under pressure and from a supervisor short-staffed on a Friday afternoon.
Controls In The Order The Law Expects
Regulation 36 sets the order. It is not a menu, and lone work is an area where the top of the hierarchy is available more often than employers assume.
| Level | Applied to lone work | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Eliminate | Remove the lone working | Two-person rostering, moving the work to staffed hours, ending single-operator opening and closing |
| Substitute | Lower-risk way of achieving the same thing | Phone or video contact instead of a home visit. Remote monitoring instead of a physical patrol |
| Isolate | Separate the worker from the hazard | Secure entry, service barriers, restricted public access after hours |
| Engineering | Change equipment or environment | Automatic fall detection, lighting, monitored CCTV, vehicle telematics |
| Administrative | Change how the work is done | Check-in schedules, buddy systems, abort criteria, lone work training, movement records |
| PPE | Protect the individual | Personal duress devices, satellite communicators |
A lone worker programme consisting of an app and a procedure is levels 5 and 6. Both are legitimate, and both are the weakest available.
The honest position for many employers is that two-person rostering was possible and was ruled out on cost, which may well be defensible.
It needs to be documented as a decision rather than left unexamined, because that is the question a regulator asks.
Tasks That Should Not Be Done Alone
There is no single national list, and that is deliberate: the decision belongs to your assessment.
These are the tasks most commonly prohibited, because an injury would be immediately disabling or rescue would be difficult.
- Work at height where a fall would prevent the worker calling for help
- Confined space entry, which typically requires a standby person in any case
- Live electrical work, where the worker may be unable to disengage
- Operating heavy plant or machinery with entanglement or crush potential
- Work with hazardous chemicals where exposure may impair judgement or consciousness
- Hot work and work near ignition sources in unattended areas
- First response or clinical work with known aggressive clients, where backup is the control
Write the list down
An unwritten prohibition is not a control. It is a shared assumption, and shared assumptions fail on the day someone is short-staffed. A one-page list, approved and circulated, is one of the cheapest controls available in this whole area.
What Good Looks Like On Paper
Every control on the risks when working alone is tested the same way: by asking for the record. These are the six a regulator, an insurer or a court will ask for.
| What you will be asked | The record that answers it | Where organisations fall down |
|---|---|---|
| Who works alone in your organisation? | A written list by role and task, reviewed | The list has never been produced |
| Where is lone work in your risk register? | Entries with owners, controls and review dates | It sits in a safety folder rather than the register, so it is invisible at board level |
| What did you decide should not be done alone? | An approved prohibited task list | The rule exists in people’s heads |
| What communication system did you provide? | The system, coverage verification, and test records | Coverage was assumed rather than verified |
| Who monitors it? | A named role with rostered backup and an escalation path | Alerts route to an individual who is sometimes unavailable |
| What changed after the last incident? | The investigation and the regulation 38 control review | The incident closed without the controls being revisited |
The second row is worth dwelling on. Lone work managed inside a safety team, with nothing in the organisational register, is invisible to everyone making resourcing decisions.
That is usually why two-person rostering never gets seriously considered. The same principle applies across the business, as set out in audit-ready risk management.
6 Common Mistakes In Managing Lone Work Risks
- Assessing the task and not the isolation: The task risk assessment already exists. The lone work question is what changes when nobody else is there.
- Leaving out psychosocial risk: Isolation and lack of support are recognised hazards with a duty attached, not a wellbeing extra.
- Relying on informal check-ins: A text to a supervisor is goodwill. A scheduled check-in with a named monitor and an escalation trigger is a control.
- Forgetting home-based workers: The duty applies, the isolation is real, and the group is usually missing from the assessment entirely.
- Keeping the prohibited task list unwritten: Shared assumptions fail on the day somebody is short-staffed.
- Starting at the device: An app and a procedure are the bottom two levels of the hierarchy. A regulator will ask what was considered above them.
Bringing It Together
The risks when working alone are not exotic. They are the ordinary hazards of the job with the safety net removed, and one more that is specific to isolation itself.
