Working Alone Safety: Lone Worker Programs, Check-In Systems, and High-Risk Solo Tasks

Roughly 15 to 20 percent of all workplace fatalities in the United States involve workers who were alone when the incident occurred, according to OSHA fatality reports. The number reflects a simple, brutal reality: a fall that a co-worker could respond to in 30 seconds becomes a fatality if the nearest person is two miles away and doesn’t expect to hear from you for another three hours.

Working alone is not inherently dangerous. But it removes every layer of informal protection that comes from having someone nearby. No one notices when you stop moving. No one calls 911. No one performs CPR.

Why Lone Workers Face Higher Risk

The hazard isn’t the work itself. It’s the delay between when something goes wrong and when help arrives.

A worker who suffers a cardiac event in a busy warehouse has a reasonable chance of surviving because co-workers will notice and call for help within minutes. The same event in a remote pump station at night could mean hours before anyone realizes something is wrong. By then, the outcome is usually different.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety identifies three factors that increase risk for lone workers: the nature of the work itself, the location and environment, and the worker’s individual characteristics (medical history, experience level, language barriers). All three have to factor into your risk assessment, not just the task.

Most employers focus only on the task. That’s a mistake.

A worker with a documented cardiac condition doing moderate physical work in a remote location deserves a different check-in interval than a healthy, experienced worker doing the same task 500 feet from an occupied building. Treating all lone work the same produces programs that look good on paper and fail in practice.

What OSHA Actually Requires

OSHA does not have a standalone lone worker standard. That surprises a lot of safety professionals, especially those who’ve worked in Canada or the UK, where specific lone worker regulations exist at the provincial and national level.

What OSHA does have is the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act, which requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm. Working alone in high-risk conditions is a recognized hazard. If your workforce includes lone workers and you have no program to manage the risk, you have a General Duty Clause exposure.

Beyond the General Duty Clause, several specific OSHA standards directly address solo work scenarios.

OSHA 1910.146 on permit-required confined spaces is the clearest example. The standard requires an attendant stationed outside the space for the entire duration of any permit-required entry. The attendant’s sole job is to monitor the entrant and initiate rescue if something goes wrong. A lone worker physically cannot be both the entrant and the attendant. Entry into a permit-required confined space without a dedicated attendant is a direct OSHA violation. There is no exception for brief entries or familiar spaces. See our full confined space guide for the complete permit and attendant requirements.

The bloodborne pathogens standard (1910.1030) requires first aid and CPR to be available. In practice, this means workers can’t be so isolated that no one can respond to a medical emergency within a reasonable time. For lone workers in remote locations, this affects your emergency response planning.

Construction standards under 29 CFR 1926 include similar fall protection thresholds (6-foot trigger) and excavation requirements that implicitly assume someone is nearby to monitor conditions and respond to a cave-in.

Tasks That Are Prohibited or Extremely High-Risk Alone

Permit-required confined space entry is prohibited without an attendant. That’s a hard rule, not a judgment call.

Energized electrical work is the next one. OSHA’s electrical safety standard (1910.333) strongly discourages working on energized circuits alone, and NFPA 70E, the industry’s primary electrical safety standard, explicitly states that no one should work alone on energized equipment above 50 volts unless the employer can demonstrate that de-energizing creates greater hazards. Even then, the standard calls for additional safeguards when working alone. Most employers read NFPA 70E as a practical prohibition on solo energized work.

Work at heights deserves the same treatment. A worker who falls from a roof or ladder may be incapacitated and unable to call for help. If the check-in interval is two hours and the fall happens at minute one, the outcome is predictable.

Chemical work requiring emergency decontamination is another category. If a worker has a chemical splash to the eyes, the 15-minute eyewash required by OSHA is not helpful if the worker is alone, incapacitated, and can’t reach it.

Remote site work for utility companies, government inspectors, and field service technicians also carries elevated risk because emergency response times are measured in tens of minutes, not seconds.

Night-shift maintenance in large facilities is underestimated. The building may not be physically remote, but if the nearest person is two floors away and the noise from equipment masks a fall, the effective response time can be just as long.

