As an employer, you have a duty of care towards all of your employees. This includes those working in remote locations, not just those who are clearly visible in an office or shop. Unfortunately, it can be a lot more difficult to ensure the safety of lone workers.
It’s harder to see what kinds of threats they’re faced with, and equally difficult to respond to lone worker alarms and other calls for help. It is however incredibly important that you put in place a wide range of protective measures — to help show you why, here are four of the key benefits of lone worker safety systems.
1. Increased safety
The first and most obvious benefit is that you get to increase the safety of lone workers. Employers have a legal and moral duty to ensure the safety of their workers in all settings — this tends to be practically impossible without having a clear, systematic approach in place.
The increased safety of your employees will often lead to decreased turnover rates, as futur will feel like they’re being adequately cared for and protected. It will also help to ensure that you remain in compliance with the many regulations in place to ensure that workers don’t come to harm. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in serious legal repercussions, and irreparable harm being done to your brand.
2. Location monitoring
The latest lone-worker safety systems typically include a range of different tracking technologies. Not only will this lead to increased safety, but it also comes with a range of other related benefits.
In the case of an emergency, you know exactly where to send help to. If the lone worker doesn’t know where they are, or can’t communicate due to injury or some other factor, you’ll still have their precise coordinates. This also means that you don’t have to constantly ask them for updates on progress, as you can see where they are at the click of a button.
3. Increased efficiency
If you don’t have a well-thought-out lone-worker safety system in place, it’s likely that you’ll be wasting a lot of unnecessary time and effort when it comes to safeguarding your employees. A systems-based approach, that leverages all the relevant technologies, can help to increase operational efficiency, while also saving you time and money.
That’s without even going into the resources you’ll likely save by avoiding legal action for failing to avoid easily preventable lone-worker incidents. Lone worker safety systems are definitely a case of putting in a little work early on in order to save a lot of work further down the line.
4. A data-driven approach
Having a lone worker safety system allows you to leverage all the data at your disposal, along with the latest data analysis tools. Over time, the more data you have access to, the more effective and informed your responses to incidents will become. This data will also likely provide insights into other related areas, allowing you to identify working patterns that could be optimised to increase efficiency in different areas.
These are just a few of the many benefits that come with taking lone worker safety seriously. Failure to take a systematic approach to these kinds of issues will likely result in disaster at some point, both in terms of the cost to human life and to your brand reputation.
