A housing association in London has a lone worker personal safety product for 400 of their employees. About 70 per cent of Notting Hill Housing Group’s (NHHG) staff are required to work out of the office. The level of risk that these staff face can vary, from visiting empty or remote properties to being at risk of verbal or physical abuse when facing confrontation.
NHHG has worked with the lone worker product company Guardian24 for more than ten years and during this time they have used Guardian24 via standard mobile phones, via a specialised lanyard device and more recently via an application on their BlackBerry phones. Guardian24 says that customers can mix and match what way their staff use the products. Jacqueline Olulana, Health, Safety & Environmental Advisor for NHHG says; “Guardian24 gives us the peace of mind that our staff are protected and that we are meeting our duty of care to our workers. Our staff feel valued by the company as they know we have invested in their safety and we take it as a high priority.”
Guardian24 says its product is fully compliant with the British standard for lone worker device management, BS8484. Users can log their visits when they are going out of the office by calling an automated log line. They record details of their activity and input how long they expect a visit will last. Should the time away overrun or if the user fails to close their activity, the system will automatically call the user to verify their safety. If the user is not contactable, an escalation process begins. Also, should the user feel that their safety has been compromised, they can summon help by discreetly pressing a panic button. At this stage the service will notify a nominated respondent to begin the escalation procedures. From this stage, live audio is recorded and the GPS location fix is increased to every five minutes.
NHHG’s procedure is that if an alert is raised it goes through to an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), which will assess the alert and escalate to the police if necessary. Using an ARC response removes pressure from managers to respond to calls and gives the peace of mind that an accredited body is available to act accordingly should an incident occur.
About the firm
The Guardian24 subscriber base now exceeds 38,000 UK users; with about 400 public and private sector organisations using the services. Among customers are local authorities, healthcare services, housing associations, central government bodies, educational institutions, charities, banks, insurance and construction firms. Services are used via a wide range of devices including Blackberry, Android, Windows PDA’s or specialist Lone Worker devices. Visit www.guardian24.co.uk.
