Alberta Working Alone Requirements
In Alberta, the requirements for “working alone” were added to the General Safety Regulation (AR 448/83) on October 4, 2000. With the consolidation of all occupational health and safety rules into the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Code, the requirements became part of the OHS Code. The purpose of the Working Alone requirements is to ensure that workers working alone can do so safely. As a result, employers have responsibilities to minimize and eliminate risks associated with their workers who work alone.
General types of working alone situations
Workers who work alone can be grouped into five broad categories:
(1) Workers who handle cash. This includes convenience store clerks, retail and food outlet workers and taxi drivers.
(2) Workers who travel away from base offices to meet clients. This includes home care workers, social services workers and bylaw enforcement officers.
(3) Workers who do hazardous work but have no routine interaction with customers or the public. This includes workers in the logging, oil and gas industries.
(4) Workers who travel alone but have no routine interaction with customers or the public. This includes truck drivers and business people in transit.
(5) Workers who are at risk of a violent attack because their work site is isolated from public view. This includes security guards and custodians.
When is considered a worker working alone?
A worker is considered to be working alone if the worker works by himself or herself at a work site in circumstances where assistance is not readily available when needed. Employers can eliminate the risk of workers working alone, as well as the need to comply with the working alone requirements, if they chose to organize work schedules and workplace procedures to eliminate the need for workers to work by themselves.
Employer obligations
If an employer has workers who work by themselves, the OHS Code requires the employer to:
conduct a hazard assessment to identify existing or potential safety hazards in the workplace associated with working alone;
implement safety measures to reduce the risk to workers from the identified hazards;
ensure that workers have an effective way of communicating with their employer, immediate supervisor or another designated person in case of an
emergency situation; and
regularly contact the worker at intervals appropriate to the nature of the hazard associated with the worker’s work.
