Staff Aren’t Using Your Lone Worker Safety System. Is Cancelling the Right Decision?

 

“We haven’t had an incident.”

“Our staff aren’t really using the system.”

“They don’t think they need it.”

“We’re paying for something people aren’t using.”

These can sound like reasonable arguments for cancelling a lone worker safety system.

But there is an important question that needs to come first:

 

Has the risk changed?

If your staff continue to work alone, remotely or in isolation, and the risks that led you to introduce a safety control still exist, low staff usage does not necessarily mean the control is no longer required.

It may mean you have a different problem to solve.

A decision about whether a safety control is required should be based on risk. A decision about what to do when employees aren’t following an appropriate safety procedure is a management issue.

Confusing the two can have serious consequences.

 

1. Start with the Risk, Not the Usage Statistics

Imagine an organisation introduced a lone worker safety system because employees regularly worked alone in the community.

Perhaps they visited clients, travelled between locations, worked after hours or entered environments where assistance wasn’t immediately available.

The organisation assessed the risks and determined that additional safety measures were appropriate.

A year or two later, management looks at system usage and discovers that some employees rarely use it.

The temptation might be to conclude:

“If our staff aren’t using it, why are we paying for it?”

But that starts the assessment in the wrong place.

The first questions should be:

• Why was the safety measure introduced?
• What hazards were identified?
• Are workers still exposed to those hazards?
• Has the likelihood or potential consequence changed?
• Have other controls been introduced?
• If this control is removed, how will the residual risk be managed?

If the work and the foreseeable risks haven’t materially changed, declining system usage doesn’t make those risks disappear.

Before removing a safety control, go back to the risk assessment.

 

2. Apply the Seatbelt Test

Consider something much more familiar: wearing a seatbelt.

Imagine your organisation operates a fleet of vehicles.

Your staff drive thousands of kilometres each year, but there hasn’t been a serious vehicle accident for several years.

Some employees start saying:

“I’ve never needed my seatbelt. Why do I have to keep wearing it?”

Would the WHS team review the seatbelt usage statistics and conclude that employees no longer need to wear one?

Of course not.

Instead, they would consider the actual risk.

They might start with the organisation’s own history of crashes, injuries and near misses.

But they wouldn’t stop there.

They would look at what happens in similar organisations and industries. They would consider road safety data and the experience of the wider community. They would consider both the likelihood of a vehicle accident and the potential consequences when one occurs.

That broader evidence tells us something important.

Even if a particular employee has driven for 20 years without a serious accident, a serious accident remains foreseeable.

And that’s why we wear seatbelts.

We don’t wear a seatbelt because we expect to need it today. We wear it because today might be the day we do.

The same principle should inform decisions about safety measures for lone, remote and isolated workers.

 

3. Don’t Let “It Hasn’t Happened Here” Become Your Risk Assessment

Organisations should certainly examine their own incident history.

But internal incident data is only one source of information.

A low number of recorded incidents may mean the risk is low. But it could also reflect underreporting, good fortune, effective existing controls or simply the relatively low frequency of a potentially serious event.

Risk assessment therefore needs to look beyond what has happened within your organisation.

Consider:

Your workers. What are they seeing and experiencing? What incidents, hazards and near misses are being reported—or perhaps not reported?

Your organisation. What does your incident history tell you? Have work practices, locations, clients, operating hours or staffing arrangements changed?

Your industry. What are comparable organisations experiencing? Are there known incidents involving violence, medical emergencies, falls or other hazards affecting people doing similar work?

The wider community. Are there well-established risks associated with the activities your employees undertake?

A serious incident doesn’t need to have already occurred within your organisation for the risk to be foreseeable.

This is particularly important with lone and isolated work.

Working alone doesn’t necessarily create the original hazard. What it can do is increase the consequences when something goes wrong because another person isn’t immediately available to notice the problem, provide assistance or call for help.

The relevant question is therefore not simply:

“Has this happened to us before?”

It is:

“Could this reasonably happen to one of our people?”

 

4. If Staff Aren’t Using the System, Find Out Why

Suppose you reassess the risk and conclude that the safety control is still appropriate.

But staff aren’t using it.

Now you have identified the real problem.

The next question is:

Why?

There may be legitimate barriers.

Perhaps employees haven’t been adequately trained.

Perhaps they don’t understand when they are expected to use the system.

Maybe procedures are unclear or inconsistent between teams.

Perhaps managers don’t reinforce its use.

There may even be aspects of the system or workflow that make compliance unnecessarily difficult.

These are all issues worth investigating.

Talk to your people. Understand the barriers. Make the safe behaviour as easy as reasonably possible.

But there is another possibility.

Employees may simply have become complacent.

When people perform an activity repeatedly without anything going wrong, their perception of the risk can change.

The seatbelt analogy demonstrates the problem.

Imagine an employee saying:

“I’ve been driving this route every day for five years and I’ve never had an accident, so I’ve decided I don’t need to wear my seatbelt anymore.”

We wouldn’t normally respond by removing the requirement to wear seatbelts.

We would reinforce the safety requirement.

The same principle applies to other reasonable workplace safety procedures.

