In many cases, organisations whose workers do not work in immediately hazardous occupations feel that the requirements of duty of care, and health and safety legislation seem designed to constrain the ability of companies to do business. Yet one of the most telling illustrations of the need for a duty of care comprehensively rebuts that point of view.

In 1986 a young 25 year old estate agent called Suzy Lamplugh went to meet a Mr Kipper at a house in Shorrolds road in London. She disappeared and her body has never been found.

As can be seen from the example above, even a seemingly prosaic occupation such as estate agency can present dangers that need to be covered by a duty of care, especially when lone workers are involved. Evidently, a lone worker is not necessarily an individual who will be working in a known hazardous environment; rather it is any worker who will be operating alone or does not know other people around them.

An employer must have a comprehensive set of pre-planned lone worker policies and procedures that act before the worker sets out for any appointment. These start with clear records of the time, location and expected duration of any appointment, continue with training on policies procedures and personal safely, and finish with the technologies designed to offer protection at a time of crisis.

When an employee embarks on a job, the company should ensure that they are leaving with all the information that could conceivably help them complete that job as quickly and as safely as possible. Completing the job will be down to training and the provision of suitable tools and equipment.

Data protection concerns

The information necessary to underwrite the second objective may come from a different place than the standard job information.  For example, a CRM or other system may record information such as the fact that a particular person owns a dog that is likely to bite, or that an individual being visited has a history of violent behaviour.

In many cases such information is retained, but has not been shared because of data protection concerns. The latest guidance under the data protection act seeks to define the overarching requirement of worker safety in such situation.

Lone worker alert solutions should always be regarded as an option of last resort for the worker, as opposed to a crutch on which to support a facade of duty of care. As always with technology solutions, there are a range of approaches which seek to guarantee that any form of alert that is generated is both received and acted upon in a timely fashion.

The link between the call to action and the action itself is one of the fundamental requirements of a lone worker solution. In essence this means that a call for help by a worker, or a lack of activity from a worker when some is expected (for example touching a button to 'check in' or a motion sensor that ceases to detect movement) sends a message that is as certain as possible to be received by a monitoring service.

Planned layout

In site situations this can be achieved by a planned layout of radio base stations that receive signals from lone worker units carried by staff. These base stations can both triangulate the position of all workers carrying a device and provide sufficient overlapping radio coverage to guarantee that any alerts will be received.

For workers who are more mobile and cannot rely on planned radio networks or wired communications other, less reliable, technologies must be employed, such as Bluetooth, WiFi and cellular GPS and GPRS radio services, coupled with GPS location. In these cases there is no absolute guarantee of network connectivity, and so additional mechanisms must be made available.

These seek to advise the lone worker that they are entering an environment where connectivity is not guaranteed, or that radio contact has been lost and the position of their last acknowledged location. Such solutions can also advise in a situation of apparent connection that messages to the central monitoring point are being sent and received. The monitoring point can be advised of the last known good location of the worker before they passed out of radio range.

The system can also maintain an open connection channel with the monitoring station and advise with an audible or vibration alert should this connection be broken for any reason, and a timer can be initiated. Any timed facility can be overlayed with an advisory to a worker that presses a panic button that their request cannot be delivered due to a lack of connectivity.

Since these systems exist, it is imperative that organisations begin to employ them to protect their workers. Duty of care doesn’t only exist to provide organisations with a fig leaf of compliance and respectability: it is a vital part of ensuring the safety of all employees, no matter how unlikely the danger of their position might be.