Unite Students is the UK’s longest established, private landlord for people in higher education. Creating places through the delivery of purpose-built student accommodation, it has provided a home for over 600,000 people since forming in 1992. The company now employs more than 1,400 staff – people with a passion for creating great environments, to help their residents settle into new surroundings, whilst providing security and support where needed.
Working alone
A significant number of Unite Students’ workforce can potential work alone, and/or out of hours, at night and weekends. As well as this, they have roles that are spread across campuses and throughout the city, and duties including student welfare issues, checking buildings and communal areas, and even discussion around debt arrears. Therefore, it’s clear that the company needed a solution in place to ensure their employees were protected and felt empowered.
After speaking with their employees, Unite Students discovered their workforce could, at times, feel intimidated, scared and had faced anti-social and threatening situations whilst at work. As a result, they immediately began searching for a solution.
Matt Perks, Unite Students City Manager explains, “If it gets out of hand then it’s really important that our employees have support and can get hold of the local police, but also that they feel safe when doing so. The SoloProtect solution offers exactly that; a discreet device that allows our employees to carry out their duties with peace of mind.”
Reduce risk
An international lone worker safety company, SoloProtect is working with thousands of customers across the UK, US, and mainland Europe. The company works alongside employers to help them reduce social and physical risk to personnel, and financial risk to their organisation. SoloProtect has supplied Unite Students for a decade, and recently delivered a significant number of new SoloProtect Go devices for their lone working employees.
SoloProtect Go was announced to the market in 2018. It is a small and discreet, fob style lone worker device – and is supported by SoloProtect’s 24/7, EN 50518 accredited Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). This enables a lone worker to raise a ‘Red Alert’ at the push of a button, making a call directly from their lone worker device, into the ARC, for prompt verification, and escalation – appropriately, and in line with any incident taking place.
It’s important to protect your staff no matter how big or small your company is, and Unite Students does everything possible to meet the required duty of care to its workforce. The company strongly believes in safeguarding the wellbeing of all its employees, including those that work alone.
SoloProtect UK Managing Director, Craig Swallow, commented: “We’re delighted to see Unite Students adding SoloProtect Go to the existing ID devices we’ve supplied for a number of years. We value them greatly as a customer, and think they’ve nurtured a terrific safety culture”.
Matt Perks, Unite Students City Manager commented: “Our care and commitment to safety applies to all stakeholders – residents and customers, our employees, and anyone who enters a Unite Students’ environment”.
For more information about SoloProtect lone worker solutions, click here.
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