Safety app to check-in with lone working staff around the clock

Turner and Townsend is a construction and project management consultancy that employs lone workers to provide a range of services to organisations across the UK.

Turner and Townsend were previously using check in calls to monitor the location and safety of their lone workers. However, as staff set their own itineraries and often work at remote sites, it was not easy to accurately keep track their locations throughout the day.

Employees working away from direct supervision were expected to call in every 2 hours to confirm they were safe. Not only was the process time consuming, but it was also unreliable. As many organisations have found, taking the time out every 2 hours to make a call can be very disruptive and many end up forgetting or becoming complacent.

Turner and Townsend identified this as an area of risk for the business and began the process of looking for a more reliable solution. It was a key requirement that the new solution had GPS tracking and that staff could still be contacted in areas of low signal. A check-in facility was also important, as was the ability to keep an accurate audit trail.

As part of their research, StaySafe was recommended to Turner and Townsend by Ericsson, who use StaySafe to protect their UK field engineers. Following a demonstration, Turner and Townsend launched StaySafe.

StaySafe is a lone worker app and monitoring service which allows businesses to monitor the location and safety status of remote and lone workers. A range of features allows employees to signal for help in any situation, while a cloud-based Hub provides information needed to respond to an alert quickly and effectively.

How StaySafe helped:

• Visibility of employee location as they travel and work between sites
• Monitor employee safety in low signal areas
• Check-in with staff at regular intervals
• Set up of in-house and outsourced employee monitoring
• Accurate reporting

Turner and Townsend now have full visibility of staff GPS location through the StaySafe Hub, which uses 2, 3 and 4G signal to ensure that staff are monitored in all locations, no matter how remote. The online Hub also allows Turner and Townsend to keep an audit trail of activity and run reports as necessary.

The app has been configured so that staff at Turner and Townsend are required to check-in safely every 90 minutes. If an employee misses a check in or raises an alarm at any time, alerts are triggered in the Hub and emergency procedures followed.

Monitoring of staff within the Hub was initially undertaken in house. This meant that supervisors at Turner and Townsend oversaw the monitoring of their own employees and a set of standard operating procedures to follow was developed with StaySafe.

However, the business has now made the switch to outsourced monitoring to ensure their lone workers are protected 24/7. Due to sites being located all around the UK, staff can work and travel outside of traditional office hours. Around the clock monitoring was not possible at Turner and Townsend in-house, so StaySafe has arranged for alerts from staff to be responded to by an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), who will follow the emergency procedures set out by Turner and Townsend.

Client Feedback

Karl Povey, Principle Consultant, Turner and Townsend: “We needed more comprehensive and robust way of ensuring our lone workers were safe and StaySafe ticked all the boxes. When we launched, I made it clear that using StaySafe was not about invading privacy or tracking productivity, but to make sure staff get home safely every day. The entire team, including myself, are on the app and we know that if there is a missed check-in or an alert is triggered, we will get a phone call. Knowing that someone is monitoring us and that if there is an incident, even out of hours, we will get help gives the team confidence that their safety is being looked after.”