Lone Worker Safety Critical For Avoiding Workplace Accidents
Workers’ comp lawyer explains how to stay safe on the job
Many jobs require employees to work alone. Among workplace safety experts, these workers are known as “lone workers.” Jobs that require employees to work alone can cover a wide range, including:
- Overnight convenience store workers
- Utility repair workers
- Delivery truck drivers
- Car repair mechanics
- Warehouse workers
- Late-night maintenance workers and cleaners
Unfortunately, workplace accidents often occur involving lone workers, according to a recent article from the National Safety Council’s Safety + Health website.
In order to avoid such accidents, more needs to be done to educate workers and employers about the risks lone workers face on the job. When lone workers are hurt on the job, they are entitled to receive workers’ compensation benefits.
What is a lone worker?
As the name suggests, a lone worker is any worker who works alone. This includes employees who work in remote settings or work nontraditional working hours. However, safety consultants interviewed by Safety + Health noted that a lone worker can be anyone who works in a situation where they are alone all or most of the time, even if they’re working in a factory or another workplace situation where there is more than one employee in the same building.
“The way we categorize a lone worker is if we have workers who can’t be heard or seen by another individual during the course of work,” Dave Nickel, a senior consultant and health and safety director for ERM, in an interview with Safety + Health. “They aren’t anticipated to be visited by someone throughout the course of a day. Nobody is visiting or dropping off supplies.”
What are common causes of lone worker accidents?
Work-related accidents involving lone workers happen for many different reasons. Some of the common causes of workplace injuries involving lone workers include:
- Work-related accidents due to severe weather conditions, including high winds, lightning, flooding, avalanches, or dangerously cold temperatures.
- Burn injuries due to fires or electrocution.
- Slip and fall accidents.
- Work-related traffic accidents.
- Being physically assaulted by a stranger.
Whatever the circumstances, employers must take steps to protect workers’ safety and well-being. Otherwise, employees can sustain serious injuries on the job.
What can employers do to prevent accidents?
There are many steps employers can take to protect the safety of lone workers. Different suggestions highlighted in the Safety + Health article about lone workers include:
- Having specific practices and safety procedures in place to protect lone workers.
- Establishing a formal means of communication between lone workers and other employees or supervisors.
- Having pre-determined check-in times for lone workers. That way, if lone workers do not check in, employers will be alerted so they can follow up to make sure they’re safe.
- Not allowing lone workers to work alone or work at all if hazardous conditions exist, including hazardous weather conditions that may arise or which are forecasted during the employee’s shift.
- Clearly explaining potential hazards to lone workers.
- Providing safety training to lone workers specifically designed to address possible hazardous situations, including forest fires, wild animals or falling from a height.
Employers need to be prepared and anticipate possible risks lone workers might face on the job. If not, serious injuries or work-related accidents can easily occur.
What options are available to injured workers?
If you or a loved one was hurt while working alone, you may be eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits. However, actually obtaining such financial compensation can be harder than many people might realize.
Many times, an employer’s insurance company will deny an application for worker’s compensation benefits. Sometimes, it’s because companies insist that the injury happened outside of work. Or they might try to claim that the injured worker has a pre-existing medical condition rather than a new work injury. When there are no witnesses to the accident — which is usually the case when a lone worker is injured — there is more room for the insurance company to dispute, delay and deny.
Whatever the circumstances of your particular case, our experienced workers’ compensation attorneys at the Law Offices of Deborah G. Kohl can help. We have decades of experience handling worker’s compensation claims in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. As a result, we know how to help workers apply for such benefits and how to demand the money they rightfully deserve.
Get the law firm that gets results. Contact us and schedule a free case evaluation with a Rhode Island workers’ compensation lawyer at one of our three office locations. We handle workers’ compensation claims throughout Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
