Are your management processes slowing you down, draining your organisation’s resources, or endangering your lone workers?
As a manager, it is imperative that you streamline your processes to improve workplace health and safety, reduce costs, save time, and improve customer satisfaction. Deploying a lone worker alarm across your mobile workforce can do all of this, and more.
1. Eliminate manual processes where possible
Have you considered how a lone worker health and safety platform can simplify or automate your existing processes?
Many organisations still use manual processes to manage, monitor, and report on their lone workers’ activities. For example, some organisations use check-in and check-out whiteboards to keep track of their lone workers, while others require employees to SMS their managers. Let us briefly examine these examples and their pitfalls.
Whiteboard check-in and check-out: Using a whiteboard to manage lone workers lacks accuracy, efficiency, historical data, and transparency. Challenges include difficulty in recording data, employees forgetting to check in or out, illegible handwriting, and unforeseen changes of location or activity after leaving headquarters.
SMS the manager: Though digital, SMS is an outdated solution for lone worker safety. Firstly, SMS requires a lot of time, accountability, and responsiveness from employees and managers. It does not account for managers participating in meetings or appointments, no/low cell service areas, or allow managers to view employees’ locations in real-time.
Implementing a lone worker safety app means that you can easily monitor, manage, and report on all lone worker activities within one simple platform, eliminating all of the above safety risks and inefficiencies.
2. Create auditable trails and save historical data
To ensure workplace safety and abide by government regulations, managers need clear, auditable trails to demonstrate that health and safety processes have been followed.
Some governments also require organisations to store historical health and safety data for a number of years.
SHEQSY makes it easy to create an auditable trail, by offering pre-start questionnaires and forms, recording all pertinent jobs, dates, times, locations, and routes, and reporting on all hazard, incident, and duress alarm events.
SHEQSY also stores historical data for the lifespan of an organisation’s subscription. Managers can easily export data to Excel, PDF or extract it via API’s for integration with their existing platforms or reporting suites.
3. Make responses and follow-ups seamless
Communication between lone workers and managers should be quick, easy, and offer additional safeguards where possible.
Often, managers have their own obligations related to client appointments and meetings, rendering them temporarily unavailable for lone worker replies and follow-ups. If a lone worker activates a duress alarm while their manager is busy, then they may not receive help in a timely manner.
With SHEQSY, organisations can define duress alarm escalation processes so that lone workers always have access to emergency assistance. For example, when a duress alarm is triggered, the alert can be sent to SHEQSY’s 24/7 security monitoring centre and they will respond with the agreed escalation process.
SHEQSY’s in-app messaging feature also enables employees to engage in vital communication (individually or in groups) that is quick, auditable, and secure. This feature makes communication as seamless as high-risk workplaces demand.
4. Ensure compliance with government regulations
As a manager, the law requires you to ensure your lone workers are properly safeguarded.
In fact, the Australian state of Victoria’s manslaughter legislation states that employers who negligently cause a death in the workplace can face fines of up to $16.5 million and individuals can serve up to 20 years in prison.
Implementing a lone worker safety app and ensuring its effective use increases the safety of your lone workers, displays your acknowledgement of the hazards and risks faced by your employees in undertaking their roles, and demonstrates you have taken reasonable steps to mitigate these hazards and risks. As an employer, this can assist you in relieving unnecessary personal exposure and liability.
5. Streamline your workflow
SHEQSY safeguards your mobile workforce and makes lone worker safety easy.
Within SHEQSY, managers can seamlessly manage, monitor, and report on lone workers’ activities.
SHEQSY’s app not only ensures the safety of lone workers through activity timers and duress alarm functionality, but also it supports calendar integrations with Office 365, Exchange, and G Suite that enables employees to view and navigate to upcoming activities, complete forms, report hazards and incidents, communicate with colleagues, and stay engaged with their organisations.
