Lone working AIBU?

[Moonbear10]

There are days over the festive season where myself and several colleagues (one male, one female) are rota'd in to work alone.
We work at a farm park set in a huge country park and would be alone in charge of the entire site on our set days. Obviously there are large animals, tools, ditches, vehicles as daily parts of the job.
None of us are keen to work alone due to the possibility of accidents occuring and nobody else being on site and relying on mobile phones to call for help.
Alongside this, we have had a strange man turn up that we've had to report to the police on a few occasions. The last time being a few nights ago when he approached the premises when a female manager was alone on site. She felt intimidated by him. Obviously myself and female colleague are uncomfortable about working alone when there's the possibility that he will appear again.
Management don't want more than one person in because they don't want to pay more than one person the double time wage

Where do we stand with this? Is there anything we can do?

[MissMarks]

Well my staff in work are regularly in charge of a homeless hostel on their own and generally manage with an ‘on call’ system should anything kick off. I think you will be fine provided during the lone working time you are not wandering about on your own and are office based.

[Lemonlady22]

look up legalities of lone workers....i think in your setting, machinery etc it could be illegal

[SalemShadow]

Yanbu. That sounds dangerous

[TrickorWheat]

I would ask for a meeting asap

[Moonbear10]

Due to the nature of the job I can't stay in the office all day and will be wandering around on my own, animals need feeding, mucking out, moving etc.

We all have one to one meetings on Wednesday and I intend to being it up then, just want to make it clear that I know where I stand with it (which I'm not entirely sure of even after having a Google of legislation)

[Butterfly02]

Have you got a lone working policy? Do you use machinary? Does the machinary policy say you need two people to use?

[BackforGood]

Remember, of course, if you convince them it isn't safe to be there on your own, it means you all working two days over the holiday period, rather than one - which might not appeal to everyone.

Is it possible to have a sort of 'call in' system every hour or so.....you say "I'm going to muck out the horses now" and the 'at home but on call person' rings you in an hour to check all is well. So the 2nd person can be getting on with their day at home, but is aware of where you are on the farm park and whoever is working alone knows that should there be an accident, someone would know within an hour at the very most, where you were heading ?

There should be a lone worker policy, but the detail of it is difficult for any of us to come to a conclusion about, without knowing the circumstances. After all, a lot of people work alone, day in, day out.

[Moonbear10]

No lone worker policy that I can find, although did find some other interesting policies that they have previously told us don't exist!
Will see what comes up in the meeting on Wednesday, they should have risk assessments in place at the very least.

[BlankTimes]

Google Lone Worker Protection alarms. They have loads of different functions.
Some only work if there's decent mobile coverage, which isn't always great in rural areas.

[Margaritatime]

I would use the Health & Safety Executive guidance www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/workers/lone.htm and www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg73.pdf as my starting point.

[YobaOljazUwaque]

A "call in" buddy system such as described by @BackforGood would be ideal - over the festive period you each get one day when you are working alone but in regular contact with a colleague who is at home, and one day when you are at home but in regular contact with whoever is at work. The at-home bit should be paid at half time so will be cheaper than doubling up staff. There also needs to be a plan for what action the at-home person takes in the event that the at-work person says in one convo eg "I'm just going over to the barn now" and is then uncontactable. What is sufficient grounds to raise an alarm?

[Spanglyprincess1]

I've done loan working rurally and it's OK. We did the buddy system but that was a decade ago!
Just called it at set times, no response meant a dedicated buddy had to come out. Bit annoying for the buddy as can't drink etc but it mebat we were OK. The buddy is paid an oncall rate for the day so still paid but it wasn't much

[Geschwister4]

Trouble with the call in system is that if something happens you may have to wait an hour before help can be alerted- in some cases that may be too late. I would certainly raise this in your 1 to 1- they do have a duty of care to keep you safe in the workplace, this sounds potentially very unsafe to me.

[WizzyBee]

If they are expecting you to work alone then there should be a Lone Working risk assessment which sets out what you can and can't do.
If there is a buddy call in system then surely the 'buddy' should get paid, or is it going to be the managers who are going to be on call every hour on their day off?!!

[LakieLady]

I used to do lone working, sometimes with high-risk clients and often doing home visits in remote and rural areas.

I totally get why you feel uneasy with this, and you definitely need some sort of lone worker alarm system.