For any business, ensuring the health and safety of its employees should be the number one priority – what is more, it’s a legal requirement. This is especially true when a company has employees that need to work alone. Whether it be in construction, healthcare or the public sector, lone workers face unique risks and challenges that those working in a team often don’t experience. Therefore, proactive steps must be taken to address them.
By implementing clear safety protocols and through using modern alarm systems, companies can greatly enhance the security and well-being of their lone workers. This not only safeguards the employees but also helps reduce potential liabilities for the company.
However, ensuring that lone workers have the right equipment and processes in place – such as a handset or device that is capable of triggering an alarm in the first place – is important to deploy to protect employees. Chris Potts, Marketing Director, ANT Telecom explains.
Triggering the alarm Lone worker alarms offer a way of notifying people within an organisation that an incident to a lone worker has occurred and that support is required. However, to set off an alarm in the first place, workers must carry some form of handset or device that is capable of triggering alarms. There are many handsets that come in different sizes for employees to use: including wearable, dual-purpose, man-down, WiFi and those that don’t rely on 2G, 4G mobile networks. These options must all be considered when deploying an effective solution – additionally, organisations must consider how response teams will manage each alarm too.
Light and Sounder Alarms Light and Sounder Alarm alarms are great for anyone working in noisy or remote environments, where visual or audible alarms are the best way to capture attention.
They are commonly used on manufacturing sites alongside lone worker handsets or devices. When an incident takes place, a worker either presses their SOS button or their man-down feature on their lone worker handset. Typically, this activates and triggers the light and sounder alarm. However, while these alarms are great at making people aware of an incident, they do have their limitations. One of the biggest draw backs is the lack of information provided by the alarm. This is a problem if you have multiple lone workers on a site, as it doesn’t reveal who triggered the alarm or where the person is located. But, it does provide a general alarm for all to hear, see and respond to.
Therefore, to overcome this challenge, separate ‘sounders’ could be installed for each lone worker with them clearly labelled. But, even with 10 or more lone workers the management of this could start to become more complicated and cluttered. Furthermore, if an incident occurred, it would mean that responders would have to walk to the sounder first to discover who triggered it, which is far from ideal.
When using this solution, its recommended that organisations implement a lone worker procedure and that they train workers on how to respond and manage this type of alarm – you certainly don’t want staff to stand and just watch when the alarm goes off.
PC Desktop Alarms PC Desktop Alarms are an effective piece of kit for any business where safety, real-time communication, and rapid response to incidents are crucial. These alarms suit healthcare facilities where they have large teams of lone workers working in different sections of a hospital, or workers placed in large open plan offices. When triggered, PC Desktop Alarms provide important information to responders: including the lone worker’s name, telephone number and location, to help the responder deal with the incident.
Receiving the responses to these alarms typically takes place via control rooms and security areas, or in external Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs) as these areas tend to be manned. However, this doesn’t always have to be the case. Large screens can be set up in other areas that workers operate in, such as open planned offices or in production areas where other people can receive and respond to alarms. In addition to this, alarm triggers can also be set up to be distributed to a group of Desktop Alarm responders as well as Handset Alarm responders to ensure alarms aren’t missed. This way all bases are covered.
Mobile Handsets Alarms Mobile Handsets present another way for businesses to ensure the safety of their workers. When using this technology, recipients of a triggered alarm receive the alarm in the form of an SMS message or via an application on their smartphone (radios with screens can also receive alarms as can DECT handsets too). Typically the alarm message details the name of the person that triggered the alert, location and telephone/handset number.
For many businesses, especially security firms or construction businesses, distributing alarm alerts directly to mobile handsets is a good way to deal with incidents, as mobile responders often also tend to be local to incidents and can manage each event from start to finish.
Responders also generally keep their mobile handsets with them at all times and therefore alerted instantly. However, since mobile responders often don’t work alongside one another, it’s wise to train staff on the protocol for managing an alert. Once an alert comes in, if they acknowledge it, they are the ones with the responsibility of dealing with the incident. This helps to avoid situations where either the whole group gets involved or no one does.
Multi-Alarm Combinations Many organisations also make use of multi-alarm combinations to protect their lone workers. For instance, a light and sounder can warn responders within a production area of an incident. Responders can find further details by logging on and acknowledging the alarm on a nearby PC Workstation. Similarly, alarms presented on desktop screens as well as mobile handsets works well too. A member of the response team simply acknowledges the alert to take ownership of the event, which updates the rest of his/her colleagues.
Managing Alarms and Audit Trails It’s important to remember that once an alarm has been triggered, it’s the beginning of the emergency, not the end. Therefore, for any business to looking to maximise the health and safety of their employees, it’s crucial to figure out how to respond to the event. To do this, organisations must consider who the best people are to alert and attend the scene – and, when they arrive, how will emergency medical support be requested and coordinated? So, what’s the triage process, and what are the next steps to resolution?
For example, if a maintenance worker was rendered unconscious on a manufacturing site, the best people to alert are probably the other maintenance workers as they know the site and the risks; and one day they could find themselves in the same position. But the emergency isn’t over once they’ve located their colleague. They will still need to contact the first aid team, perhaps emergency services. Paramedics will need help navigating to where the incident is etc. If this is all planned for in advance teams will have all the right tools and the response in emergency situations will be smooth: with no bottlenecks, fewer delays and most importantly time will be saved – which could be life changing.
Lastly, it’s important to know how response teams deal with each alarm. So having an audit trail shows when each alarm has been triggered, when it was acknowledged and closed. All of which helps organisations improve processes over time for the business and staff.
Conclusion
Lone worker alarm systems play a crucial role in safeguarding employees within lone working scenarios, especially within high-risk environments. By integrating options like light and sound alarms, desktop alarms, or mobile handset alarms, organisations can ensure quick responses to emergencies. Each type of alarm system has its strengths.
This ranges from alerting entire areas to an incident, to providing detailed information about situations as they occur. For effective use, companies must also train employees on responding to alarms and managing incidents. Multi-alarm combinations can offer additional protection too, and audit trails help improve processes in the long run for organisations and staff. Prioritising the safety of lone workers not only fulfills legal requirements but also helps prevent accidents, enhancing overall security and reducing company liabilities.
