Unite Students is a UK private landlord for people in higher education, offering purpose-built student accommodation. The company employs more than 1400 staff, providing security and support where needed.
A number of Unite Students’ workforce may work alone, and/or out of hours, at night and weekends. Their work may be spread across campuses and across a city. Duties include student welfare, checking buildings and communal areas, and even discussion around debt arrears. Unite Students sought a way to ensure their employees were protected and felt empowered.
After speaking with their employees Unite Students found their workforce could, at times, feel intimidated, scared and had faced anti-social and threatening situations while at work. Unite Students sought to meet its duty of care to all employees. Matt Perks, Unite Students City Manager says: “If it gets out of hand then it’s really important that our employees have excellent support and they can get hold of the local police, if and should they need to, but also that they feel safe when doing so. The SoloProtect solution offers exactly that; a discreet device that allows our employees to carry out their duties with peace of mind. On top of this, the service we’ve received from SoloProtect on a whole has been brilliant.”
SoloProtect offers lone worker safety products and services. SoloProtect has supplied Unite Students for a decade, and recently delivered new SoloProtect Go devices for lone working employees.
SoloProtect Go was announced to the market in 2018. A fob style lone worker device, it’s supported by SoloProtect’s 24/7, EN 50518 accredited Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). This enables a lone worker to raise a ‘red alert’ at the push of a button, making a call from their lone worker device, into the ARC, for verification, and escalation – appropriately, and in line with any incident.
This new tranche of devices also features as the basis for a four-minute video case study developed with Unite Students. It shows the company’s commitment to employees and customers, by actively looking to equip personnel and empower them to cope with the demands of their job.
Matt Perks adds: “Our care and commitment to safety applies to all stakeholders – residents and customers, our employees, and anyone who enters a Unite Students’ environment. We’re delighted that the case-study feedback reflects this.”
