Lone Worker Protection
Lone worker safety is a corporate duty of care
Tens of thousands of lone workers are abused, attacked or victims of an accident in the UK every year. 152 deaths and 121,430 injuries were recorded in the UK in 2009/10. 1033 offences were prosecuted by government and a further 287 by local authorities. The number of enforcement notices issued has increased 15% since 2007.
The Health and Safety at Work Act establishes Duty of Care to employees and the general public. That is especially relevant to full or part time employees who work alone or away from the office. The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) definition is "Lone workers are those who work by themselves without close or direct supervision." Injury rates are higher in some industries where lone worker numbers are also proportionately high, for example agriculture, transport and construction. Failure to comply with HSE guidelines can lead to prosecution in the event of an accident: The Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act (2007) in the event of a fatal accident, and the Health and Safety Offences Act (2008) in the event of any accident. For Corporate Manslaughter the Sentencing Guidelines Council recommends significant and punitive fines (seldom below £500k and up to £10 million) and Publicity Orders. The Health and Safety Offences Act prosecutes individuals (employees, managers and Directors) with punishment of up to 2 years in prison.
The HSE provides specific guidelines for Lone Workers in INDG 73 rev2:
- Procedures must be put in place to monitor Lone Workers to keep them healthy and safe
- This includes devices designed to raise the alarm in an emergency that can be operated manually (Red Alert) or automatically by the absence of activity (Yellow Alert)
- There must also be checks to ensure employees have returned to their base or home once their tasks are completed
- Alarms can be ‘self-managed’ by the customer organisation or outsourced to a third party Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC)
- BS8484 defines the requirements for the provision of Lone Worker Device (LWD) services by third parties. It covers hardware (including mobile phones) and services
- Further standards apply to ARCs (e.g. BS5979 Cat II and ACPO accreditation)
Companies have a duty not only to ensure employees have the ability to raise an alarm an get help in any work situation, but also to check they have returned safely to their home after being on company business.
Protect your workers with an integrated Lone Worker solution
Codegate offers a range of Health and Safety tools designed to assist and protect lone workers. The following components which can be used independently or as part of a fully integrated solution:
- Identicom smart identity badges give workers the ability to raise an alarm and collect audio evidence
- Identicom Mobile software for Blackberry, Android, IOS and Windows smart phones, providing red and yellow alerts with audio evidence collection
- MobiControl device management software that provides location based data on mobile assets
- Vehicle Incident Reporting Tool to quickly report accidents, take photographic evidence and capture third party details
- VDR Vehicle CCTV accident recording to record incidents
- SAFE panic alarm for public facing employees or home workers using a networked PC
BS8484 Approved
Codegate supplies Identicom® lone worker products developed by Connexion 2 Limited. Connexion2 Limited is audited and approved against Sections 4, 5 & 6 of BS8484 (The British Standard for Lone Worker Device Services). In order to gain approval against the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) element of BS8484, the ARC's utilised in Identicom solutions have to be approved against BS5979 Category II. Identicom and Identicom mobile has been awarded ACPO Secured by Design Status. Secured by Design, SBD and the Secured by Design logo are trademarks of and are solely owned by ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives.
System Integration
Codegate is a software developer and system integrator, which means we can incorporate industry leading lone worker protection products into the day to day business processes of field workers. Those employees who already use a mobile computer as part of their daily work can have lone worker software added to the same device, whilst others can be provided with an identity badge. It doesn’t matter what the mix, the red and amber alerts will function in the same way and feed back to the ARC with the same priority.
Codegate provides mobile worker software solutions that will operate in conjunction with lone worker and incident reporting software, enabling large organizations to provide field workers with a mobile solution that will improve productivity and at the same time keep employees safer.