This is why you need to create your lone worker protection apps and digital forms, sooner rather than later. best of all, it’s cheaper and easier than you think.
You’re reading this because you know you have a duty of care towards your employees and you want to create your lone worker protection apps, but you either don’t know how difficult it is, how much they cost, how they can aid compliance and mitigate risk, or how useful they REALLY are.
Fortunately, I can safely say they’re easier, and more cost effective than you think and lone worker digital forms and apps save lives.
Here’s how:
Migrating paper forms to digital forms, and creating digital transformation in the workplace, especially in the construction, engineering, or hospitality sectors has become a necessity. Among the myriad of digital solutions available, lone worker protection apps and digital forms, such as those offered by forms2 mobile business and safety apps, have emerged as powerful tools to enhance employee safety, streamline operations and ensure legal compliance.
They also show you care about your employees. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t.
In this article, we delve into the world of lone worker protection apps and digital forms, highlighting their benefits, key features, and how they can enhance safety protocols and operational efficiency in your workplace for lone workers.
What is A Lone Worker
A lone worker is an employee who performs their job functions without direct or close supervision, often in isolation from other workers or without immediate assistance from colleagues. This could be an oil and gas worker, a welder in a silo, a technician up a crane, security guards on patrol, field technicians, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, hospitality workers in a large hotel, farmers, vineyard workers and even office workers staying late or starting early. They sometimes are referred to as mobile workers and may operate outside of normal business hours where workplace hazards are prevalent, say at night or during early hours of the morning.
What is Lone Worker protection?
Because lone workers work in isolation, they can be subject to unique safety risks and workplace hazards. Lone worker protection, or lone worker monitoring, is a protocol where employers provide adequate safety measures for these workers, and is often a legal requirement.
Some examples of lone worker protection protocols that ensure lone worker safety might include periodic check-in calls or manual reporting, with physical returns back to the office or another person physically calling out to another worker at specific time intervals – you’ll find this quite common where chemicals are present, in farmyards or where welders/oil and gas workers are working around chemicals in silos or pipelines. Someone will physically shout “Are you okay” every 3-5 minutes…
This HSE article shows you how to manage the risks of working alone but our lone worker monitoring apps can be designed to meet and exceed HSE guidance and legislation, and also be designed to meet customers own escalation procedures, fitting in with your existing lone worker safety program.
Unfortunately, these manual methods are time-consuming, inefficient and downright unsafe. What if someone doesn’t hear you? This is where lone worker protection apps and digital forms are absolutely essential.
What are Lone Worker Protection Apps?
Lone worker protection apps are digital solutions designed to keep lone workers safe by providing real-time location tracking, emergency alert systems, and check-in features. These apps are installed on the workers’ smartphones, transforming these devices into powerful safety tools. They send alerts at time intervals to the worker to which they have to respond to, otherwise, an issue is escalated to a manager.
An example of a lone worker safety solution being:
Steve is working at height and it’s raining. His manager, Jane, has set up the lone worker protection app to alert Steve’s phone by push notifications every 3 minutes. If Steve responds, the timer restarts. If he doesn’t Jane is alerted, and then she can either action someone to check on Steve, or call him to check he’s ok. Either way, the whole system is automated, so Jane only needs to check on Steve if he doesn’t respond. The lone worker protection app does all the work for her.
Yes, Steve has to respond every 3 minutes by clicking a button or tapping his screen, but it’s miles better than answering a phone call every 3 minutes.
What are the major Benefits of Lone Worker Protection Apps?
First and foremost, lone worker protection apps keep your workers safe and managers are aware of their worker’s welfare at all times. But there are WAY more benefits to lone worker protection apps that make them an indispensable tool for any organisation or sector employing lone workers.
1. Enhanced Safety
Lone worker protection apps can be set up with features like GPS tracking,, weather alerts and panic buttons, significantly enhancing the safety of your lone workers. In case of emergencies, lone workers can quickly send alerts, ensuring immediate response and assistance if they run into trouble.
Additionally, if a worker does not respond when they are required to, someone can be dispatched to their location to check on them. This can be life-saving if a worker has passed out and is unable to call for help. The app can alert managers and if it’s a high-risk scenario, managers can get there before matters turn deadly.
This is especially useful in workplaces using hazardous chemicals like Oil & Gas, vineyards, working at height, engineering, or farming and agriculture.
Lone worker protection apps not only mitigate risk, but they ensure rapid responses in emergencies and significantly reduce the risk of severe injuries or worse.
Cost Efficiency
By reducing potential accidents and incidents, lone worker protection apps can save businesses money that would otherwise be spent on insurance and compensation claims. Simply taking a proactive approach to employee safety can lead to reduced insurance premiums as insurance companies often provide discounts or more favourable terms to businesses that implement safety measures, such as lone worker protection apps, to minimise workplace risks.
