The Reality of Lone Working
A Royal College of Nursing study dealing with the issues of lone working and personal safety surveyed about 1,500 nurses who work in the community. The findings reveal serious gaps in how organisations protect their lone workers.
📊 RCN Survey findings: Almost two-thirds of community staff said their employers did not know their whereabouts on a given working day. Nearly 40% rarely, never, or only sometimes carried out risk assessments prior to a client visit.
- Over 75% of staff wanted more information about their service users to work safely
- Only 86.5% of physical assaults were reported to a line manager
We have met home care staff who might visit up to 14 people in a single day. My question to them is always: if I walked into your supervisor’s office while you were at work and asked, “Where is Mary right now, and is she safe?” — what quality of answer would I get?
What’s Your System Worth?
Depending on the team, answers vary hugely. Criminal Justice teams tend to be very aware of the risks their workers face. Home Care staff, by contrast, tend to be left to their own devices — there are so many of them, and they are generally unqualified and therefore perhaps not seen as ‘core’ resources.
Lone working teams manage whereabouts using a variety of methods. In/out boards are a favourite: workers write down their itinerary for the day — who they are visiting, when, and what time they expect to finish. People at the office can check, if asked, and make a phone call to confirm safety. But ask staff if they ever receive “just checking you’re okay” phone calls, and the answer reflects a general sense that this is a less than robust safety system.
Workers sometimes visit clients out of hours, increasing the risks further. No one is at the office to check the in/out board. The receptionist leaves at 4pm. There is an on-call manager — but only to be called in emergencies. Visits continue up to 10pm and beyond for some lone working teams.
Managing the Risks of Lone Working
The burning question that should be keeping those responsible for safety up at night is: are you supervising the work in your team adequately, and is the system you have put in place robust?
If one of your staff feels unwell, faints and collapses in a client’s home — when do we find out she needs help, and how?
If the answer is not a comprehensive one that people can have confidence in, then perhaps it is time to review and tighten those lone working systems.
The common joke we hear from staff, hiding a dark reality, is that the alarm would be raised when their family is sat around the dinner table, “wondering where that woman who cooks dinner is.”
Technology That Makes a Difference
An entire industry has come of age to support the responsibilities of managers in adequately supervising lone working teams. Devices using mobile phone and messaging technology, GPS tracking, process management software, and alarm-receiving call centres are now available which can significantly increase the level of supervision and support offered to staff.
✅ Action: GPS tracking, messaging apps, and alarm-receiving call centres are no longer futuristic — they are available today. If your in/out board is the only line of defence, it’s time to upgrade.
Care services wishing to control their exposure to a training omission could explore our Lone Working personal safety training or Breakaway training for appropriate control measures.
Gerard O’Dea is a conflict management, personal safety and specialist training consultant on the risks of lone working. He is the training director for Dynamis, a specialist in personal safety and violence reduction initiatives and the European Adviser for ‘Verbal Defense and Influence‘, a global programme which addresses the spectrum of human conflict. www.dynamis.training/
Gerard’s book on Lone Worker Personal Safety is available on Amazon Kindle and Paperback.
