As an employer, it’s integral that you protect your employees, you have a duty of care to put systems in place to ensure their safety and wellbeing when they’re working on a job.
Every industry enlists lone workers in some capacity and the numbers in the UK are increasing all the time. It’s thought that around a fifth of the UK working population engage in lone working. This can take people everywhere and anywhere, outside of a single office, site or location, which means that knowing where your workers are and knowing that they’re safe is key.
With British Crime Survey statistics showing that up to 150 lone workers are attacked (physically or verbally) every day, safety is paramount.
Training
It’s really important to put training programmes in action to equip your lone workers with tools and techniques to work safely and assess levels of risk. They can also learn about self-motivation and managing their own workload too, so you can keep efficiency and productivity high, even though a lone worker is working independently.
It’s also necessary for other employees who aren’t lone workers, but interact with them, to also undergo training so they’re able to spot if lone workers are in trouble or need extra support. And also to learn how best to manage lone workers and ensure that you’re able to check-in, motivate and encourage them regularly to help keep standards high.
Suitability
There can be a whole variety of reasons why someone might not be suitable for lone working – workers themselves might not feel it is the right option for them. It’s useful to engage in robust conversation with workers to check whether lone working is something they want to do and look at medical suitability etc. Otherwise you might be putting workers into situations and job roles that aren’t ideal and don’t suit their needs or specific skillsets.
Risk Assessments
When mapping out the areas of your business that require lone working, you should also try to pinpoint areas of the business and specific tasks that are at risk of unsafe working practices or dangerous situations. This could mean that you provide extra support to lone workers, or use more than one lone worker at a time in certain scenarios. Being able to foresee situations before they arise will help you to plan and protect your employees.
Monitoring Safety
At Steanne, we know how important it is to keep lone workers protected and safe. GeoSafeGuard is a web-based tracking system that we’ve put together so that employers can monitor the safety and whereabouts of individual workers in isolated, remote or potentially unsafe locations.
It works by updating employees with workers’ active whereabouts, active status on a regular basis and notifies you when workers are non-responsive. Depending on the risk status of a worker you’ve selected, you’ll receive this information in pre-determined intervals.
24/7 support is available and product features are as follows:
- Panic Alarm
- Worker Selectable Risk Levels
- Configurable Alert Countdown and Shift Assignment
- Comprehensive Auditing and Reporting
- Filter Workers by Departments and Sites
- Map Portal display and GPS Location Tracking
Monitoring tools give you the level of security required to keep your workers safe.