Skip to main content

The new Health and Safety at Work General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations specifically require PCBUs (a person/entity conducting a business or undertaking) to manage any risks to the health and safety of their lone workers. If risks cannot be eliminated, they must be minimised, as far as is reasonably practical. If you don’t provide staff with the resources to be secure in the workplace be that either a specific site or multiple sites if they travel from one to the other than you put yourself at risk of court action and large resultant fines quite apart from the moral issues involved of protecting the people you employ. You may employ someone in a store a warehouse or visiting people in their own homes, all these areas have their own risk factors from robbery to injury to violence.

However, there are several easy solutions which can be used to cover pretty much any situation. If you have a fixed workplace area you can install a simple system usually a wearable pendant or wrist button connected back to a base unit. If the employee strikes a problem, they press the button and raise an alert. You can also add a fall detector for even greater safety. If your employee has a varied workplace may travel from site to site then you need to add a GPS feature allowing the location of the worker to be notified to those responding.

Here you have several options, some use the employee’s smartphone using a purpose-built app and features of the phone such as GPS location. These can raise an alert if either purposely activated or if the employee doesn’t check in by a certain time. Video and audio using the phones camera and microphone can be accessed, their GPS location pinpointed and then emailed to emergency contacts and stored in case required later.

Another option is a purpose supplied device (Pendant or card) again GPS capable but works as a dedicated phone for emergency contact if the employee raises an alert via the device.

The important thing is to act before it becomes an issue. Employers want their employees to be safe but also have a legal duty to do so and one that can have huge consequences if it go’s wrong. Don’t put the safety of your employees and the viability of your business at risk when there are simple preventions to possible large problems. If you have a question, feel free to contact us for a no obligation chat.

Leave a Reply