The major point here is that you’re reducing the possibility of a serious incident. Covering yourself and your employees.
At prices starting from $18* per user per month, we’re actually one of the cheapest no-code platforms for enterprise organisations out there!
Improved Productivity
Let’s face it, if you care about your workers, which you SHOULD do, they’re going to feel safer and be more productive. When workers, especially lone workers, know that you and their team are monitoring their safety and that help is always available, they’re going to feel more secure and go about their workday knowing you’ve got their best interests and their safety in mind, which will obviously lead to improved productivity, so it’s a win/win scenario!
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Compliance with Legal Requirements
Lone worker protection apps help you and help all employers meet their legal duty of care, protecting your business from potential legal actions.
The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland, specifically have stringent lone worker protection standards that employers must adhere to.
By creating your own no code lone worker protection app, and lone worker policy any employer can proactively meet and even exceed these standards for as little as $18 per month*. There’s a two-fold benefit here: You’re achieving compliance but you’re also protecting your business from potential legal liabilities and associated insurance complications that can be particularly costly, and well, inconvenient to say the least! Can you risk it?
Real-time Incident Reporting
Lone worker protection apps allow for immediate incident reporting, helping businesses identify potential risks and improve safety procedures faster than ever before. In the unfortunate event that an issue DOES happen, you can take the appropriate action to ensure it never happens again.
However, you can also set up your apps to integrate with existing emergency response protocols and any lone worker safety policy you may have. For example, if you’re working in the forestry sector, and your tree faller doesn’t respond, you can automate alerts to helicopter rescue, complete with GPS location, integration with what3words, and send to the pilot so you can ensure a coordinated and efficient response that could potentially save your worker’s life.
Evidence and Documentation
As mentioned LWP apps can automatically record incidents, providing a timestamped log of events for insurance purposes, and again for rescue purposes or training of the dangers lone workers face. Documentation, especially automated documentation can be super important in case of insurance claims or investigations, as they give both sides a crystal clear record of what transpired, ensuring that claims are processed swiftly and fairly.
By showing insurance firms that you have done everything in your power to implement advanced safety measures for lone workers, and create d robust lone worker solution, employers like you can drastically reduce liability exposure. No one wants an incident to happen, but if it does, having a lone worker safety solution app in place can show your commitment as an employer to safety. This could actually limit the magnitude of liability claims as you’ve shown you have held your end up when it comes to duty of care and shown that you have implemented a one worker safety program ahead of any incidents.
How do Digital Forms tie into Lone Worker Safety apps?
Alongside lone worker protection apps, digital forms or mobile forms as they’re otherwise known, play a crucial role in enhancing lone worker safety. Digital forms are electronic versions of paper forms, designed to capture and process data more efficiently. In the context of lone worker safety, digital forms can be used to record safety check-ins, report incidents, and maintain safety records directly from your phone or tablet.
What are some of the benefits of using digital forms for lone worker protection?
They’re WAY more Efficient
Digital forms eliminate the need for manual data entry, reducing errors and saving time. You can set up your lone worker protection app to integrate with your data capture app, or create standalone versions depending on what your employee needs.
More accessible than paper!
We’ve covered the benefits of switching to digital forms from paper forms but as digital forms are stored in the cloud, they can be accessed from anywhere, ensuring that critical safety information is always at hand when you need it.
Enhanced Data Accuracy
With digital forms, data is captured and processed in real time, enhancing accuracy and allowing for immediate action in case of incidents. Need to know where Steve is? Justget his last submitted location on your lone worker protection app. Want to know if Jane is safe doing her rounds in the warehouse? Send an alert.
Using Lone Worker Protection Apps and Digital Forms together
When you combine lone worker protection apps and digital forms for data capture, you’re creating a robust safety framework for your lone workers. The real-time tracking and alert features of your lone worker protection apps ensure immediate response if there’s an emergency or accident, while digital forms allow you to capture and process data more efficiently, which will improve safety management altogether – whether you’re taking a toolbox talk or reducing the need for workers to spend time alone at work.
Put simply, digital transformation with lone worker protection apps, safety apps and digital forms benefits you as a business owner or manager and workers. Everyone wins.
How can you Get Started with Lone Worker Protection Apps and Digital Forms?
Implementing lone worker protection apps and digital forms with no-code apps in your organisation is way easier than you think. And no-code is a LOT cheaper than traditional app development too!
With most users developing their apps within days, not months, you can get up and running in no time, rolling out your updated lone worker safety solution faster! Check out our mobile business app and digital forms case studies to see how easy it is!
Or speak to our platform specialists about building your no-code lone worker protection apps for as little as $18 per user per month, and go from no-code beginner to expert in a matter of weeks.
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