Employers have a legal duty of care to all employees who work alone. And this covers a wide range of professional roles, from healthcare workers on home visits to field engineers on remote sites, or estate agents showing empty properties.
Many organisations meet this legal requirement with lone worker monitoring: a system of processes, devices, apps and sometimes monitoring centres that can quickly get help to anyone the moment something goes wrong.
In this guide we’re going to explain what lone worker monitoring involves, what you’re required to do by UK law, and how to select and implement a suitable lone worker solution.
What is lone worker monitoring, and who counts as a lone worker?
According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), lone workers are defined as people who work alone without close or direct supervision. This is a broad group too, including home workers, delivery drivers, security staff, cleaners, engineers, petrol station staff and many more.
In fact, lone working covers a whole range of job types:
- Field-based roles: Such as engineers, surveyors and sales representatives who travel between sites
- Home-based and remote workers: Including a growing share of the workforce since hybrid working became widespread
- Fixed-site roles: Where someone works a shift alone, such as a receptionist, security officer or night-shift worker
- Roles that are only sometimes solitary: Such as a retail worker opening or closing a shop outside trading hours
Lone worker monitoring refers to the processes and technology that manage the risks present in these roles, and what it looks like in practice can vary considerably.
For instance, lone worker monitoring could be as simple as a manual check-in system between a worker and a supervisor. Or at the more sophisticated end of the scale, it could be a dedicated device connected to a round-the-clock Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), from which operators can see a worker’s location, listen in if needed, and escalate to emergency services in moments.
Lone worker protection should be a consideration for most businesses today, given its prevalence in the modern workplace, as this category covers a wide range of roles in all kinds of industries. And while there’s no official government statistic that measures lone workers as a defined category, the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) - the trade body for the UK's security sector - puts the number of UK lone workers between 6 and 8 million.
Is lone working legal? The UK legal duty
Working alone in the UK is absolutely legal, but the law requires employers to manage the risks of doing so properly. This duty is upheld by three pieces of British legislation:
- The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974: Section 2 of this act requires every employer to ensure ‘so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all employees’. This is the core of UK workplace safety law and applies to lone workers as much as anyone else.
- The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999: Regulation 3 of these regulations gets more specific: every employer must ‘make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of employees’. And if you have five or more employees you have to record the significant findings of your assessment and identify groups of employees especially at risk, which may well include lone workers.
- The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007: This act lays out a serious criminal offence where death results from the way an organisation’s operations were managed or organised, when that amounts to ‘a gross breach of the duty of care owed to that person’, and if senior management’s approach to the activity was a significant element of the breach. Organisations rather than individuals are prosecuted under this act, and convictions carry an unlimited fine.
A proper reading of these pieces of legislation means you’re free to let staff work alone, but first you must assess the risks and be able to show you’ve established reasonable and proportionate controls. What ‘reasonable’ means in practice is explained in the HSE’s own guidance.
Monitoring is one control among a number and the appropriate level of monitoring depends on what your risk assessment lays out.
Why monitor lone workers?
There are a number of reasons why employers of lone workers choose some form of monitoring:
Faster emergency response: If a lone employee has a medical emergency, falls or is threatened, one of the biggest dangers is the amount of time that can pass before someone notices. Thankfully, proper monitoring can solve this problem.
A defensible compliance record: With a monitored system you get a clear audit trail of check-ins, alerts and responses. This supports your risk assessment and review duties.
Reassurance for staff and managers: Physically isolated workers tend to feel much more confident knowing that help is just a button press away.
Reduced reliance on buddy systems and on-site supervisors: Pairing and constant supervision aren’t practical or affordable for many roles. Monitoring is an alternative that doesn’t compromise worker safety.
Operational insight: As well as protecting employees, monitoring data can help refine your policy by highlighting patterns such as locations or shifts that see the most incidents.
The risks lone workers face
A solid risk assessment needs to take an honest look at what could actually go wrong. The main incident categories are:
- Violence or aggression: This could be from members of the public, clients or intruders on your site
- Accidents with no one nearby to help: These could result from trips and falls or issues such as equipment failure
- Medical emergencies: This is a particular risk for people working in physically demanding roles, as well as employees with existing health conditions
- Environmental hazards: These hazards could include extreme weather, hazardous substances and confined spaces
- Road and travel risk: HSE specifically mentions this as a factor affecting many lone workers
How monitoring works: methods and technology
Many organisations combine more than one method of monitoring, depending on the risk level of different roles:
Manual check-ins and buddy systems: The simplest approach is when a worker messages or calls a supervisor at agreed intervals. It can work well for lower-risk roles but relies completely on someone remembering to make the call, and someone else noticing if it’s not made.
