Can a person legally work alone? Yes. No Australian law says a worker has to have someone else on site, and nothing in the work health and safety (WHS) framework prohibits a person from working by themselves. But that answer is the easy part. The law that matters for your business is about what you must do when people do work alone.
The obligations sit in the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) and its regulations, the model text adopted in every state and territory except Victoria, which runs its own Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). If your business has a cleaner working after hours, a sales representative on the road, a nurse doing home visits, a farmer alone in a paddock, a delivery driver, or a team member working from home, you have lone workers. This article sets out the duties that attach: the primary duty of care, the specific duty for remote or isolated work, the risk management process the regulations require, and what a regulator can do if you fall short.
Who owes the duty
The WHS laws place the obligation on the person conducting a business or undertaking, shortened to PCBU. The concept is deliberately broad: s 5 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) says a person conducts a business or undertaking whether they do it alone or with others, and whether or not it is run for profit. A sole trader working by themselves is a PCBU, as is a two person partnership, a family company and a large employer.
The people protected are called workers, and the definition is wider than employees. It covers employees, contractors and subcontractors and their employees, apprentices and trainees, and volunteers. The duty follows the work rather than the employment label, so engaging labour through a labour hire firm or independent contractors does not switch the duty off.
The specific duty for lone work is triggered whenever work is remote or isolated work. The Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth) define it at reg 48 as work that is isolated from the assistance of other persons because of location, time or the nature of the work, where assistance includes rescue, medical assistance and the attendance of emergency services. Three dimensions matter:
- Location: a farm worker, a field geologist, a freight driver on a long regional run.
- Time: a cleaner in a city office at 11pm, a night shift service station attendant, a weekend security guard.
- Nature of the work: a home care nurse moving between houses, a real estate agent holding an open inspection alone, a solo office worker in a building that is otherwise empty.
Isolation does not require a remote paddock. What matters is whether the worker can get help if something goes wrong.
The primary duty of care
Even before the remote or isolated work rules come into play, every PCBU carries the primary duty of care under s 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth). The duty is to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers while they are at work, and to ensure other people are not put at risk by the work. Section 19 spells out what that includes in terms that map directly onto lone work: providing and maintaining a safe work environment, safe systems of work, safe plant and structures, adequate facilities, and information, training, instruction and supervision.
"Reasonably practicable" is not a vague ideal. Under s 18 of the Act, it means weighing up the likelihood of the hazard occurring, the degree of harm that could result, what the PCBU knows or ought to know about the risk and how to control it, the availability and suitability of control measures, and the cost of those measures where the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk. The more severe the potential harm of a lone work incident, such as a medical emergency with no one to help, the more the law expects the PCBU to have done about it.
The primary duty also carries an ordering rule. Section 17 says risks must be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable, and only if elimination is not reasonably practicable may they be minimised. You cannot simply choose the cheapest option that happens to reduce, but not remove, the risk.
The specific duty for remote or isolated work
Regulation 48 of the Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth) adds a duty that applies only to lone work. A PCBU must manage risks to the health and safety of a worker associated with remote or isolated work in accordance with Part 3.1 of the regulations, which is the risk management process set out below. Critically, when minimising those risks, the PCBU must provide a system of work that includes effective communication with the worker.
Effective communication is a legal requirement, not a recommendation. For a worker genuinely isolated by location, a mobile phone that does not get reception is not effective communication. Regulators expect scheduled check ins, satellite phones or two way radios where there is no coverage, duress or emergency alarms, and procedures that trigger a response when a check in is missed. The point of the system is that a worker in trouble can raise help, and that someone is monitoring whether help is needed.
Breaching reg 48 carries a tier E monetary penalty: up to $50,000 for a body corporate and $9,900 for an individual under the maximum penalty amounts applying from 1 July 2026. Those figures are indexed each year and vary between jurisdictions, so they are an indication of scale rather than the whole picture of what is at stake.
The risk management process
The regulations do not just impose duties; they prescribe how to meet them. Part 3.1 of the Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth) requires a four step process, and Safe Work Australia confirms the same steps for remote and isolated work specifically.