Four groups cover the risks when working alone: injury or medical event, violence and aggression, environmental and travel hazards, and psychosocial harm.
The fourth is the one most often missing from an assessment, and it carries the same duty as the other three.
If you are starting, produce the list of who works alone. Most organisations have never written one, and everything else depends on it.
Then work through the working alone risk assessment checklist for the highest-exposure role and put the result in your risk register with an owner and a review date.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the main risks when working alone?
Four groups. An injury or medical event with nobody present to help, violence or aggression with no backup, environmental and travel hazards away from a fixed site, and psychosocial harm from isolation itself. The first three are what most assessments cover. The fourth carries the same work health and safety duty and is routinely left out.
2. Is it legal to work alone in Australia?
Yes. Working alone is lawful and it carries specific duties. A person conducting a business or undertaking must manage the risks of remote or isolated work and, under regulation 48 of the model work health and safety regulations, must provide a system of work that includes effective communication with the worker. Some high-risk tasks should not be performed alone, and that is a control decision for your assessment rather than a blanket legal prohibition.
3. What should an employer do about lone working risks?
Six steps in order: identify everyone who works alone including home-based staff, assess the four risk groups against each role, decide what should never be done alone, apply controls starting at the top of the hierarchy, provide a communication system that works where the worker actually is, and review on events rather than only annually. Most organisations start at step four, which is why their programmes end up as a device and a procedure.
4. Is isolation itself a work health and safety risk?
Yes. Safe Work Australia lists isolation and lack of support among recognised psychosocial hazards, so a lone worker may face both physical risk and psychological risk from the same arrangement. The controls differ: psychosocial exposure responds to contact, supervision, rotation and written abort criteria rather than to a duress device.
5. What tasks should never be done alone?
The decision belongs to your assessment, and the tasks most commonly prohibited are those where an injury would be immediately disabling or rescue would be difficult: work at height, confined space entry, live electrical work, operating heavy plant, work with hazardous chemicals, hot work in unattended areas, and clinical or first-response work with known aggressive clients. Write the list down, because an unwritten rule is not a control.
6. Do lone working duties apply to employees working from home?
Yes. Work health and safety duties extend to the home when work is being done there, and a home-based worker is isolated from assistance in exactly the way the duty contemplates. This group is the one most often absent from a lone work assessment, usually because the work itself feels low risk, which is not the question the assessment asks.
7. How do we identify who works alone?
Work through every role and task and ask a single question: if this person were injured or became unwell right now, how long before somebody knew, and how long before help arrived. If you cannot answer both in minutes, they are working alone for the purposes of the duty, regardless of how the job is described. Include night shifts, opening and closing, home visits, plant rooms and home-based work.
8. How often should lone working risks be reviewed?
On a periodic cycle and on event triggers. Under regulation 38 of the model work health and safety regulations, control measures must be reviewed when a new hazard is identified, when a control is found not to be effective, after a notifiable incident, before a change at the workplace, and when a health and safety representative requests it. A change of site, roster, vehicle or client cohort all count as changes.
Sources
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth), regulation 48, Remote or isolated work
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth), regulation 34, Duty to manage risks
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth), regulation 36, Hierarchy of control
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth), regulation 38, Review of control measures
- Safe Work Australia, Remote and isolated work: WHS duties
- Safe Work Australia, Psychosocial hazards
- Safe Work Australia, First aid in the workplace
- WorkSafe Victoria, Working alone
- SafeWork NSW, Remote or isolated work
- WorkSafe Queensland, Remote and isolated work
See how Sentrient supports workplace safety
Sentrient keeps your risk register, hazard reports, controls and training records in one place, so lone work sits in the register with an owner and a review date rather than in a safety folder nobody sees.
Explore the risk management system | Book a free demonstration
Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice. Work health and safety duties vary between states and territories, and some industries carry additional obligations for remote or isolated work. Confirm your obligations with your work health and safety regulator or a qualified adviser before acting.
