For lone and remote workers
Lone worker safety in Australia: your WHS duties and a check-in procedure that works.
A lone worker is anyone who works where nobody can reach them quickly if something goes wrong. Australian work health and safety law puts that risk on the business, not on the worker. Your job is to manage it: write the procedure, set check-in times that match the real risk, and make sure a missed check-in reaches a person who will act.
The definition
Who counts as a lone worker.
Isolation is about what a worker can reach, not how far they are from town.
SafeWork NSW describes remote or isolated work as work where you cannot get immediate help from rescue, medical or emergency services, because of your location, the time you work, or the nature of the job. Distance is only one of the three.
That definition catches more of a roster than most managers expect. A cleaner working a city office at night counts as an isolated worker, because nobody on the footpath outside would reach them in time. Workers who usually fall inside a lone worker procedure include:
- Community nurses, home care staff and support workers inside a client's home.
- Farmers, field scientists and technicians on a remote site.
- Cleaners, security patrols and maintenance crews on night shift.
- Real estate agents at private inspections.
- Drivers on long runs, and crews at a base camp far from a town.
The harm is physical and psychological. SafeWork NSW names remote and isolated work as a hazard in the NSW code of practice for managing psychosocial hazards at work.
The duty
If your people work alone, the responsibility is yours.
Under Australian work health and safety law, the duty to keep lone and remote workers safe sits with the business.
Manage the risk, and have a way to communicate.
The model WHS Regulations (regulation 48) specifically address remote or isolated work. They require a person conducting a business or undertaking to manage the health and safety risks to remote or isolated workers, and to have systems in place to effectively communicate with workers.
Source: Safe Work Australia, Remote and isolated work, WHS duties. We help you meet the duty. We are not a certification body, a regulator, or a 24/7 monitoring centre.
What the regulators ask a business to do
SafeWork NSW asks you to eliminate the risks of remote and isolated work where that is reasonably practicable, and to minimise what remains. It expects you to consult your workers as you identify and review those risks, to keep communication with isolated workers effective, and to cover them in the site emergency plan.
SafeWork NSW also publishes the control measures it expects you to consider. Several of them describe a check-in system directly:
- Communication devices and procedures that keep regular contact between a worker and a supervisor.
- A check-in at the start of a working period and a sign-off at the end of it.
- Automatic warning devices that raise an alarm in an emergency.
- Personal duress alarms that a worker can trigger, and that also fire when the worker stops moving.
- Scheduled supervisor visits, so somebody sees the worker during the shift.
Victoria has not adopted the model WHS laws and runs its own OHS Act, and Victorian employers still carry a duty to manage the risk of working alone. WorkSafe Victoria's working alone hub carries an information sheet on those duties and the controls, farm guidance, and a working alone policy template.
A check-in system supports the duty without discharging it, because compliance rests on your whole risk-management approach.
The procedure
What a check-in procedure has to cover.
Four decisions turn an informal habit into a procedure a supervisor can run.
Check-in intervals
Anchor the times to the risk, not to the clock. A daily nine o'clock message protects almost nothing if the dangerous work happens at two in the afternoon.
Set a check-in before and after each hazardous task, and one at the end of the working period. For higher-risk work, shorten the interval to an hour or less. Two or three well-placed check-ins beat six token ones, because every extra check-in is one more thing to forget.
Give each check-in a grace window. Fifteen to thirty minutes suits general solo work, and less suits the dangerous jobs.
Escalation contacts
Name the responders, and name them in order. One contact is not a system: a single person takes holidays, boards flights and turns their phone off.
Roster two or three responders so every shift has a named person covering it, and write down which step belongs to whom.
Tell each responder what the alert means and what you expect them to do. Agree that a false alarm costs nobody anything, so no responder hesitates.
Missed check-in steps
Write the escalation as a sequence with times attached.
- Remind the worker first. Most missed check-ins end here, and nobody else is troubled.
- Alert the rostered responder. Send a push notification when the grace window closes.
- Follow with an SMS. A text lands when a push goes unseen or a phone sits on silent.
- Place a phone call. A ringing phone is the channel hardest to ignore.
- Try the second responder. They may know the job ran long, or they may join the response.
- Send someone to look. Start from the last known task and location.
- Call 000 if there is reason to fear injury. The caller must be able to say where the worker was and what they were doing.
Keep a short details sheet for each worker, and keep it current. Record the site address and how to get in, the gate codes, hazards a responder should know before walking in, the vehicle, and the medical basics. An escalation is only as good as the information it hands the responder.
After hours and thin coverage
Night shifts, weekends and on-call work are where informal arrangements fail. Decide who carries the phone outside business hours, and roster it like any other duty. Escalation that waits on a supervisor noticing an empty desk cannot work at eleven at night.
Plan for the places phones do not reach. Record the intended route before a worker leaves coverage, then set the next check-in for when they expect to be back in signal. On sites with no mobile service, a long-range sensor can carry the check-in instead.
Log every check-in, alert and response. The log is how you review the procedure, and how you show a regulator that your system of communication is real.
A starting point
A sample lone worker procedure outline.
Copy this into your own WHS documents, then fill in the names, times and numbers.
