Guardian24, the Belfast-based lone and mobile worker safety product company, and Footprint Solutions, an information management solution house, announced a partnership aimed at lone workers in the housing association sector.
Recent welfare reforms and the introduction of Universal Credit mean that housing trusts are challenged with having to raise customer interaction so that rent and other payments are collected efficiently. This can lead to the requirement for more staffing in the community and hence risk and vulnerabilities that come with lone working.
Guardian24’s lone worker solution has been integrated with Footprint’s Housing Support Pro workflow solution. Designed to meet the specific needs of housing trusts, Housing Support Pro is a tablet-based mobile and paperless working application that empowers remote workers with the ability to collect and act on up to date information enabling trusts to move toward paperless, mobile working.
John Sant, CEO of Footprint Solutions, said: “This integration is a perfect fit for housing trusts that need to bring lone worker solutions to their mobile workforce. It means that workers are protected from a duty of care perspective, and housing trusts ultimately benefit from having a comprehensive package of solutions on one device.”
Golden Gates Housing Trust is a Housing Association trialling the integration of Guardian24 on the workflow application. The Housing Support Pro solution with the integrated Guardian24 solution is placed on the employees’ iPads; and the Guardian24 application is placed on the employees’ smartphones. Housing Support Pro assigns a job to the user via an electronic digital visiting form. When the user accepts the appointment a corresponding Guardian24 lone worker activity is created. The user can log an estimated finishing time for them to complete the appointment. If their logged activity overruns the smartphone will call them to verify their safety. If they do not respond the phone will enter ‘alert mode’ and will follow the appropriate escalation procedures.
If a situation arises where the user feels that their safety has been compromised, they can raise a covert panic alert by discreetly tapping a Guardian24 check box at the bottom of the digital form on their tablet. This alarm is picked up by an incident management centre or the user’s pre-defined escalation procedures are followed to respond to the alarm activation. Once a panic alarm has been raised their smartphone is notified and opens a live line of recording. The GPS is also activated so the user’s location can be pinpointed. Information from the workflow solution is passed to Guardian24 by default so there is no duplication of effort, the firm adds.
Guardian24’s Chief Executive Henry Woods says: “Guardian24 already safeguards over 38,000 people across 400 organisations in the UK and Ireland through our mobile-application for lone workers. Both Guardian24 and Footprint Solutions are fully committed to helping safeguard individuals that work alone in vulnerable circumstances, which is why we believe that our partnership will be a great success.”
