Imagine a call from an employee who is working alone and in trouble, and whose safety is in question.

Do you have procedures in place to protect your staff – or are there gaps that could constitute failings in your duty of care?

Utilising GPS locating technology and exclusive software, highly skilled Controllers at our 24/7 Emergency Response Centre will assess the situation and take appropriate action - emergency services or SKYGUARD mobile response teams - quickly, discreetly and effectively.

Even if most of the time you work in a busy office or factory, you may be a lone worker at some time. Working late, travelling for work or working at home can all constitute lone working. Bridget Leathley tracks down the best online guidance on safe lone working.

Lone Workers are people who spend some or all of their working hours on their own – for example:

• Employees who work on their own away from their business base – such as Healthcare professionals, Emergency services personnel, estates agents, public transport staff, trades people, etc
• People working on their own outside normal hours – such as factory security staff or a night cleaner in an office block.
• Mobile workers who may spend much of their working day on their own – such as sales or delivery people.
• People who work from home.
• Self-employed people

It is an employer’s legal duty under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSW Act) and the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations (MHSW) 1999 to undertake a risk assessment to identify hazards faced by a lone worker, and to take appropriate action to safeguard them.  From April 2008, new legislation will mean that an organisations can be prosecuted where a safety failure is the cause of a work-related death.

If a person is self employed, it is their own responsibility to ensure their safety.

NOVA ETS  has a GOLD ARC monitoring system  to monitor any lone worker using ANGEL 7 GPS TRACKER, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.

We can also provide Lone Worker units - ANGEL 7 that are suitable for most working environments and provide workers with two way communication and GPS tracking.  Using Matrix technology, the units are small enough to fit into a pocket and still give an accurate GPS position, and are powerful enough to provide a GPS fix in one story buildings.   And it doesn’t need an external antenna to operate in cars and lorries.

Voice calls can be made from any telephone line to the Lone Worker Unit - Angel 7  to check on the status of the lone worker and if there is a problem, the worker can signal by a single push of the central emergency button.  The worker’s exact location is captured by the internal GPS receiver and an SMS alert message (and/or an e-mail) is sent.  At the same time, a voice call to a pre-set phone number can open up.

It is still relatively early days, so it is not yet possible to predict the full impact of the new Act, but it should make it much easier to convict organisations whose senior managers have breached their duty of care, causing death.

Any organisation which fails to address these issues may find itself, not only on the wrong end of very serious charges, but also with a real impact on recruitment, retention, customers and reputation.

Businesses must therefore ensure an even stronger commitment to health and safety. Some key steps include the identification and correction of potential risk areas, checking that all health and safety policies are up-to-date and are consistently reviewed, plus ensuring all senior management are trained in health and safety and are aware of the implications of the new legislation.

False Economy

LookOut call’s Brian Caddy considers that the new Act is a landmark  which will ensure that all firms take their health and safety responsibilities to their employees more seriously from now on.
“The HSE estimates that the cost of even investigating a serious breach of safety can be as much as £19,000, so it's an expensive business if the employer has attempted to cut corners on staff safety. It is estimated that 70% of all fatalities at work are caused by these types of deliberate actions so it’s a false economy to even attempt this now”.

Many organisations are actually increasing the trend of using lone workers due to the advent of interactive communications, which allows for the workforce to be spread over increasingly wide areas such as home and mobile workers, as Brian outlines. “As a result of this trend, spending on lone worker safety systems such as Lookout call will increase, thus ensuring that staff have a reliable way of requesting help. This could act as a valuable ‘insurance policy’ as well as an essential safety tool. Failure to do so could see some organisations falling foul of the new Act very quickly. Some legal firms now have whole departments devoted to health & safety legislation, when previously the subject was considered a low priority. It is relatively simple to prove employer negligence, so the same legal firms enjoy the ‘easy win’ scenario these cases virtually guarantee.

Lone workers  

Occupational group is the factor which is most strongly associated with the risk of assaults at work (Budd, 1999). However, exposure to violence at work not only depends on a person’s occupation but also upon the circumstances and situations under which a person performs their job. Working alone, for example, increases the vulnerability of workers (Chappell & Di Martino, 2000.)

HSE defines a lone worker as:

Someone who works by themselves without close or direct supervision Lone workers include those who:

• work from a fixed base, such as one person working alone on a premises (eg, shops, petrol stations etc);
• work separately from others on the same premises (eg security staff) or work outside normal hours;
• work away from a fixed base (eg, maintenance workers, health care workers, environment inspectors);
• work at home (homeworkers); and
• mobile workers (eg, taxi drivers).

The number of people working alone is increasing. As automation spreads in factories and offices, solitary work is becoming more frequent. The growing practice of sub-contracting, outplacement and teleworking also add to the growth of lone working. In addition, the combined push of increased mobility and the development of interactive communication technologies encourage the development of one-person operations. As well as those who work alone for the majority of their working time, there is a greater number of people who work alone part of the time (Chappell & Di Martino, 2000). Lone work does not automatically imply a higher risk of violence, but it is generally understood that working alone does increase the vulnerability of workers. Moreover, this vulnerability will depend on the type of situation in which the lone work is being carried out.