Now more than ever, your organisation needs a safety solution to protect its lone workers. But because lone worker safety solutions come in many varieties, it can be difficult to decide which option is best suited to your organisation.
A lone worker app is the best choice for most organisations, for reasons that include quick setup, ease-of-use, affordability and future scalability. Other lone worker solutions, such as call centres, GPS tracking, and phone-based systems, are either obsolete or only partially meet an organisation’s requirements or budget.
SHEQSY’s lone worker app is cost-effective, easy to use, and includes a suite of seamless safety features to ensure your lone workforce is safe and accounted for. In this article, we will explore the disadvantages of traditional lone worker devices and why a lone worker safety app is the best choice for your organisation.
The Disadvantages of Lone Working Devices
Organisations often decide to deploy SHEQSY across their lone workforce after they have trialed other lone worker devices and hardware, such as lone worker pendants, safety cards and GPS hardware.
Organisations that trial these other devices often cite similar issues:
- Employees did not want to carry additional devices
- Employees lost and damaged the devices, which resulted in additional costs
- Employees forgot to recharge the devices, take them to appointments, or return them to the office
- The cost of providing a device to each employee meant that the organisation could only provide a lone worker safety solution to selected employees
- Employees report that clients can be uneasy or disengaged when the employee has a visible duress device in the consultation
In addition to the challenges outlined above, purchasing lone worker devices and hardware presents a significant upfront cost, and often, organisations do not have the capital necessary to provide a device for every employee.
There are also often long-term contracts associated with the use of these devices.
Using an app to safeguard your lone workforce eliminates these issues, as well as the need to purchase new or replacement hardware.
In many situations, apps are superior to lone worker alarms, devices, and hardware. However, this can vary depending on your organisation’s unique requirements.
Note: Where it is appropriate for your organisation, SHEQSY also supports integrated lone worker devices and hardware with the SHEQSY lone worker solution.
The Advantages of a Lone Worker Safety App
The advantages of utilising an app to safeguard your workforce are extensive.
We will examine some of the main features and considerations that make SHEQSY’s lone worker app the best solution available for improving worker safety and operational efficiency.
Ease of use
Because SHEQSY is deployed as an app across your employees’ work or personal smartphones (iOS or Android), they are already familiar with how to use the device, meanwhile the app itself is user-friendly and offers practical features such as a countdown welfare timer and simple duress activation.
In addition, inviting and onboarding your employees to use the app is a quick and seamless process that is completed in under a minute.
Location Tracking
SHEQSY offers real-time location visibility with activity countdown timers and generates alerts if lone workers overstay an activity, miss a check-in, or activate their duress alarm.
Unlike traditional GPS tracking systems, the SHEQSY app only shares employees’ locations while they are actively working. SHEQSY is enabled and disabled by the lone workers themselves, in order to balance safety and lone worker privacy.
Learn more about GPS tracking versus lone worker solutions here.
Cost
Because smartphones are already prevalent among your workforce, deploying an app is the lowest-cost option for your organisation. There is no upfront cost, as there is with other lone worker devices and hardware.
SHEQSY is the most cost-effective lone worker solution on the market with pricing determined by the features you require.
Learn more about SHEQSY’s pricing here.
Your organisation can trial the SHEQSY app at no cost, with no obligations, and no credit card required.
Contact SHEQSY to learn more and request a demo of the solution.
Safety Policy
SHEQSY supports your organisation’s unique safety policies. You can configure different escalation procedures by organisation, department, team, or individual.
Through SHEQSY, you can decide to monitor duress events yourself via email and SMS, or you can utilise SHEQSY’s 24/7, A1-graded monitoring centre. When alerts are raised, the monitoring centre immediately verifies the situation and responds with your agreed escalation processes.
This article explores how SHEQSY supports organisations’ lone worker procedures, which are dictated by your safety policy and government regulation (1).
Management
SHEQSY’s lone worker app and SHEQSY management dashboard make safeguarding and keeping track of your lone workers easy.
All historical lone worker activities managed by the SHEQSY app are stored in the SHEQSY lone worker solution. User-friendly tools enable your organisation to manage lone workers, review historical information and generate reports, configure escalation processes and integrate your management tools (such as calendars and scheduling platforms).
Data Collection
SHEQSY’s comprehensive lone worker safety and management platform effortlessly collects, organises, and stores data from lone worker activities in one user-friendly dashboard.
This information can assist with human resources tasks, bookkeeping, information management, and government compliance (2).
Integration
SHEQSY integrates with Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, and G Suite calendars for scheduling, viewing and navigating to upcoming appointments, automatically populating the SHEQSY lone worker app on arrival at appointments and reporting on planned vs actual lone worker activities.
All SHEQSY data is available for export via XLS, PDF and APIs where integration with existing platforms is required.
Learn more about SHEQSY’s features here.
Deploying a Lone Worker App in Australia
Not-for-profit organisations and businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States use SHEQSY’s lone worker safety app to protect their employees.
Epworth HealthCare, Victoria’s largest not-for-profit private hospital group, trailed many different lone worker solutions but ultimately decided that SHEQSY’s lone worker app was the best choice.
Epworth uses SHEQSY to ensure their employees are safe, accounted for, and feel supported while working with patients in the community.
Read this case study to learn how SHEQSY’s lone worker app improved the safety of Epworth’s lone workers and simplified their management processes.
SHEQSY’s Lone Worker Safety App
SHEQSY’s lone worker safety app makes it easy for your organisation to protect employees, stay compliant, and save time.
With features including periodic check-in, simple and discreet duress alarm activation, real-time location sharing and comprehensive historical reporting, the SHEQSY app seamlessly pairs safety with efficiency.
Our team is available via web meeting to discuss your requirements, answer questions, provide product overviews, and assist with free implementation of the SHEQSY lone worker solution. To request a demonstration of SHEQSY, click here.
References:
- 1. Work health and safety
- https://www.business.gov.au/Risk-management/Health-and-safety/Work-health-and-safety
- 2. Work Health and Safety Act 2011
- https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00293