If an organisation has assessed a risk, established a safe system of work, provided appropriate equipment and training, and clearly communicated what employees are required to do, managers need to support and reinforce those expectations.

That includes monitoring compliance, coaching staff and addressing barriers.

Where appropriate, persistent failure to comply with reasonable workplace safety policies and procedures may ultimately need to be managed through the organisation’s normal performance management processes.

Safety procedures can’t simply become optional because nothing bad happened yesterday.

 

5. Remember Why You Introduced the Control

It is also useful to revisit what the organisation originally wanted to achieve.

Organisations introduce lone worker safety systems for different reasons.

For some, the primary motivation is simple: keeping their people safe.

Others are focused on meeting their duty of care and providing reasonably practicable measures to manage foreseeable risks for people working alone, remotely or in isolation.

Some need better emergency response capabilities, giving an employee a simple way to raise an alarm and seek assistance when something goes wrong.

Others want to replace informal check in arrangements.

Manual processes (phone calls, text messages, spreadsheets, calendars or asking managers to remember who is supposed to check in and when) can be inconsistent and time-consuming. Technology can automate much of this process while providing better visibility and escalation.

There may also be significant operational benefits.

Where the risk assessment supports it, technology may help an organisation safely manage work without requiring a second employee to accompany someone simply because they are working alone.

That can deliver substantial staffing efficiencies while maintaining appropriate safety controls.

The important point is this:

If the reasons you introduced the control still exist, low employee adoption doesn’t remove them.

Instead, it tells you that you may need to improve how the control is implemented.

 

6. Consider the Consequences Before Removing a Safety Control

There is another useful question for decision-makers:

What happens if we remove this control and something goes wrong?

This isn’t about assuming the worst will happen or maintaining every safety measure forever.

Safety controls should be reviewed. Technology changes. Work practices change. Risks change. Better solutions become available.

But removing a control should be a considered risk management decision.

Imagine that six months after cancelling a lone worker safety system, an employee working alone experiences a serious incident.

They can’t immediately call for assistance.

The organisation will understandably want to demonstrate that it had an appropriate safe system of work in place.

At that point, questions may include:

• What risks had been identified?
• What controls were considered?
• Why was the previous control removed?
• Had the underlying risk changed?
• What replaced it?
• Was the new approach effective?
• Was the decision based on a documented risk assessment, or primarily because staff weren’t using the previous system?

The consequences extend beyond regulatory or prosecution risk.

There is the potential harm to the employee and their family.

There may be workers’ compensation and operational costs, lost productivity, absenteeism, disruption to service delivery and increased pressure on colleagues.

There may be reputational consequences.

And there is the impact on other employees who want to know that their organisation takes their safety and wellbeing seriously.

Good safety management isn’t simply about avoiding penalties.

It’s about making good decisions before something goes wrong.

 

7. If You Cancel the System, What Will Replace It?

There can absolutely be legitimate reasons to stop using a particular lone worker safety system.

Perhaps the work has changed and employees no longer work alone.

Perhaps the hazard has been eliminated.

Maybe the level of risk has materially reduced.

Perhaps another control provides a better way of managing the risk.

Or perhaps the organisation has redesigned its safe system of work entirely.

All of these may be perfectly reasonable outcomes of a proper review.

The important point is that the decision should follow the risk assessment, rather than the risk assessment being shaped to justify the decision.

 

If your organisation is considering cancelling a lone worker safety control, ask one final question:

If the risks haven’t changed, what safe system of work will replace it?

Make sure that replacement is established and effective before removing the existing control.

 

Don’t Confuse a Safety Decision with a Management Problem

Which brings us back to our employee who doesn’t want to wear their seatbelt.

The fact they haven’t previously needed it doesn’t tell us whether they will need it tomorrow.

And their reluctance to wear it doesn’t change the risk of travelling in a vehicle.

Those are two separate issues.

The same applies to lone worker safety.

If employees aren’t using an appropriate safety system, find out why. Listen to them. Remove unnecessary barriers. Improve training. Explain the purpose. Make expectations clear. Monitor compliance and manage it appropriately.

But don’t mistake poor adoption for evidence that the underlying risk has disappeared.

Whether a safety control is needed is a risk-management decision. Whether staff use an appropriate safety control is a management issue.

And when it comes to protecting people working alone, remotely or in isolation, the best time to put the seatbelt on is still before the crash.

 

Reviewing Your Lone Worker Safety Arrangements?

My Safety Buddy helps organisations manage the safety and wellbeing of lone, remote and isolated workers through one flexible and scalable system.

From automated Check Ins and real-time oversight to emergency response capabilities, My Safety Buddy can help organisations reduce reliance on manual processes while supporting safer systems of work.

If your current system isn’t being used effectively, cancelling it isn’t your only option. Talk to us about the barriers your organisation is experiencing and how My Safety Buddy can be configured, implemented and supported to better meet the needs of your workforce.

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Travis Holland
CEO
My Safety Buddy

Should you wish to discuss strategies to improve your staff’s safety in their work environment, please feel welcome to contact My Safety Buddy.

Passionate about creating safer workplaces, our goal is to enhance wellbeing for all concerned, whilst also delivering improved operational and financial performance.

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