Planning to protect lone workers
April 1st 2011

In difficult economic times employers may be reluctant to spend on lone worker technology but there are some simple and inexpensive policies and procedures that can be put in place to protect the safety of those who work alone, says Catherine Skinner

Some people feel that in these difficult economic times there are more urgent demands on an organisation's time and budgets than introducing or maintaining robust safety strategies for their lone workers.

However it is arguably more important now than ever for employers to ensure the safety of their staff – the most vulnerable being the lone workers. The economic situation may have changed (for the worst) for many organisations but the moral and legal responsibilities towards their staff have not. Employers must consider the fact that many clients who lone workers deal with, are likely to be under greater financial pressure (and therefore stress) at the moment and this could lead to a greater risk of aggression and even violence. Employers should also remember that if the worst happened and an employee was hurt due to unsafe work practices, the financial consequences and damage to the organisation's image would far outweigh the cost of having prevented the incident in the first place by having a suitable safety strategy in place.

It does not necessarily take a great deal of money to improve the safety of staff.

Simple policies and procedures can be put in place, which don't necessitate an inordinate amount of staff time and resources or the use of expensive technology systems.

Some simple steps: Create a safety policy: A personal safety policy is a written statement of intent that outlines what actions an organisation will undertake to fulfil its legal obligations towards managing personal safety risks to its staff. It provides a framework from which procedures and guidelines can be developed Carry out risk assessments in order to identify the risks involved in the tasks the lone workers undertake Take action to either eliminate any identified risk by eliminating the associated task, or introduce systems and procedures that will reduce the risk until the level of residual risk is considered acceptable Decide how to deal with any residual risk, e.g. by introducing training and possibly technology where appropriate Once risk assessments have been carried out and procedures and guidelines are put in place to reduce any identified risk, then the residual risk should be addressed. This is the time to consider any training or technology – not before. If an employer introduces a new technical system or staff training, without going through the other steps first, then they could be found liable if an incident happened for not accepting that their work systems were inherently unsafe.

Personal safety training No matter how thorough an organisation's risk assessments are or how well designed their procedures and guidelines may be, risk can rarely be totally eliminated when dealing with the public and employees could still find themselves facing violence or aggression.

Therefore it is important that staff are given training on how to defuse aggression or escape from a potentially violent incident. If they are taught how to recognize the early warning signs of aggression, they can often defuse the situation and prevent it from escalating into violence. Suzy Lamplugh Trust would always recommend personal safety training for staff whose job involved dealing with the public - but only as part of an overall safety strategy not instead of one.

Having reduced the risks and trained the relevant employees on how to defuse an aggressive incident, the employer could then think about introducing a tracing/alarm system if they still felt it necessary. These systems cannot prevent an employee from being involved in an aggressive or violent incident, nor can they help the employee to deal with one.

However they can alert colleagues that there is a problem and ensure that help can get to the employee in as short a time as possible.

If for financial reasons, an organisation is considering not introducing or updating their safety strategy for their lone workers, they should think about the possible consequences of this. There may be financial or legal considerations, not to mention the adverse affects on staff such as low morale, high staff turnover or high sickness levels. It's not so much a case of can they afford to do it, more a case of can they afford not to.

Catherine Skinner is director of Suzy Lamplugh Trust

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