Free availability of automated monitoring service to safeguard lone workers
24 March 2020
ANT Telecom is offering free availability of its automated monitoring service, Aspect247, to address the issue of safeguarding employees working from home now that the outbreak of Covid-19 has resulted in a large proportion of the UK workforce now becoming lone workers.
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While the risks are relatively low when working from home, there is still an essential need for employers to uphold their duty of care and make sure all staff are safe during the working day.
Aspect247 is a fully automated monitoring system that employers can use to keep lone workers safe. Although many employees might be used to working from home on occasion, this is an unprecedented situation for many businesses and individuals. And given the rapid announcement of the government's advice regarding Covid-19, many employers would not have had time to do the standard health and safety checks to ensure a safe home-working environment, let alone trial any form of employee monitoring or sign-in service.
In light of the extraordinary situation the country, and the world, finds itself in, and with ANT Telecom’s experience in supporting businesses with managing lone working, it will be offering the solution and advice to businesses for free, to help them to keep their operations going throughout these turbulent times.
Many companies use manual processes to monitor or check on remote workers’ well-being. The onus is on the employee or manager to initiate contact regularly. Not only is that inefficient, it is also unreliable and generally not logged so can’t be audited.
Aspect247 is a hosted solution and works automatically. Welfare checks are initiated automatically at agreed and set intervals. For example, an employee could check in at 09:00 and set a welfare check for 17:00 at the end of the day. Equally an employee can check in when arriving at a site for a meeting at 10:00, setting a welfare check for 11:30 when the meeting is expected to finish. If the user fails to respond to the welfare check after a prompt, an alert is then automatically pushed to a group of nominated individuals. This could be a combination of co-workers, friends or family.
Image: ANT Telecom
The time periods could be specified by the employer, or individual, depending on the preference. Some businesses may implement a 09:00 check in and a 17:00 check out, or some may choose to use hourly check in services. For those businesses that are still conducting essential customer or site visits on location, more regular check ins could be crucial. And as the system also incorporates a location input, if the user doesn’t check out at the end of their site visit, the employer or nominated individual can see the last location that the user was in, and commence the follow up procedure with enhanced knowledge.
The system also incorporates a speed dial SOS function where employees can save the Aspect247 SOS number as a speed dial on their phones. By initiating the SOS feature will automatically send an alert out to the agreed group of contacts for the individual, prompting them to check in on the user or escalate the situation accordingly.
Klaus Allion, MD, ANT Telecom comments: “Employees need peace of mind that in the event of an incident happening when they are working from home, with little to no peer supervision or support, that they will be protected. And employers need to ensure that they are upholding their duty of care for their employees, with a solution that’s quick and simple to deploy, easy to use, and reliable in terms of alerting the right people so that the right help is available and any issues escalated – fast.”
For more information, click here to visit ANT Telecom’s website here, or call +44 (0) 1494 833123
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