Lone Incident Reporting: A Guide

What is Lone Incident Reporting?

Lone incident reporting is the way lone workers—employees who work alone without a team or supervisor nearby—document and communicate incidents, near-misses, or safety concerns they experience on the job. It’s designed to meet the specific challenges of working solo, especially in remote, industrial, or high-risk settings, where help isn’t immediately available. This process helps ensure that even when someone is working alone, their safety issues are heard, tracked, and addressed swiftly and properly.

Importance and Benefits

Lone workers’ main job is to operate in environments where assistance may not be immediately available. Incident reporting allows organizations to manage incidents efficiently and respond quickly. It’s not just about responding to accidents—it also helps prevent future accidents from happening.

Here are some reasons efficient incident reporting is essential to lone working safety:

• Immediate Risk Mitigation: Enables quick organizational responses through real-time incident reporting, preventing minor issues from turning into major emergencies.

• Early Intervention Prevents Escalation: Helps catch small problems or near-misses early so they can be dealt with before turning into serious incidents.

• Identification of Unique Hazards: Highlights safety challenges more commonly associated with  lone working such as slips, trips, falls, equipment issues, or hazardous exposure.

• Improved Safety Protocols: Allows organizations to determine root causes and recognize patterns through incident reports, therefore improving processes and making working conditions safer.

• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Keeps clear and timely documentation of reports during audits, inspections, and insurance claims to help meet legal requirements in many jurisdictions.

Common Lone Working Incidents

Effective lone incident reporting ensures incidents are properly documented, addressed and used to avoid future ones from happening. Below are the most common types of incidents where this kind of reporting makes a real difference:

• Slips, trips, and falls: Experiencing a minor fall while working alone can quickly escalate into a serious situation when one is without immediate assistance.

• Accidents Involving Heavy Machinery: Lone workers risk entanglement and being crushed when operating heavy machinery with no one nearby to stop the equipment or offer immediate help.

• Exposure to Chemicals or Electricity: Being left without supervision, lone workers have a high chance of being exposed to environments with hazardous substances or electrical risks, while also left unable to seek help if overcome by fumes or shock.

• Violence or Assault: Workers performing their duties alone face a greater risk of violence or aggression when interacting with the public, as they are often without immediate support or backup.

• Medical Emergencies: Lone workers can experience sudden health issues like heart attacks, strokes, or severe allergic reactions, which can be fatal  due to possible delays in response.

How to Report and Handle Lone Worker Incidents

Reporting an incident quickly and accurately is essential to ensure the safety of all involved. Here’s a simple guide on how to effectively report an incident when it happens.

1. Incident Occurs: After an incident occurs, lone workers should first focus on ensuring their own safety and preventing further harm before attempting to report the incident.

2. Immediate Reporting: Once stable, lone workers should promptly notify their employer, supervisor, or designated contact to ensure timely emergency response and support.

3. Notification: The incident should be reported with clear and accurate information as soon as the incident occurs to facilitate effective response and record-keeping.

4. Documentation: Details regarding the incident should be completely documented accurately, including descriptions of the incident, conditions, involved equipment, and any injuries, ideally preserving the scene for further  investigation.

5. Follow-up: After reporting, a thorough review should be conducted to determine causes, assess risks and damage, and implement preventive measures for the future.

How Lone Incident Reporting Works

Legislations and Regulations

Legislations about lone worker incident reporting do exist, though the details can differ depending on the country or region. These laws require employers to mitigate risks at all cost—from assessing risks and setting up clear communication and reporting procedures, to ensuring prompt responses.

In the UK, the Health and Safety Executives (HSE) legally require employers to include lone workers in their overall risk assessments and safety plans. This involves identifying the specific hazards lone workers may face in their field and putting the right plans in place to manage these risks effectively. Another implementation set in place is that for employers with 5 or more employees, they are legally required to record the findings of risk assessments. These assessments should then be reviewed regularly and updated whenever there are changes in working conditions or after an incident, ensuring safety measures remain effective and relevant.

In the US, though there’s no comprehensive lone worker-specific regulation, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) General Duty Clause broadly applies to the risks lone workers face and requires employers to take reasonable steps to protect them. Specifically, OSHA requires employers to keep account of their lone workers’ location by checking in on them regularly through visual or verbal contact. This ensures there’s communication between both parties all throughout their shifts and at the end of their work periods.

Simplifying Lone Incident Reporting with Technology

Make lone incident reporting easier for lone workers by giving teams a simple, digital way to stay on top of safety. With a digital solution easily usable by lone workers such as SafetyCulture, workers can report incidents quickly and employers can get notified of them in real-time. This ensures no risk, hazard, and incident is missed, keeping  everything organized all in one place. Here’s how SafetyCulture supports better lone incident reporting:

• Digital Incident Reporting: Empower lone workers with cloud-based incident reporting tools, including customizable incident report forms and checklists accessible via mobile devices.

• Lone Worker Risk Assessments: Conduct thorough lone worker risk assessments by tracking hazards, risks, and control measures digitally through risk assessment templates.

• Automated Check-ins : Prompt regular check-ins from lone workers and automatically escalate alerts to appropriate parties if check-ins are missed or a safety event is triggered.

• Real-time GPS Tracking: Gain visibility of a lone worker’s exact location at all times during their shift, enabling rapid response if an emergency arises.

• Panic Button and Emergency Alerts: Provide lone workers easily accessible duress alarms through SafetyCulture’s panic button feature to discreetly notify managers or emergency contacts immediately when in danger or right after an incident occurs.