How do I write a business case for lone worker safety?
Lead with the legal obligation and your own incident data, not with a product. Show what one serious incident costs against the annual cost of controlling it. Present three options including do nothing, and name a specific number and a start date.
The internal champion, usually a WHS or operations manager who has already decided what is needed and now has to convince a finance committee.
The structure that gets approved
- The obligation. One paragraph on what the law requires for workers who work alone, and that the duty sits with the organisation and its officers personally.
- The exposure, in your own numbers. How many people work alone, when, and what has already happened. Near misses count and are often all you have.
- The cost of an incident. Direct and indirect, including the time your organisation spends on it. See the note below on being careful here.
- The options. Do nothing, a partial measure, and the recommended option. Always include do nothing, with its consequences stated plainly.
- The recommendation and the ask. A specific number, a specific start date, and what it buys.
- How you will know it worked. The measures you will report against in twelve months.
The part that decides it
Finance committees do not approve safety spending because it is the right thing to do. They approve it when the cost of not doing it is made concrete and the cost of doing it is small by comparison.
Concrete means specific to you. "Workplace violence costs Australian business millions" persuades nobody. "We had eleven incidents of aggression last year, two people took leave afterwards, and one resigned" persuades a committee, because it is theirs.
If you have no incident data, that is the finding. An organisation with lone workers and no incident record is not incident-free; it is not capturing them. Say so.
Being careful with numbers
Use your own figures wherever you can. Where you have to use external ones, cite the source in the document and check it says what you think it says, because someone on the committee will check.
Be conservative. A business case that overstates the risk gets picked apart on the one number that is wrong, and the whole thing loses credibility with it. Understating slightly and being unimpeachable is the stronger position.
Mistakes that sink these
- Leading with a product. The committee has to accept the problem before they will consider a solution, and a proposal that opens with a device reads as someone who has already been sold to.
- No do-nothing option. Without it there is no comparison, and the committee's default becomes do nothing anyway.
- Only emotional argument. It is genuinely about people getting home safely, and that belongs in the document, but it cannot be the whole case.
- Vague ask. "We should invest in lone worker safety" gets deferred. "$14,200 in year one, starting 1 October, covering 40 field staff" gets a decision.
- No measures. If you cannot say how you will know it worked, you will be asked the same question again next year.
- Ignoring the objections. Name the obvious ones, including cost and whether staff will use it, and answer them in the document rather than being ambushed.
What to attach
We publish pricing rather than gating it, so you can attach a real figure without booking a call first. There is also a business case generator that produces a tailored draft, and free templates for the risk assessment underneath it.
- Your completed lone worker risk assessment, which is the evidence the hazard was identified
- Your incident and near-miss summary for the period
- A quote or published pricing, so the number is real rather than an estimate
- The regulator's guidance for your jurisdiction, which makes the obligation someone else's words rather than yours