Looking after employees who spend their nine-to-five under your roof can be difficult enough, but ensuring that staff who go out and about for their work – especially those who operate alone and in out-of-the-way locations – remain safe and within your protection requires special effort. Craig Swallow explains.
Lone workers are those who work by themselves, without close or direct supervision. They operate in a variety of sectors, including health and social care, local government, transport, warehousing, retail, research, security, and many more.
As well as often having to work alone, or in remote locations, the other thing many workers in these sectors have in common is the necessity to deal with members of the public. This brings with it the risk of having to face aggressive or violent behaviour. Violence at work is defined by the HSE as “any incident in which a person is abused, threatened, or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work”.
Physical assaults and verbal abuse – often a precursor to violence – are growing work-related health and safety concerns. The 2006/07 British Crime Survey indicated that there were approximately 397,000 threats of violence and 288,000 physical assaults by members of the public on workers in the preceding 12 months.1 Workplace violence now costs UK industry hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation, and the loss of more than three million working days each year.
Racial and sexual abuse are probably the most common types of ‘verbal violence’ but, owing to social pressures, are probably the most under-reported and recorded. Verbal abuse also includes patronising and derogatory comments, as well as swearing and insults. Even where staff are not physically harmed, repeated occurrences of swearing, threats and verbal abuse can lead to depression, stress, reduced morale, absenteeism, retention problems, and reduced productivity.
While the occupational groups most affected – prison-service and police officers – are those that most of us would probably expect, given the environments in which they work, other sectors that suffer significantly include nursing, care provision, bus and coach drivers, education, catering, and public administration.
The Royal College of Nursing has highlighted that more than a third of nurses working alone have been assaulted or harassed in the last two years. Its survey of 1000 nursing staff last year found that more than half (52 per cent) of nurses working alone thought that the level of threat of violence or abuse had increased over the same period.2
Just as employers have responsibilities for the health, safety and welfare at work of their ‘in-house’ employees, so too must they look after their people who work alone. They have a duty to assess risks to lone workers and take steps to avoid, or control those risks, where necessary. Failure to do so may place an employer in breach of section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974.
In addition, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR) impose an obligation to report incidents of violence in the workplace. Anti-discrimination legislation also imposes specific duties on employers to protect their employees, where ‘reasonably possible’, from being harassed by their fellow employees, or any other person with whom they are in contact.
A lone worker should therefore be at no greater risk than any other employee, and precautionary measures should be put in place to account for normal work and foreseeable emergencies, such as illness, accidents, and workplace violence. Risk assessment should help decide the right level of supervision, training, and protective equipment to be employed to safeguard lone workers. Employers should question, for example, whether:
the work environment presents a special risk to the lone worker;
there is a risk of violence;
particular groups of workers, such as women, are especially at risk; and
help can easily be summoned in the event of an emergency.
Come to my aid
That last point is interesting, in that it is a difficult issue to control – it depends on the individual situation in which the worker finds themselves – but addressing it effectively is both reassuring and beneficial to the employee. In the aforementioned RCN survey, for example, around two thirds of the respondents said having a mobile device with which to call for help would increase their confidence to work alone.
But the solution is not as straightforward as simply providing lone workers with a mobile phone. Taking a phone out of a pocket or bag and making a call for help can, in some situations, make things worse by agitating the aggressor and even causing them to make a grab for the device to stop the call. By default, using a phone is an overt action. The user may also have to remove a key lock on the phone. They will certainly have to identify the correct keys in order to make a call, assuming that the phone is switched on in the first place. And what if the person they call doesn’t answer?
If the worker has already been attacked – or is otherwise incapacitated – and cannot reach his or her phone, they will not be able to summon help in this way. Most people will carry a mobile in a bag or in a pocket. If an attack occurs, how easy is it for that worker to access their phone? What if their bag is in a different part of the room, or if the attack occurs while walking across a car park?
Even if the worker does manage to make the call successfully, most mobile-phone service-providers do not have the necessary infrastructure to enable calls to be recorded for use in court, should a prosecution arise from the incident.
Another option is the use of personal attack alarms, which emit a piercing signal when activated. The increasing number of such devices coming on to the market prompted the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2006 to issue guidelines on the type of device that should be used, and how the Police will respond when alarms are activated.3
As with intruder alarms, a maximum of two false calls from PAs will be allowed in a 12-month period before Police response is withdrawn. Once this has occurred, the Police will only reinstate response once evidence is received that the PA has been free of false calls for a period of three consecutive months.
False alarms are fairly inevitable with PAs, so the security company monitoring the alarm must have the necessary infrastructure to be able to ascertain whether it has been triggered accidentally. In fact, to obtain police attendance, PA systems now need to provide some additional indication that a criminal offence is in progress. For example, some devices have a facility that enables the security centre to listen in to what is happening and assess whether or not the PA user is facing a possible assault.
It is expected that, increasingly, the Police will only respond to credible alarms that are managed through recognised and approved alarm-receiving centres. Such alarms will need enhanced methodology whereby a credible monitoring centre can escalate an incident to the Police. PAs with an open voice channel help the monitoring company decide whether an incident is real or false and, if real, allow it to determine the severity of the situation.
ACPO is also insistent that training and retraining of alarm-users should be incorporated into the maintenance of PAs. Reputable companies should, as a matter of course, provide users with training and ongoing after-sales service. Training is an important part of any new technology being introduced to a workforce, and this is particularly the case with staff who work alone and cannot easily call on colleagues for help or advice.
One of the primary goals of any lone-worker protection system should be to get assistance to that worker as soon as possible, should it be required. From a technology perspective there are two common methods to determine location in the context of lone-worker applications: GPS (global positioning system), where satellites are used to gain a position and then report it, typically via mobile-phone technology; and LBS (location-based services), where the location is determined and reported via the mobile-phone network.
Conclusion
In addition to legal obligations, there are very sound business and moral reasons why employers should effectively manage any threat of workplace violence. Even when staff are not physically harmed, repeated occurrences of swearing, threats, racial abuse and other forms of verbal abuse, can lead to depression, stress, reduced morale, absenteeism, retention problems and reduced productivity.
As well as the personal toll on the victims, the cost to the employer can also be significant. A personal-injury claim made through the County Court will cost at least £50,000 and usually takes three years for the case to be heard. A High-Court action will cost at least £100,000, and perhaps in excess of £1 million, and usually takes at least five years for the case to be heard. While legal action is in progress, everybody involved is being diverted from the job they were originally recruited to do.
Continuous evaluation and development of best-practice strategies and equipment are the most important elements in reducing risks for lone workers. Police crime-prevention officers, local authorities, and sector/industry bodies should all be able to provide advice to further assist in lone-worker protection.
References
1 www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causdis/
violence/demographics.htm
2 RCN (2007): Lone Working Survey, by Maria Smith, Research Fellow, Centre for Research and Evaluation, Sheffield Hallam University
3 Credible PA systems will feature ACPO’s ‘Secured By Design’ mark. This initiative supports the principle of “designing out crime” through the use of effective crime prevention and security standards for a range of applications
Craig Swallow is CEO of Connexion2.
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