Apps: A smartphone app can transform an existing device into a lone worker tool, usually including a panic button, GPS location and a session timer that triggers an alert if not cancelled in time. It’s a flexible and low-cost monitoring option that may be suitable for lower to medium-risk roles, and with this option staff don’t need to carry an additional security device.
Dedicated devices: Here we’re talking about wearables and standalone units, which can include lightweight wristbands or ruggedised devices built for more challenging environments. Dedicated devices usually include a discreet duress button, automatic ‘man down’ fall detection and GPS tracking. It’s worth noting that dedicated devices don’t depend on an employee’s own phone being charged and within range.
24/7 ARC monitoring: Whichever app or device you choose, an alert needs to be received somewhere, and that’s where Alarm Receiving Centres (ARC) come in. An ARC provides round-the-clock remote monitoring services and support from trained operators who can review a situation using location, audio and sometimes video data. They can then escalate if necessary to an employee’s emergency contacts, on-site guards or the emergency services.
Triggers other than manual panic buttons include ‘man down’ detection, missed check-ins, incomplete journeys and exposure to hazardous environments and elements.
And communication methods have improved over the years when it comes to monitoring, now including WiFi and mobile data alongside cellular networks to help ensure clear comms, even in patchy-signal areas.
Standards and accreditation that matter
Standards and accreditation around lone worker monitoring demands a bit of research, because some providers throw around the terminology loosely. Let us quickly explain what you need to know:
BS 8484
This is the British Standard for lone worker devices and services. It’s a voluntary code of practice rather than a legal requirement, and it sets out what a lone worker service should look like. This includes how quickly a device should connect to an ARC after triggering, how false alerts should be dealt with, what clients should receive from training providers, and how ARCs should operate.
It’s important to understand here that only providers whose full chain (device, ARC and response process) is accredited to BS 8484 can offer the fastest kind of police response. This is known as Level 1 and usually reserved for genuine emergencies where the caller can’t dial 999 themselves.
Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs)
Not all ARCs are as effective as one another, so it’s worth knowing that the National Security Inspectorate’s (NSI) Gold level accreditation is the industry benchmark. Achieving this level requires independent auditing of operating standards, resilience and staff competence.
Accreditation when evaluating providers
If you’re a Head of Procurement or Head of Security and you’re looking for lone worker monitoring solutions, you shouldn't simply ask whether an organisation is BS 8484 accredited, but which parts of their service chain hold current, independently audited accreditation. Ask for evidence, too.
Securitas UK operates two in-house Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs), giving us dual-site resilience so that monitoring can continue even if one location is affected by technical issues or a power outage. Both centres are fully accredited to BS 50518 and PSA 33:2014, enabling us to provide monitoring services in Ireland as well as the UK. We also hold BS 8484 and NSI Gold accreditations, reflecting the quality, reliability and professionalism of our monitoring services.
How to carry out a lone worker risk assessment
Under Regulation 3 of the 1999 Regulations, employers are required to undertake a suitable and sufficient risk assessment. Lone working deserves adequate consideration as part of this process.
If you want to conduct a lone worker risk assessment, here’s a process you can follow:
- Identify your lone workers and their tasks: List each role and situation where someone works alone or without close or direct supervision. This includes occasional lone working.
- Identify the hazards: Work through the risk categories described earlier for each role: violence, accidents, medical emergencies, environmental hazards and travel risk. HSE guidance also asks you to consider whether the workplace presents its own special risk - for instance if it’s isolated, rural or unfamiliar to an employee.
- Decide who's especially at risk: Workers - such as new starters, those with existing medical conditions and anyone whose first language isn’t English - may need extra consideration, additional training and instructions in a language and format they can easily understand.
- Identify existing controls and what's missing: Look at what controls you already have in place - such as training, supervision and communication equipment - against what the hazards actually require.
- Decide on additional controls, including monitoring: HSE guidance points towards alarm-raising devices or systems (manual or automatic) for higher-risk roles, as well as training and escalation procedures.
- Record the assessment: If your organisation has five or more employees you need to record the significant findings of your assessment, as well as the groups you identify as being particularly at risk.
- Review regularly: Your assessment should be reviewed whenever it may no longer be valid or comprehensive - such as when employees change duties, when their health changes or when they work on a new site.
