"Risk assessment" makes a lot of managers picture a thick document that gets filed and forgotten. It shouldn't be. A good lone worker risk assessment is a short, honest working tool that answers a simple chain of questions: what could go wrong, to whom, how badly, what are we already doing about it, and what should we do next? This is a practical walk-through of the sections that matter, with lone-working in mind throughout.

Before you start: scope it by situation

Don't try to assess "lone working" as one giant thing. Break it into the distinct situations your people are actually in — a home visit, opening up a site alone, a rural site inspection, a late shift in the office. Each has its own hazards and deserves its own row. A handful of well-chosen situations beats one vague catch-all every time.

Section 1: Identify the hazards

List what could realistically cause harm in this specific situation. For lone workers, run through a mental checklist:

  • The environment — traffic, work at height, confined spaces, slips and trips, poor lighting, remote or hard-to-find locations.
  • The task and equipment — machinery, tools, manual handling, driving, anything hazardous to operate single-handed.
  • Other people — the risk of aggression or violence, especially on home visits, cash handling, or enforcement.
  • The person's own health — a medical event with no one present to notice or help.
  • Isolation itself — the amplifier that turns a minor incident into a serious one because help is delayed.

Section 2: Decide who might be harmed, and how

Usually it's the lone worker, but note anyone else in the picture — members of the public, other contractors. Then be specific about the harm: not "injury", but "a fall on stairs leaving them unable to call for help" or "an aggressive occupant during a visit". Specificity here is what makes the controls in the next section actually fit.

Section 3: Judge the level of risk honestly

For each hazard, weigh how likely it is and how serious the outcome could be. You don't need an elaborate scoring matrix — a straightforward low/medium/high judgement is enough for most organisations, as long as it's honest. The point of grading is to steer your effort: high-risk situations warrant tighter controls and shorter check-in intervals; genuinely low-risk ones shouldn't be gold-plated.

Resist two temptations: marking everything "high" to look cautious, and marking everything "low" to save effort. Neither helps anyone. The grade should reflect what you'd genuinely expect, so the controls land where they're actually needed.

Section 4: Record the controls already in place

Be truthful about what actually exists today, not what's aspired to. Existing controls might include training, safe systems of work, vehicle checks, or a buddy arrangement. For lone working specifically, this is where you record how the person keeps in touch and how help is summoned — the welfare check-in schedule and the escalation route. If the honest entry here is "none", that's not a failure of the assessment — it's the assessment doing its job.

Section 5: Identify further action needed

This is the section that actually protects people. Wherever the existing controls don't bring the risk down to a reasonable level, note a specific, owned, time-bound action. "Improve safety" is not an action. "Set 30-minute check-ins for home visits, with escalation to the duty manager, by the end of the month — owner: J. Smith" is.

Typical actions for lone working include introducing or tightening a check-in schedule, defining an escalation ladder that keeps climbing until answered, providing a discreet means to raise an alarm such as a panic alert, adjusting who does the highest-risk visits, or improving training on withdrawing from a situation that feels unsafe.

Section 6: Record, communicate, and review

If you employ five or more people you must record the significant findings — but everyone benefits from writing it down, because a lone worker risk assessment nobody has seen protects nobody. Share it with the people it covers, make sure they understand their part in it, and keep the record where it can be produced if you ever need to demonstrate what you did.

Finally, set a review trigger. Reassess when the work changes, when an incident or near-miss occurs, or at a sensible interval if nothing else prompts it. A risk assessment is a snapshot; the work moves on, and the document has to move with it.

Keep it living

The best lone worker risk assessment is the one that changes something — a shorter interval here, a named escalation contact there — and then gets revisited when reality shifts. If you'd like to see how the check-in and escalation controls it points to work in practice, our how it works page walks through the whole flow.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; refer to current HSE guidance for authoritative detail on your obligations.