A lone working policy nobody follows protects nobody. The habit matters more than the document.
Employers have a duty to protect the health and safety of staff who work alone, and for veterinary work that is not an edge case: ambulatory visits, on call attendance and single staffed shifts are the weekly rhythm of the job. The risk is real and so is the responsibility.
The template pairs the written policy with the operating habit: a check-in procedure simple enough to survive a busy day, an escalation path that names names, and a visit log that doubles as evidence the system runs. Written for practices, usable by five people or fifty.
Each one is a design problem, and each is fixable in the document itself.
Is the vet driving between yards lone working? The RVN alone at lunchtime? The policy must define its own scope in your practice's terms, or everyone assumes it means someone else.
A procedure that demands calls every thirty minutes dies in the first busy week. The template scales check-ins to risk: routine visits get a light touch, flagged situations get a firm one, and silence always triggers escalation.
If an incident happens, the questions are immediate: was there an assessment, was the procedure followed, where is the log. A policy without records answers none of them. The template builds the log in from day one.
Ten sections, written for veterinary work rather than adapted to it.
Free by email, usually the same day. For the detailed risk assessment side, we will say plainly where your health and safety adviser should take over.
Every system carries your practice's name and branding, not ours. These are the ones that matter most here.
The legal duty is to protect the health, safety and welfare of your staff, and lone workers specifically, so far as reasonably practicable. A written policy is how a practice of any size demonstrates it has thought about that duty and built a working procedure around it.
Yes, that is the core case it was written for: unfamiliar premises, large animals, variable signal and long distances. If your practice is ambulatory only, see our page on HR for equine practices, which pairs this policy with the rota and records side.
The policy sets the framework and the habit. Task level risk assessment for specific hazards sits with your health and safety arrangements, and we are straightforward about where our HR remit ends and your safety adviser's begins.
Make them light, make them owned, and make silence loud. A named monitor per shift, a check-in method that takes seconds, and an escalation that triggers automatically on a missed check. Habit beats paperwork, and the policy is designed around the habit.
Leave your details and we'll get back to you, usually within a few hours.
Thanks! We've got your message and will be in touch shortly.