It’s worth noting that for some high-risk activities - such as working in confined spaces or with live electrical conductors - more than one person is required by law, regardless of your own risk assessment.
Choosing a lone worker monitoring provider
If your risk assessment suggests a monitored solution would be sensible, the next step is thoroughly evaluating providers. Here are a few criteria that you should focus on:
Accreditation and audit trail: As we’ve mentioned, it’s important to discover how accredited a provider is, and whether their entire service chain has been independently audited.
Response-time SLAs and KPIs: It’s also vital to understand how quickly an alert connects to a trained operator, and how these figures are measured and reported.
Escalation process: You also need to find out exactly who is contacted in what order after an alert, and under what circumstances a provider will go directly to emergency services, as opposed to a nominated contact first.
Scalability: If your organisation has multiple sites or if it’s likely to grow, make sure the provider can onboard additional users, devices and locations without prolonged set-up periods.
Integration: You also need to consider how a lone worker solution will sit alongside your existing security setup. Think about things like CCTV monitoring, access control, and whether reporting will feed into a single platform, or a number of disconnected systems.
Reporting and audit capability: When speaking to a provider ask what reporting is available for your internal audits, incident reviews and insurance requirements, to cover compliance bases.
Cost versus in-house alternatives: It’s also worth comparing the cost of a monitored system to an equivalent buddy system, or internal monitoring system. The staffing overhead of the latter shouldn’t be overlooked as it can be significant.
To illustrate what at-scale lone worker monitoring can look like in practice, Securitas UK has a two-decade partnership with South West Water, which was recognised at the 2025 British Security Awards. In this case, 1,500 lone worker and gas detection devices have been deployed to protect a high-risk, dispersed workforce across isolated sites, equipping them with the ability to report incidents quickly and securely, while supporting a culture of safety and accountability.
If you’d like to find out your organisation’s risk status before you consider providers, our security risk assessment can uncover potential vulnerabilities and help you see what controls would be sensible to implement.
Implementation and getting buy-in
Choosing a lone worker monitoring solution is great, but getting it properly implemented takes a little further thought. Here are a few steps that should help:
Roll out in phases: We recommend you start with your highest-risk roles and expand from there. Trying to switch your entire organisation at once can be overwhelming.
Train properly: Training needs to cover how monitoring systems work, including how to avoid false alarms and what happens when an alarm is triggered. A proper understanding of the system breeds trust.
Address privacy directly: Monitoring falls under UK GDPR rules as it involves processing personal data, so again, for trust, it’s important to be clear about what is collected, why it is collected, and for how long it is retained. A clear, lawful basis needs to be established, and data collection should be proportionate to the purpose of protecting, rather than surveilling, staff.
Embed it in policy: A written lone working policy is vital, covering training, supervision and emergency procedures. And this policy should be tested periodically to make sure it’s still appropriate and comprehensive.
The bottom line
Your duty of care to people working alone is clear. HSWA 1974, the 1999 Regulations and the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 lay out what’s required of you as an employer: to assess the risk, put proportionate controls in place, and to be able to show your efforts.
For many organisations the best way to do this is with a well-documented lone worker policy and effective monitoring technology to support it, and more importantly, to protect lone workers.
Talk to Securitas about protecting your lone workers.
Please note that this article is intended for general information and not legal advice
FAQs
What is lone worker monitoring?
Lone worker monitoring is the system that monitors employees working alone. Methods include everything from simple check-in calls to sophisticated apps and devices connected to 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centres that can assess situations and quickly send help when needed.
Who is classed as a lone worker in the UK?
The HSE definition of a lone worker is anyone who works without close or direct supervision. This includes home workers, fixed-site staff on solo shifts, field-based workers and anyone else who occasionally works alone as part of their role.
Is it illegal to work alone in the UK?
No, lone working is legal. The law requires that employers assess risks and put controls in place to keep lone workers safe.
Is lone worker monitoring a legal requirement?
What’s legally required is a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and practical and proportionate controls to protect lone workers. No specific technology is mandated - the law focuses on the outcome rather than the method.
What is BS 8484?
BS 8484 is the British Standard covering lone worker devices and application services. It’s a voluntary code of practice that sets out requirements for device performance, ARC operation and response times.
How do you monitor a lone worker?
The most effective lone worker monitoring usually combines an app or device, a panic button and automatic alerts, connected to a 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centre.