Identify the hazards
Regulation 34 requires the PCBU to identify reasonably foreseeable hazards. For lone work, the common ones are violence and aggression from the public, which affects night retail, security and home visiting roles; a medical event with no one to respond; fatigue and error; manual tasks; vehicle incidents; slips and trips in unoccupied premises; and the mental health effects of prolonged isolation.
Assess the risks
For each hazard, assess the likelihood and the degree of harm, remembering that the consequences of a lone work incident are often worse simply because help is delayed. The assessment should cover the time of day the work happens, the location and whether it is safe, the design and layout of the workplace, first aid availability, the worker's health and capability for the task, and whether the worker has had enough training.
Control the risks
Regulation 35 requires risks to be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable, otherwise minimised. Regulation 36 sets the hierarchy of control: substitute the hazard, isolate people from it, use engineering controls, then administrative controls, then personal protective equipment. For lone work, administrative controls tend to carry most of the weight: check in systems, emergency response plans, first aid arrangements, duress alarms and supervision visits. A worker who is at real risk while working alone should, where practicable, be visited or paired up rather than simply given a phone number to call.
Review the controls
Regulation 38 requires control measures to be reviewed and revised so that the work environment stays safe, and specifically whenever a control is not working, before a change to the workplace or work practices, or when new information about the risk emerges. A roster change that leaves a worker alone at a different time, a new location, or a worker whose health changes can all invalidate an old assessment.
Consultation runs through all of this. Under s 49 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth), the PCBU must consult workers when identifying hazards, assessing risks and making decisions about how to control them. The people doing the lone work usually know the hazards the risk assessment missed.
What happens if you get it wrong
WHS offences are not soft touch. The model penalty amounts applying from 1 July 2026 are:
- Category 1: reckless or grossly negligent conduct that exposes someone to a risk of death or serious injury attracts up to $12,321,000 for a body corporate and $2,464,000 for an individual, who can also face imprisonment of up to 15 years under the Commonwealth Act.
- Category 2: failure to comply with a duty that exposes someone to a risk of death or serious injury attracts up to $2,470,000 for a body corporate.
- Category 3: failure to comply with a duty attracts up to $827,000 for a body corporate.
- Industrial manslaughter: where a jurisdiction has enacted it, the model maximum is around $21.3 million for a body corporate and 20 years' imprisonment for an individual.
The penalty figures are indexed each year and differ from state to state, and Victoria's Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 has its own scheme, so treat the numbers as an indication of scale rather than a quote for your jurisdiction.
Enforcement is active. The state and territory regulators, including SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria and Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, can inspect, issue improvement notices and prohibition notices, direct that work stop, and prosecute. A serious lone work incident is exactly the kind of matter that attracts a regulator's attention, and a demonstrated failure to manage the risks can also surface in a common law claim for personal injury.
A compliance checklist for lone work
Run through these steps for every arrangement where a worker is isolated from help:
- Map the lone work: list every worker who works without ready access to help, including when and where.
- Consult: involve workers and health and safety representatives in identifying hazards and designing controls.
- Assess and document: complete a written risk assessment for each lone work situation, covering time of day, location, environment, first aid, communication and worker capability.
- Install communication: a check in system that actually works where the worker is, with procedures for a missed check in.
- Plan for emergencies: first aid arrangements, an emergency response plan, and a way to summon help quickly.
- Train: workers need to know the procedures, how to use the communication system and what to do when a check in fails.
- Review: revisit the assessment whenever rosters, locations, tasks or workers change.
When to call in a WHS lawyer
A WHS lawyer's role is not to run the risk assessment for you, but to review the system you have in place and to act when things go wrong. That means reviewing lone work policies, risk assessments and emergency procedures before an incident, advising during a regulator investigation or in response to improvement and prohibition notices, and defending any prosecution. If you have had a serious incident, a near miss involving a lone worker, or an enquiry from a regulator, that is the point at which legal advice becomes urgent.
The gap most businesses miss: time
If you take one thing from this article, make it this: remote or isolated work is defined by time and the nature of the work as much as by location. The cleaner in a city office at 10pm is a lone worker under reg 48, and the same effective communication duty applies to them as to a farmer in a remote paddock. This week, find the worker in your business who is most isolated from help, and ask whether you could actually reach them, and raise help, within minutes if something went wrong. If you cannot answer that question, your risk assessment is not finished, and the law treats the gap as yours, not theirs.