As a business owner, you’re not just focused on generating as much profit as possible. You also need to take care of your resources, and that means you also need to look out for the welfare of your employees. This is especially important when you have situations wherein an employee has to work alone. Lone work safety must be a priority, because such a situation is inherently more dangerous than working in groups.
There are things you can do to address this safety issue for your company. As the employer, here are some tips that can help you with your safety concern.
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The most obvious solution to this problem is to make sure your employees are not working alone at all. You can at least have a buddy system in place at all times. While this may not always be feasible, at the very least you should minimize the occasions when you do have an employee working alone.
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If there are occasions when you do have people working alone, you need professional assistance to help you put suitable measures in place. These experts from firms like Solo Protect can help you put up the SOP procedures that can help minimize hazards and injuries. You may also receive technical assistance, including GPS devices, convenient alarms, surveillance equipment, and reliable communications.
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You also have to make sure that the employees you pick to work alone are suitable for the task. Some just aren’t cut out for solo work. They may be too young and immature, or they may not work effectively unless there are others around them. You need extremely responsible workers who can take reasonable care of their own safety and who can comply with your safety procedures. These people should know how to use and care for their equipment properly. It really helps if you have independent and responsible thinkers for your lone workers.
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Put adequate surveillance in place. Security cameras are very affordable these days, and they can help you keep an eye out on your worker as well as your business premises. If something goes wrong, then you have video proof of what happened so you can prevent problems from reoccurring.
Audio surveillance can also help, as these can record audio logs as to where your workers are going or what they’re doing. These can also record the presence of intruders or angry customers who issue threats against your workers.
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You should also try to use automated check-in procedures. Check-ins are usually SOP for lone workers. It makes sense that you can have them check-in at certain times so that other people are aware that everything’s going right. When your worker fails to check-in at the appointed time, then you immediately know that something’s wrong.
The problem is that most businesses have workers using their smartphones to check-in, and that’s not always an ideal solution. Sometimes they may end up with no battery power or no signal. Even when they do have a signal, getting out their smartphone can be a distraction. They may end up going online to check out their social networks and email services. They may even end up wasting time watching YouTube videos. It’s not as if anybody else is at work to castigate them.
However, you can have automatic devices that simply let the worker press a button to check-in. It takes a few seconds and there’s no risk of distractions for the worker.
Ensuring lone worker safety can entail a significant investment, but you have to make sure that your employees are safe all the time. It’s part of your responsibility as an employer and failing at it can actually cost your business a lot more money in the long run.