Check-In System Options

A check-in system is the backbone of any lone worker program. The concept is simple: if the worker doesn’t check in at a defined interval, someone initiates a welfare check.

The manual approach uses scheduled phone or radio contacts. The worker checks in every 30 minutes (or every 2 hours for lower-risk tasks), and a designated monitor confirms the contact. If a check-in is missed, the monitor follows a written escalation procedure, which typically goes from phone call to supervisor notification to emergency services based on how much time has passed and what the worker was doing.

Manual systems work. They’re cheap, require no technology, and create a human touchpoint that workers often appreciate. But they depend entirely on the monitor actually doing the job, and they fail when the monitor gets busy or forgets.

Automated systems address that failure mode. Wearable man-down devices detect the absence of movement (indicating unconsciousness or a fall) and trigger automatic alerts after a defined period of inactivity. GPS tracking platforms show the worker’s location in real time and can alert supervisors if the worker hasn’t moved in a set time or if they’ve moved outside a defined area.

Satellite communicators like SPOT or Garmin inReach work in areas without cell coverage. For truly remote work, a satellite device with two-way messaging is often the only reliable option.

The right system depends on the risk level and the work environment. Don’t over-engineer a program for a worker who stays late in a warehouse with security cameras and cell service. Do over-engineer it for a utility technician working alone in rural areas at night.

What a Written Program Must Include

A written working alone policy does several things. First, it defines what counts as lone work at your facility. Not every task done without a co-worker present qualifies. An office worker staying late is different from a maintenance worker doing a nighttime equipment repair in an isolated mechanical room.

The policy needs to identify the specific jobs and conditions that trigger lone worker protections, the required check-in intervals for different risk levels, and the escalation procedure when a check-in is missed. That escalation procedure has to include real names and phone numbers, not just job titles. “Call the supervisor” fails at 2 AM on a Sunday when no one has thought through who that is.

It also needs to identify tasks that require a second worker or are prohibited when working alone. Confined space entry is the clearest example. Energized electrical work above certain voltages is another. Your policy should name these tasks specifically, not describe them vaguely.

Finally, the policy needs to address how workers summon emergency help when they’re incapacitated. A worker who can’t speak or reach a phone can’t make use of a phone check-in system. Man-down devices or emergency alert buttons may be the only option for high-risk tasks.

Training Requirements

Workers assigned to lone work tasks need training before they start. That training should cover the specific hazards of their assigned tasks, how to use whatever check-in system is in place, how to summon emergency help if they’re injured or incapacitated, and the escalation procedure so workers know what happens if they miss a check-in.

Supervisors also need training. A supervisor who doesn’t understand the program will skip check-ins when they’re busy and treat missed contacts as minor inconveniences. The program falls apart at that point.

Include lone worker procedures in your new employee orientation for any role that involves solo work. Our new employee safety orientation guide covers how to structure that onboarding process. And make sure any lone worker incidents get properly documented and investigated using the process in our incident investigation guide.

Special Requirements in Some Jurisdictions

The United States does not have a federal lone worker regulation, but several states and Canadian provinces do.

British Columbia’s Occupational Health and Safety Regulation (Part 4.21-4.28) is one of the most detailed in North America. It requires employers to do a written hazard assessment for any work done alone or in isolation, establish a system of regular contact, and have a procedure for initiating emergency response if contact is lost.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario have similar requirements. If your operations extend into Canada, check the specific provincial regulation for the locations where you work.

Within the United States, California’s Cal/OSHA program has issued citations under the General Duty Clause for inadequate lone worker programs in healthcare and field service industries. Washington State and Oregon have also been more active than federal OSHA in this area.

The practical takeaway is this: even where no specific regulation exists, the General Duty Clause gives OSHA the authority to cite you for a recognizable, preventable hazard. A documented program is your defense. The absence of one is what gets companies cited.

Your emergency action plan needs to account for lone worker scenarios specifically, not just assume that someone nearby will call 911.