Ensuring the wellbeing of employees is not new to employers, writes Andrew Jones, pictured, of Multitone.
The legislation that ensures that all senior management within an organisation create, develop and maintain a “relevant duty of care” is the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 and it must be adhered to, without exception. This act is changing, however the essence of it remains the same – that is the duty of care all employers have for their employees.
The NHS, as a very complex organisation, has won awards for the types of employee protection it offers. For many personal protection schemes mobile technology has been utilised to assist many of those workers who work out in the field. However, there are many areas inside a hospital where staff are possibly exposed to areas of potential danger, i.e. a nurse monitoring a ward at night, staff working with controlled drugs or staff working within the A&E departments. For many of these instances the need to call for assistance is immediate, yet the ability to make a call is minimised. For these times of potential flash points, there are a number of things to consider:
The environment in which staff are working and if an audible alarm will exacerbate an already tense situation,
What level of support is really needed?
What dangers are apparent? (ie falling masonry),
What information can be gleaned from the support system? and
Can the person raising the alarm be given confirmation that help is on hand, so they can act accordingly?
Personal security works at its optimum when if offers a fuller picture, of not just the situation, but the level of severity and the precise location. Such information can be garnered from integrating existing internal systems to create a more powerful and visually rich staff protection system. An example of this could be differing systems to support different groups of workers. Alarms can be sent from these devices to other users of phones, PC’s mobile etc., or routed to a dedicated team who can link the emergency call with live CCTV footage and receive visual confirmation of the situation. This helps to ascertain the real level of support required, so support teams only utilise the right level of support, or can call for more formal support from the emergency services if required. In addition a discreet message can be sent to the person in distress notifying them that help is on its way. Support teams can identify where the problem has occurred and can therefore reduce the time spent getting to any incident.
Where this level of personal protection system is in situ, organisations have reported the following benefits:
Staff become very confident that they can get the right level of assistance when needed and are therefore less distracted and focus on the job in hand,
This confidence reduces the level of anxiety and therefore absenteeism, which also reduces the need for expensive “bank staff”, and
Groups work in unison, enhancing the feeling of teamwork and reporting of such incidents is easy to complete, so data becomes more reliable.
A key factor for any personal protection system is how alarms are received and reacted to by those who are expected to respond. The right processes and training needs to be in place so dedicated responders understand their full remit, and are able to assist, in the most appropriate manner, without putting themselves in danger. If required, an escalation of an alarm with an auditable reporting mechanism can ensure that all requests for assistance are highlighted and the outcomes are easily recorded for internal and external reports.
For the end user and the support teams it is vital that any personal protections system is simple to use and the organisation can monitor the movements of specific personnel at all times. However, the most important aspect of any personal protection system is that the employee feels that that they have a system that they can depend upon and ensure they can raise the right level of support should they need to.
For the employer the best method is to have a range of options in place designed to protect all employees, and for these differing systems to be as simple as possible to use and administer. For most organisations a range of products and services, all designed to protect the employee, irrespective of where they work, is a sensible way forward.
Overall, the best method of staff protection is to offer a combination of known and understood processes and solutions. All staff need to assume a level of responsibility for their own safety and this is normally based around ensuring that they have taken adequate steps to understand their own environment. Employers need to have created and supplied systems and equipment that allow staff to continually update their whereabouts and be able to make contact in a variety of ways.
