Protecting Lone and At-Risk Workers: What Australian Employers Need to Know

From the community nurse visiting a client's home after dark, to the retail worker closing up alone, the real estate agent showing a vacant property to a stranger, or the field technician driving between remote sites — millions of Australians do some or all of their job without a colleague nearby. These workers face two overlapping risks: the isolation itself (no one to help if they fall ill, are injured, or have an accident) and, for many, direct contact with members of the public who may be unpredictable, aggressive, or in crisis.

Protecting these workers isn't just good practice — it's a legal duty. This article sets out what Australian law requires of employers, and the practical measures and technology available to meet that duty.

The legal framework


The primary duty of care

Work health and safety (WHS) in Australia is governed by the model Work Health and Safety Act, developed by Safe Work Australia and adopted, with minor local variations, by the Commonwealth and every state and territory except Victoria (Victoria's Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 imposes an equivalent duty). Western Australia was the last jurisdiction to harmonise, commencing its own WHS Act in March 2022.

Section 19 of the WHS Act places the primary duty of care on the "person conducting a business or undertaking" (PCBU) — in practice, the employer. A PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and of other people affected by the work. Critically, this duty follows the work, not the workplace. A support worker in a client's home, a driver between appointments, or a contractor on a remote site is owed exactly the same duty as someone in a conventional office.

"Reasonably practicable" is not a loophole. Regulators and courts weigh factors including the likelihood of the hazard occurring, the degree of harm it could cause, what the employer knew or should have known, and the availability and cost of controls. If a control is available, effective, and not grossly disproportionate to the risk, failing to implement it is unlikely to be excused.

Remote or isolated work — Regulation 48

Most jurisdictions' WHS Regulations contain a specific provision — commonly Regulation 48, under the "remote or isolated work" division — requiring a PCBU to implement a system of work that includes effective communication with the worker. In practice, regulators and safety guidance expect this to include:

• A documented risk assessment for each role or task that involves lone or isolated work
• A reliable method of communication suited to the environment (mobile coverage can't simply be assumed)
• A monitoring or check-in system, with clear escalation if a worker misses a check-in or cannot be contacted
• Training and instruction tailored to the isolation and hazards the worker will face
• A plan for emergency response, including how the site will be reached and how injured workers will be extracted
• Procedures for reporting incidents promptly and preserving the scene for investigation

Simply issuing a mobile phone and telling a worker to "call if there's a problem" does not, on its own, satisfy this duty — particularly if the phone has no signal in the work area, or if no one is actually monitoring for missed calls.

Psychosocial hazards

A significant and relatively recent shift in WHS regulation is the explicit inclusion of psychosocial hazards — including exposure to workplace violence and aggression from the public — as a risk employers must manage under the same primary duty. Codes of Practice on managing psychosocial risks at work (adopted in most jurisdictions) specifically identify "occupational violence and aggression" and "remote or isolated work" as psychosocial hazards requiring assessment and control, alongside more familiar physical risks. This means the anxiety and trauma associated with dealing with hostile members of the public is a compliance issue, not just a wellbeing nicety.

Consultation, notification and penalties

Employers must consult with workers (and their health and safety representatives) when identifying hazards, assessing risks and deciding on control measures — workers doing the job are often best placed to identify what actually goes wrong in practice.

Serious incidents involving lone or public-facing workers — deaths, serious injuries, or "dangerous incidents" — are notifiable to the relevant WHS regulator (such as SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkSafe Queensland, or Safe Work Australia's equivalents in other states) within short statutory timeframes, and the site must generally be preserved until the regulator advises otherwise.

Non-compliance carries real consequences. Penalties under the model WHS Act run into the millions of dollars for corporations, and several jurisdictions now have industrial manslaughter offences carrying substantial fines and imprisonment for individuals where gross negligence or recklessness leads to a worker's death. Officers — directors and senior executives — also carry a personal, non-delegable due diligence duty under section 27 of the Act, meaning safety cannot simply be handed off to a WHS manager and forgotten by leadership.

Who is affected?

"Lone worker" or "public-facing at-risk worker" covers a broad range of roles, including:

• Community and home-care nurses, disability support and NDIS workers
• Real estate agents and property managers conducting inspections
• Retail, hospitality and petrol station staff, especially during opening/closing or night shifts
• Taxi, rideshare and delivery drivers
• Utility, telecommunications and field service technicians
• Security guards and concierge staff
• Social workers, child protection officers and housing officers conducting home visits
• Teachers and school staff working after hours or alone with the public
• Council and compliance officers, parking inspectors, and environmental health officers
• Mining, agriculture and remote-site workers

The obligation applies whether the isolation is constant (a single-person remote site) or intermittent (a retail worker who is usually with colleagues but closes alone one night a week).

