Working alone in the workplace

pecohr

I have recently found that some managers have been coming in alone to work on Sundays (facility is closed). I understand this has been a long time condoned work practice here (I'm new to this firm). I know that there are many safety related issues and wonder if any of you have policies written that address (prohibit) this situation. I would like to go to our Senior Management and bring them up to date on potential costly liabilities, not to mention the danger to involved employees.

Appreciate your help.

Stuart

hrbanker

Sorry, I can't help you as I sit here all alone at 7:45 p.m. We rely on an alarm system with motion detector that lets me know if I'm in the building by myself or not. I can disarm at the front door and rearm right outside my office. It works pretty well as long as I don't wander into the hallway. My guess is a lot of HR professionals have to work weird hours.

However, we do have a policy that prohibits employees from being in the work areas more than 15 minutes after their scheduled work hours. Only certain employees are given the code for the motion detector, so that keeps a lot of people away on the weekend.

Hunter1

Have to agree with the 'banker' on this one. Unless there's something dangerous about your workplace, I see nothing wrong with managers working alone. I've had employees who think that there's a law (or should be) that they don't have to work alone, but, in general, unless you're into confined space or firefighting, there are a lot of employees who work alone.

pecohr

Thanks for your input. We are an old manufacturing facility (lots of rooms, lots of different elevations, lots of machinery, etc.) without the benefit of a alarm systems. The reason I brought this question up is that we recently had a female ee come in on a Sunday to find someone in the building (not an ee)x:o

I don't want to discourage managers from being productive but I also do not want to find any formerly alive ee's when I arrive on Monday x:-(

LisaMN

I'm not sure developing a policy prohibiting ee's from working on the weekends is the best solution to this problem.

The episode with the female ee arriving to find an unauthorized person in the plant would indicate the need for some security measures to protect not just the employees but the assets of the organization.

Security guards? systems? alarms? gated parking lot?

wiremanufacturer

We are also a manufacturing facility and we do not allow employees to work in the plant by themselves. The office staff will be here many times alone. WE prohibit the manufacturing ees to work on their own for safety reasons.

Rockie

We have security in our building until 9 PM every evening as we have an on-site cardiac gym for the general public We discourage anyone from working by themselves in the building. Our building is also open on Saturdays (again to serve the gym customers) until 7PM. On Sundays, only Sr. Managers can get into the building via code.

For safety reasons, it's really not a good idea to have people in a building by themselves without benefit of security (either live or a system) especially if they have to walk into a parking lot by themselves.