For over 20 years, we have worked together with a wide range of public and private sector organisations to provide lone worker safety systems for their people. Last year, our RedAlert service provided a vital layer of protection to over 40,000 people working in higher risk environments throughout the UK and Northern Ireland.

When discussing lone worker solutions with our customers, the conversation usually centres around common topics such as compliance, ease of use, fit for purpose and cost. However, one of the biggest challenges our customers actually face is user engagement, which is critically important to help protect their team, and ensure that their investment isn’t being wasted. As with any technology-led service, a lone working system is only effective if the end user understands the benefits, process and operation of the service.

For this reason, end user engagement is always at the forefront of our service and we actively work with customers to ensure the best possible buy-in from their people. In this blog, we look at some of our methods that help to ensure maximise device utilisation within their teams.

Educating the end user

Training and implementation is the cornerstone to long term device compliance. Once we understand the customers’ requirements, we then conduct a full assessment of the working environments and tasks performed by their staff, so that we fully understand the challenges being faced.

We often perform device trials with individual teams to best understand which solution best matches their needs, as each environment will often require a different solution, and it is very important that the user feels comfortable with the service.

Once the assessment process is complete, we then develop a customised plan to deliver relevant educational training to all end users detailing how the technology works, why they are being provided with the solution and how this will benefit each person as an individual.

Comprehensive and flexible training

During the training stage for end users, we also provide training for escalation contacts and users of the Web Portal. An escalation contact is a nominated colleague, usually a supervisor or manager, that is part of the contact chain in the event of an emergency. This extra measure ensures that each person understands their role in the process to help optimise safety procedures.

Our training is tailored for each individual user group and designed to be easily accessible with a range of training options to suit all individuals. This training includes face-to-face classroom style sessions, web-based training, e-learning, training videos and PDF user guides. By supplying flexible training options, we can ensure that everyone has access to a preferred training platform.

Annual refresher training is very important to help maintain compliance, and our e-learning platform is a useful tool which allows companies to track which people have completed their training and when this has taken place. Our e-learning also provides the participant with a record of when their training was completed. We can also provide you with the e-learning tool to embed into your LMS e-learning portal should you have one and would prefer to manage this internally.

Are your team using the service correctly?

Before web portals existed for lone worker systems, it was very difficult to track device utilisation. Over the years, we have continually developed our Sentry Client web portal to make it easy for organisations to manage device compliance. With access to live dashboard information and usage reports, authorised people can monitor how the system is being utilised in real-time, even down to individual employee level. Historical reporting is also available and useful when analysing data trends to help recognise areas for improvement.

By listening to feedback from our clients over the years regarding our portal, we have optimised the process and can track usage more efficiently with the inclusion of scheduled reports. This ensures that our customers receive reports automatically via email, so they don’t even have to log into the portal to view the data.

One common request we received was for a feature that allowed our clients to send notifications to all end users, so we developed Broadcast Messaging to enable people with access to the portal to send bespoke notifications through our RedAlert smartphone application. This could include reminders to use your lone worker system, weather warnings or any other notification that you wished to send.

Other ways we can support utilisation and engagement

Lone Worker Policy

We can help clients embed a usage plan into their lone worker policy and also design a bespoke usage plan for end users to agree to. This helps our clients to set clear KPI’s for the service and easily report and manage compliance. Below are some simple examples of KPI’s that our customers have set for their team

• Devices be charged at the end of every working day in preparation for the next day’s appointment.
• Amber Alerts – When visiting clients in their own homes an Amber Alert must be logged leaving the street name and house number of the client being visited.

We’re here to help

Our RedAlert services are designed to support the safety of employees. By prioritising user engagement, we can ensure higher levels of utilisation, resulting in safer teams and a better return on investment. If you would like more information on this service, then please get in touch and we will be happy to help.