How I Use the Lone Working Template with Customers in Pilla
Lone working is one of those risks that gets managed on paper and ignored in practice. I've reviewed health and safety management systems where the lone working policy exists, the risk assessment has been done, and the check-in procedure is written up. But the night manager closes alone three times a week and nobody calls to check on them. The system looks complete until you ask a simple question: if that person collapsed at 11pm, how long before anyone noticed?
The problem is rarely that businesses don't care. It's that lone working happens gradually. A shift pattern changes, someone covers a weekend, an early morning prep slot means one person in the building for two hours. Nobody formally identifies it as lone working, so nobody puts controls around it. That's what this article is about. I'll walk you through what your lone working policy needs to cover, give you a template you can edit for your own operation, and explain what actually matters when an HSE inspector asks to see your arrangements.
Key Takeaways
- What is lone working in health and safety? Lone working is any situation where someone works by themselves without close or direct supervision, whether that's being the only person on site, working in a separate area from colleagues, or working outside normal hours. Employers have a legal duty to identify these situations and put controls in place
- Why do you need a lone working policy? The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of all employees, including those who work alone. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a specific risk assessment for lone workers. An HSE inspector will expect to see documented arrangements
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the knowledge hub template below, edit it to match your operation, and share it with your team through the app so everyone has access and you can track who's read it
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to chase staff who haven't acknowledged the policy and flag when it's due for review
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
Lone working means any situation where someone works without close or direct supervision. That includes the obvious cases, like being the only person on site. But it also covers less obvious ones: working in a separate area of the building from colleagues, working outside normal hours when the rest of the team has gone home, or being in a location where help couldn't reach you quickly.
Most businesses I work with have lone workers and don't realise it. A kitchen porter who starts at 5am before anyone else arrives. A bar manager who counts the till and locks up alone. A cleaner working through an empty building on a Sunday. These are all lone working situations, and they all need to be formally identified and risk assessed.
The legal basis sits across two pieces of legislation. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of all employees, and that duty applies fully when someone works alone. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 go further: they require you to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment that specifically considers the risks to lone workers, including the nature of the work, the person's fitness to work alone, their competence, and the level of supervision they need.
There's no specific prohibition on lone working. It's not illegal to have someone work alone. But you have to demonstrate that you've identified where it happens, assessed the risks, and put controls in place. An HSE inspector won't just ask whether you have a policy. They'll ask how you identified your lone working situations, what your risk assessment found, and what controls you put in place as a result. If the answer is a generic document that doesn't reflect your actual operation, that's a problem.
I've seen businesses get caught out by this more than once. The policy says lone working is avoided where reasonably practicable, but the rota shows someone working alone every Saturday morning. The gap between the document and reality is what gets picked up.
Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry
I've built a lone working template in Pilla covering identification of lone working situations, risk assessment, control measures, working outside normal hours, training, communication, and ongoing monitoring. It gives you a structured starting point, but you need to edit it to reflect how your operation actually works.
In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Health and Safety System". Use the same tag across all of your health and safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.
The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. Read through every section. Where it says something generic, replace it with what actually happens in your business. If you don't have employees working outside normal hours, you can simplify that section. If you have specific lone working situations, like a night security role or a remote site visit, describe them. An HSE inspector wants to see that your policy reflects your operation, not that you've downloaded a generic document.
12. Lone working
Lone working in hospitality can be a key arrangement for efficiency and delivering on our brand.
Company Name must at all times ensure the welfare, safety, and health of our employees whilst they are at work, this includes times when it is pertinent to bring in a lone worker or arrange work outside normal agreed working hours.
Lone working will be avoided so far as is reasonably practicable, but where it cannot be avoided then suitable controls will be introduced.
We aim to fulfill our duty to lone workers by:
*Responsible persons to consider all working arrangements to identify when lone working takes place.
Conduct a risk assessment to assess the risks to members of our workforce who are or may become lone workers to ensure their health, safety, and welfare of the workers. Risk assessment to consider the nature of the work, employees fitness to work alone, competence to complete the task and level of supervision required.
Where employees are required to work outside normal working hours, special attention will be paid to the need for their safety in respect of lighting access and egress, first aid and the need for supervision of employees working on their own in isolated areas of the workplace.
Develop and implement the control measures and procedures identified in the risk assessment to ensure lone workers health and safety whilst at work.
Ensure sufficient funding support is available to enable the successful development and implementation of procedures, risk assessments and control measures.
Arrange training for employees identified as lone workers, so they are aware of the control measures, and know what procedures have been implemented to reduce their exposure to risk whilst working alone.
As part of the communication process, the content of the procedures and risk assessments should be made available to all staff.
Record all training provided.
Successfully manage the risk to lone workers by monitoring and reviewing our arrangements, to identify areas for continual improvement of our systems.
*Responsible persons identified on the House Responsibility Chart.
This is a preview of the template. In Pilla, you can edit this to match your business.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The identification section matters most. I'd want to see that you've actually mapped out every situation where lone working happens in your business, not just the obvious ones. That means looking at shift patterns, weekend and evening work, separate areas of the building, and any role where someone could end up working without colleagues nearby. If your responsible persons haven't done this exercise properly, everything that follows is built on incomplete information.
The risk assessment needs to go beyond ticking boxes. For each lone working situation, I'd want to see that you've considered the nature of the work (is it high-risk? does it involve equipment, heights, or hazardous substances?), whether the person is fit and competent to work alone, and what level of supervision or check-in they need. A desk-based employee working alone in an office is a different risk profile to a maintenance worker on a roof.
Common mistakes I see:
The biggest one is not recognising lone working at all. I've walked into businesses where someone works alone every morning and nobody has identified it as lone working because there are colleagues "in the building" a few hours later. If there's no close or direct supervision, it's lone working. Period.
The second is having a check-in procedure on paper that nobody follows. The policy says the lone worker calls in every two hours, but nobody is assigned to receive the call, and a missed check-in doesn't trigger any response. A check-in system that nobody monitors is worse than no system at all, because it creates a false sense of security.
I also see businesses that write about working outside normal hours but don't address the practical details: lighting for access and egress, first aid provision when the first aider isn't on shift, and how the lone worker would summon help in an emergency. These aren't theoretical concerns. A slip on an unlit car park at 10pm with nobody around to help is a real scenario.
The training gap is common too. Staff are assigned to lone work without being told what procedures apply to them, what the check-in arrangements are, or what to do if something goes wrong. If your lone workers can't explain the controls that protect them, the training hasn't been done properly.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.
If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.
Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Overdue training reminders
Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Video completion alerts
Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.
Training gap analysis
Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.