- Scope. Name the roles, tasks and shifts the procedure covers.
- Risk assessment. List the hazards each lone task carries, and your controls.
- Check-in schedule. Set the times, tied to the hazardous tasks and the shift end.
- Grace window. State the minutes allowed before an alert goes out, per task.
- Responder roster. Name the responders for each shift, in the order they are called.
- Escalation ladder. Set out reminder, push, SMS, call and second responder, with timings.
- Welfare check. Say who attends, and when the response becomes a 000 call.
- Worker details sheet. Hold the address, access, site hazards, vehicle and medical basics.
- Duress and man-down. Explain how a worker raises duress, and what follows.
- Records. Keep the check-in log, the alert log and the incident reports.
- Training. Show every worker and responder how the ladder runs.
- Review. Set a date, and review after any incident or near miss.
Consult your workers while you write it. SafeWork NSW asks for that consultation, and the crew knows its own risk moments better than the office does.
If you are covering yourself rather than employees, our daily check-in plan for working alone walks through the same decisions at a personal scale.
In the app
How Safe Check-In runs the procedure.
The escalation runs on our server, not on the worker's phone.
Safe Check-In is a lone worker check in built around the ladder above. Your workers confirm they are ok with a single tap, and the alert steps up on its own when a confirmation does not arrive. A reminder goes to the worker first, so nobody is escalated for being five minutes late. The how it works page shows the full ladder step by step.
Scheduled and shift check-ins
Set check-ins by shift, by task, or by the hour for higher-risk work. Workers confirm they are ok with a single tap.
Duress and man-down
A worker can raise duress quietly, and a missed check-in or no-movement signal escalates on its own if they cannot.
An employer view
See at a glance who is checked in, who is overdue, and where an escalation is in progress, so a supervisor can act early.
Escalation that does not stop at a push
If a check-in is missed, the alert steps up: push, then SMS, then a call to the nominated responder, so it is not missed.
Coverage where signal is thin
For remote sites, optional LoRa and LoRaWAN long-range sensors carry a check-in over kilometres, beyond phone and wifi.
A monitored plan, run by us
It runs on our own self-hosted stack and a real person keeps it working, rather than a consumer app left to chance.
Every push, SMS and call is logged, so you can check delivery and show your records. Run a self-test whenever you like.
Why a real stack matters at work
Reliability is the whole product.
A check-in system is only worth having if it works on the worst day. Safe Check-In runs the escalation as a real workflow on infrastructure we own and watch, the same stack already sending live alerts today.
n8n automation
The escalation order is fixed in a real n8n workflow, not left to one phone.
ntfy push
Self-hosted ntfy push, so we can see and control delivery.
LoRa long-range
Optional LoRa and LoRaWAN sensors for remote sites.
Questions employers ask.
Who counts as a lone worker in Australia?
Anyone who cannot get immediate help from rescue, medical or emergency services because of their location, the time they work, or the nature of the job. SafeWork NSW gives a cleaner working a city office at night as an example, because nobody outside would reach them in time.
How often should a lone worker check in?
Match the interval to the risk rather than the clock. Set a check-in before and after each hazardous task, and one at the end of the working period. Shorten it to an hour or less for higher-risk work. Two or three well-placed check-ins beat six token ones.
What should happen when a lone worker misses a check-in?
Remind the worker first, so an honest slip troubles nobody else. If the grace window closes with no answer, alert the rostered responder by push, then SMS, then a phone call. Then try the second responder, and send someone to look. If there is real reason to fear injury, call 000.
Is a lone worker check-in system a legal requirement in Australia?
The law names the outcome rather than the product. The model WHS Regulations (regulation 48) require a business to manage the risks to remote or isolated workers, and to have a system of work for effective communication with them. Scheduled check-ins with a written escalation are among the control measures SafeWork NSW lists. They support that duty, but do not discharge it on their own.
Who should be the escalation contact after hours?
Roster it, and name the person for each shift in writing. One contact is not a system, because a single person takes holidays, boards flights and turns their phone off.
What happens if a worker has no phone signal?
Record the last check-in and the intended route before the worker leaves coverage, then set the next check-in for when they expect to be back in signal. For sites with no mobile service, optional LoRa and LoRaWAN long-range sensors can carry a check-in over kilometres.
What does lone worker cover cost per worker?
The Lone Worker plan is AU$12 per worker per month, GST included, with volume pricing for larger teams. One worker means one person with their own check-in schedule and login. The pricing page lists what each plan includes.
Where this comes from
The official sources behind the work health and safety points above, so you can check any of it yourself rather than take our word for it:
- Safe Work Australia, the national body that develops the model work health and safety laws.
- Safe Work Australia: hazards, the hazards hub that covers remote and isolated work.
- SafeWork NSW: remote or isolated work, the NSW regulator's definition, duties and control measures.
- WorkSafe Victoria: working alone, the Victorian hub with the information sheet and a policy template.
Let's scope it for your team.
Tell us how your people work alone and what would help. Lone Worker is $12 per worker/month, with volume pricing for larger teams, and we will come back with a clear plan for your setup.
Safe Check-In helps you manage risks to lone and remote workers. It is not a certification, and not a replacement for emergency services. In an emergency, call 000.