Applying the hierarchy of controls

Once risks are identified through a documented risk assessment — covering the task, the environment, and the individual worker's circumstances — employers should apply the standard hierarchy of controls, favouring higher-order controls where reasonably practicable:

1. Eliminate — Can the lone or public-facing element of the task be removed? For example, scheduling high-risk home visits in pairs, or moving a task to business hours.
2. Substitute or redesign — Can the task be restructured, such as conducting an initial risk-screening phone call before a face-to-face home visit with a potentially volatile client?
3. Engineering controls — Physical measures such as security screens, safe rooms, improved lighting, secure layouts that keep an exit route clear, and CCTV.
4. Administrative controls — Policies, procedures, rosters, check-in protocols, prohibited-task lists, and training.
5. Personal protective equipment and devices — Duress alarms, communication devices, and similar tools as a final layer, never a substitute for the controls above.

Practical measures and equipment

Communication and monitoring technology

• Personal duress alarms and lone worker devices — wearable or handheld devices, such as those provided by SafeTCard.  These let a worker trigger a silent alarm, which alerts a monitoring centre or supervisor with the worker's location.
• Lone worker safety apps — smartphone-based systems combining GPS location, scheduled check-ins, panic buttons, and automatic escalation if a check-in is missed.
• Man-down / no-motion detection — sensors that automatically raise an alert if a worker falls, stops moving, or is horizontal for an unusual period — important because many serious incidents (falls, medical events) leave a worker unable to press a button themselves.
• GPS tracking and geofencing — allowing supervisors to know where field or mobile workers are, and to trigger alerts if someone strays into an unexpected or restricted area.
• 24/7 monitoring services — third-party monitoring centres (some staffed by trained responders or nurses) that receive alerts, assess them against the worker's known schedule and location, and coordinate an emergency response — closing the gap between "an alert was sent" and "help actually arrived."
• Reliable communication for remote areas — satellite phones or satellite messengers where mobile coverage cannot be relied upon; a documented check of actual signal coverage, not an assumption.

Physical and environmental measures

• Security screens, locked service counters, and controlled entry points in customer-facing settings
• CCTV and, in some sectors, body-worn cameras for staff who deal directly with the public
• Adequate lighting in car parks, entries and work areas, particularly for night shifts
• Layout design that preserves clear exit routes and avoids workers becoming trapped behind counters or in enclosed rooms
• Secure cash handling procedures to reduce robbery-related risk
• Vehicle safety measures for mobile workers — GPS tracking, hands-free communication, regular maintenance, and driver fatigue management

Administrative controls and procedures

• Check-in/check-out systems, with a named person responsible for monitoring and a defined escalation procedure if contact is lost
• Buddy systems or scheduled call-ins for higher-risk visits or shifts
• Prohibited task lists — clearly documented tasks that must never be performed alone (working at height, confined space entry, tasks involving known-aggressive clients), with genuine enforcement, not just a policy that gets bent under time pressure
• Client and site risk-screening — flagging addresses or individuals with a history of aggression before a worker is sent out alone
• Incident reporting systems that make it easy for workers to report near-misses and aggressive incidents, feeding back into risk assessments
• Rostering practices that avoid single-person closing/opening shifts wherever possible

Training

• De-escalation and conflict management training for workers who regularly deal with the public
• Situational awareness and early warning sign recognition
• Emergency response training — what to do, and who to contact, if something goes wrong
• Role-specific induction for lone or remote work, including familiarity with communication equipment before it's needed in a real emergency

Psychosocial support

• Access to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) or equivalent counselling support
• Structured post-incident support and debriefing after an aggressive or traumatic encounter, rather than expecting workers to "shake it off" and continue
• Regular review of psychosocial risk as part of the broader WHS risk assessment, particularly for roles with known exposure to public aggression

Putting it together: a practical starting point

For organisations reviewing their approach, a reasonable sequence is to:

1. Map exposure — identify every role, task, shift, or location where a worker is alone, isolated, or dealing directly with the public without immediate backup.
2. Assess and document risk for each of those roles, covering the task, environment, and worker factors, and involving the workers themselves in that assessment.
3. Select controls using the hierarchy above, favouring elimination and engineering controls before relying on devices and PPE alone.
4. Implement communication and monitoring systems appropriate to the actual conditions workers face — tested in the field, not just on paper.
5. Train workers and supervisors, and make sure escalation responsibilities are clearly assigned to a real person, not left ambiguous.
6. Review regularly, particularly after any incident or near-miss, and keep pace with regulatory developments such as the growing emphasis on psychosocial risk.

The bottom line

Australian WHS law gives employers real, enforceable obligations to protect workers who work alone or face the public — obligations that extend to psychological as well as physical harm, and that carry serious penalties, including personal liability for officers, when they are neglected.

Meeting them doesn't require guesswork: a genuine risk assessment, sensible application of the hierarchy of controls, appropriate technology, and a culture that treats check-ins and escalation procedures as non-negotiable will take most organisations a long way toward both compliance and, more importantly, actually keeping their people safe.

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