Lone Worker Safety in 2023

When thinking of lone workers, an image from a particular sector may come to mind, however lone workers come in many different forms and undertake a wide variety of work across the nation every day.? Unfortunately, many companies fail to recognise they employ lone workers at all.? So let’s begin by clarifying that a lone worker doesn’t need to be physically alone all day.? Anyone who undertakes work without close or direct supervision for some part of their day is considered a lone worker by the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE).? Here are some general examples of day-to-day lone working:

• Business travel and commuting between sites;
• Heading out to buy office supplies;
• Visiting customers at their home/office;
• Travelling to events/conferences;
• Undertaking surveys or assessments in public spaces (with other people around);
• Working from home.

Many businesses will have people undertaking one or more of the activities above, although the last one may come as a surprise, however HSE have issued revised guidance which makes clear that organisations continue to be responsible for homeworkers and such staff fall within the lone working definition.? Following COVID-19 and the rise of working from home, more people are now considered lone workers than ever before.

Book a free company lone worker assessment to benchmark your current situation and get advice on suitable solutions.

Are organisations liable for lone worker safety?

Lone workers are particularly vulnerable as they may lack support to deal with unexpected issues whilst working.? Statistics show that there were a staggering 688,000 incidents of violence at work in 2019/20 in the UK.? When considering other health and safety related issues such as accidents, medical conditions and environmental factors, there can be many risks faced by a lone worker over the course of their working time.?? It is vital that staff have adequate protection and alerting mechanisms to manage their safety.? Whilst it is clearly important to protect individuals, the right systems and working practices also help protect your organisation and avoid penalties under the UK Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 or equivalent legislation in many other countries.

The impact of workers feeling unsafe

Every employee has the right to work in physical and mental safety, as such it’s important to recognise the personal consequences of staff feeling unsafe or experiencing issues when working alone, such as:

• Stress, anxiety and depression;
• Low morale, confidence and happiness;
• Increased sick leave.

For example, research carried out by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust found that 29% of female estate agents said they have felt unsafe at a house viewing, which equates to one in three working in the role.

However, organisations are also impacted by factors such as:

• Staff unhappiness and lower productivity;
• Higher insurance premiums;
• Hiring issues due to a poor reputation;
• Increased sick leave from stress-related issues or physical injuries;
• Higher staff attrition and loss of skilled workers;
• Reputational damage and financial penalties.

Lone worker policy documentation is simply not enough to alleviate many of the issues above, and hence taking a practical approach to manage lone worker safety is an important materialisation of commitment to staff safety as well as risk mitigation for the organisation.

How can your organisation protect its lone workers?

For staff working alone, it is vital to have the following elements of protection:

• Regular contact with someone in the organisation:This contact can be in person, on the phone, or electronically via an app or dedicated device.? Being in regular contact allows organisations to identify and respond to issues at the earliest opportunity.
• Ability to trigger an alarm:Workers should have the ability to quickly trigger an alarm and notify others they have encountered an issue or are in need of immediate assistance.
• Be located and receive assistance:Organisations should know the whereabouts of lone workers in order to conduct an appropriate assessment of the risks and assistance required as well as send help where it’s needed without an extensive search.

Whilst a range of solutions exist, undertaking the above in an efficient and systematic way requires the use of a digital lone working solution – this typically consists of a dedicated device or mobile app running on a smart phone which is activated by staff whilst working. The system should require users to confirm their safety at regular intervals or send an alarm if the user does not respond within a certain time.

What is preventing widescale adoption of lone worker safety systems?

Typically organisations need to dedicate staff time to watch a screen for any incoming alarms, or outsource this duty to an expensive Alarm Receiving Center (ARC).? An ARC is like a call-centre staffed with people watching the screen and ready to respond to any incoming requests for help. The ARC would follow your instructions on how to handle an alarm, this might involve contacting the users’ line manager or calling the emergency services if certain conditions are met. The ARC would provide a 24/7 human monitoring service or be tailored to your business hours. However, an ARC represents a significant cost for organisations needing to implement safety monitoring, and quite often escalations would come back into line managers to provide local context in any case - somewhat negating the ARC in the first place. ?Also, the majority of time paying for an ARC may be idle time or dealing with false alarms (e.g. users forgetting to check-in). ?Up until now however there has been little choice to avoid these large costs. ?Even those organisations that handle incoming requests directly may find the management overheads to be a significant burden when rolling beyond a handful of staff.

A modern solution to safety monitoring

Thankfully now there is a new solution – HomeSafe – which represents an evolutionary leap in how lone-worker monitoring is provided. ?

HomeSafe is the world's first and only AI-powered safety monitoring solution for lone-workers, business travellers and 'at-risk' teams.? The solution uses a unique Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace the need for manual monitoring, whether that be an ARC, or your own staff needing to be online and constantly watching for alarms.? In doing so, it is now possible to remove a major cost and obstacle to the wide-scale adoption of digital lone-working solutions - something that is particularly needed for cost sensitive sectors such as charities, large teams and organisations with ad-hoc requirements.

The HomeSafe AI automatically scales to your needs with the solution providing precise monitoring for each individual irrespective of how small or large your organisation is. And because it’s like having a human on the other side, HomeSafe AI can even alert you in situations where workers miss a check-in due to having no battery or network coverage. ?Aside from the many built-in privacy features, the HomeSafe AI itself provides increased privacy from fewer people having access to your data as compared with services using manual monitoring.

HomeSafe helps you meet your corporate responsibilities whilst providing a simple solution for mobile workers to confirm their safety or quickly get assistance in an emergency.? The solution demonstrates your legal commitment to employee safety and wellbeing whilst providing assurance for users, managers, and company Directors.

Organisations should not be forced to trade-off personal safety vs. budgets.? By removing the need for a manual Alarm Receiving Center to watch for alarms, HomeSafe significantly reduces the cost of providing lone worker safeguarding.? With HomeSafe, digital lone-worker safety management is now viable for rollout across entire organisations and accessible to a much wider range of workers than was previously possible.

Find out more at www.homesafe.net or book a free demo and find out how HomeSafe can help you quickly and efficiently meet your lone worker safety needs. A Techfinity solution.