In the industries we work with there tend to be a dependence on lone workers, whether cleaners at a site unsupervised or a guard in retail park. These staff, if unmonitored and alone, are at a particular risk of harm, whether at the hands of another or due to an accident.

In terms of numbers ‘The British Crime Survey’ found that 150 lone workers are physically or verbally abused each day in the UK. Additionally, the numbers of accidents involving lone workers is significant, varying from slips, trips and falls to manual handling and chemical injuries.

What can your business do to help?

Naturally there are a number of policies and procedures you can put in place to ensure lone worker safety. Firstly, ensure that you undertake a lone worker risk assessment and identify any potential issues that may arise on that site, or with that service user. Make certain that the staff are aware of the health and safety aspects and what to do should an issue arise, ensuring a safer working environment. Naturally these assessments and policies need reviewing regularly to allow for improvement, however a lot of this is a legal obligation and something your insurance company may provide you with.

Other measure to ensure staff safety?

Naturally you have a duty of care to your employees as much as your clients, so ensuring safety on site is best for everyone. You may feel that the afore mentioned procedural practices will suffice, however, you may not.

One way to ensure staff safety is to provide a panic button type solution. Similar to what is provided to your grandma in an assisted living facility, they would simply push a button to inform either a line manager or 3rd party company of any issues they have.

There are various panic button apps that you could use as well as even ensuring your staff work in two’s would be enough, but is that cost effective to your client?

What can Roma do to help with lone working?

Roma systems provide a workforce management application for your remote workers, whether cleaning or security, it will work accordingly. We also have a landline monitoring solution that allows even the least technologically advanced individual can use. So how does it help lone workers?

By setting a set shift within the system your staff are able to log in and out of a contracted shift, and by doing so, can generate alerts. These alerts can be emailed free of charge or text (10p) to a designated manager or list of managers for escalation. The alerts include:

• Late Arrival – If your staff do not turn up on time, they may have run into an issue on their way to the site or at a previous site, so these alerts allow you to realise this, and find out what’s happened.
• Late Leaving – Many times we hear of cleaners, or guards having issues on site, and with the previously mentioned numbers, knowing a staff member has completed a job and left site is imperative to their safety, so the system will prompt for action from the management team.
• Off Site Alert – The application works using a GPS ring fence, and by doing so confirms a sites location and thus a staff members location when they check in or out. During the scheduled shift, the application also checks that the staff member is still on site for the duration of the shift, ensuring their safety on all parts of the site until they check out.

By managing the staff this way, and receiving the alerts in real-time, you can ensure staff safety remotely without the need for intrusive devices or 3^rd party call centres. This is all available from as little as £30 per month for up to 15 staff, probably less than the saving on your employers liability insurance.

If you have any questions or would like a free no obligation demonstration and quote please get in touch!