When it comes to keeping your workers safe, you probably do everything you can to adhere to all health and safety regulations relating to your industry. However, even following strict policies and procedures and implementing your own protocol based on working around hazards that are specific to the roles of your employees isn’t enough. Lone workers are often a neglected type of employee in a variety of different industries and sectors, and this is rarely due to a lack of care about their safety. Instead, lone workers are neglected because employers fail to identify them and aren’t aware of what actually constitutes a lone worker.
What is a lone worker?
It is important to recognise that the term “lone worker” shouldn’t be taken literally. Many people think of lone workers as people that work on their own, like taxi drivers or teachers. However, although these job roles are associated with lone working, this isn’t the only example of a lone worker. A lone worker is any individual that works on their own for any period of time, no matter how short or how frequently. For example, one of your workers may work as part of a team for the majority of the time but may occasionally be required to operate a piece of machinery alone. This worker would be considered a lone worker, even though they spend most of their time working with others.
Furthermore, you may have members of your team that are required to enter areas of a building site alone to install electrics, water, or gas lines. Although they may work alongside others most of the time, in these instances they would be classed as lone workers.
Why is it important to keep lone workers safe in the construction industry and civil engineering sector?
The construction industry and civil engineering sector often require workers to carry out their duties in environments that can expose them to risk. Although you will likely have taken the steps you need to take to follow health and safety protocol and risk assessed the environment, you should also be sure to consider lone workers. If a lone worker was to be knocked unconscious by a piece of scaffolding or falling material, for example, they will be unable to call anybody for help. Therefore, putting measures in place to ensure that lone workers are safe is incredibly important.
How to keep lone workers in the construction and civil engineering industry safe?
You should consider reassessing any environment that you work in and taking into account any risks and hazards that may cause injury to lone workers. Making an environment safer for lone workers can prevent accidents from occurring. However, you should also consider providing lone workers with a monitoring system that generates an alarm if it senses that the worker has fallen over. These can be great systems and can help workers feel safer when working alone.
Interested in finding out more about health and safety within the civil engineering or utility industry? Then get in touch with a friendly, reliable member of the Lydon Contracting team.
Lydon Contracting Ltd
Your Total Construction Solution
Tel: 01327 811533
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