Personal safety & lone working
Mel Connelly
Regional Head – Central Region
BBC Children in Need
What today will cover:
• Employers’ and employees responsibilities
• Personal Safety Policies
• Risks – the factors that should be considered when
thinking about personal safety
• Measures to promote personal safety
• Information about technology available to support
personal safety
What is Personal Safety?
What is Personal Safety?
An individual’s freedom from
risk, danger or harm
caused by the behaviour of others
Whose responsibility?
1. Be aware of risk assessments &
report issues not covered
2. Have a right to be
protected at work
8. Report incidents of violence & aggression
as well as ‘causes for concern’
3. Provide policies & procedures that
5. Learn from incidents and make changes
assist in the management of personal
where necessary
safety
7. Make choices about what
are reasonable measures to
take to control risks
4. Provide an accessible
6. Provide support to individuals
reporting system & learn from
when incidences occur
reports made
9. Do not put self or others in danger
Organisational Responsibilities
• Provide an accessible reporting system and learn from reports
made
• Set the ethos and provide a framework for managing personal
safety
• Learn from incidents and make changes where necessary
• Provide policies & procedures that assist in the management of
personal safety
• Complete risk assessments on key tasks that people carry out
• Provide support to individuals when incidents occur
• Make choices about what are reasonable measures to take to
control risk
• Provide training and communicate how Personal Safety is
managed
Personal Responsibilities
• Learn from incidents and make changes where necessary
• Do not put self or others in danger
• Follow procedures that have been devised to safeguard personal
safety
• Be aware of risk assessments and report issues not covered
• Have a right to be protected at work
• Attend and take part in training, read information about how
Personal Safety is being managed
• Use reasonable force only when necessary
• Report incidents of violence and aggression as well as ‘causes for
concern’
What the law requires
• Requires employers to be ‘safe’
• There is a clear dual responsibility
– Employers have a duty of care
– Employees have a duty of care
Cost to Organisation - Case law
.
Ingram v Hereford and Worcester County Council (2000)
Mr Ingram had to endure both physical and verbal abuse from those
he encountered on a number of travellers’ sites managed by the
council.
This included having a dog set on him and being shot at.
The case was based on the employers alleged breach of duty of care
in that it failed to provide Mr Ingram with a safe system of work,
resulting in him suffering prolonged and unremitting stress.
He eventually received a record settlement of £203,000
Cost to Organisation – Financial.
The Corporate Manslaughter Act makes it possible for employers to be
prosecuted if someone has been killed at (or by) work because of a failure
in how the organisation's activities are managed or organised, amounting
to a 'gross breach of duty'.
If an organisation is deemed to be responsible, then a maximum fine of
10% of their income can be applied.
Cost to Organisation – Name & Shame
Guilty organisations will be ordered to take remedial measures to ensure
they put in place adequate safety systems and procedures.
This may include face a publicity order requiring them to make public what
went wrong and what is being done to repair the situation.
This could mean organisations having to take out an advert in national
newspapers.
There's an element of name and shame and culpable organisations may
experience huge damage to their brand and reputation.
Personal Safety
Anticipate and recognise a risk
and take action to:
• Avoid it
• Reduce it
• Monitor/manage it
Assessing the risks
• People
• Environment
• Task
Scenario
Miss A, a twenty-two year-old nurse, works at a large teaching
hospital. She is on night duty and should leave for work at 10pm to get
to hospital in time to start work at 11pm. She is late and leaves for
work at 10:20pm. She is in uniform, carrying a briefcase and a
shopping bag in one hand and a handbag in the other. She takes a
shortcut through an enclosed park and suddenly, apparently from
nowhere, a man attacks her. He drags her behind some bushes,
threatening her and saying, ‘I’ve got a knife – scream and I’ll kill you!’
1. What could she have done before leaving home
2. What could she have done whilst walking to work?
3. What could she have done at the time of the attack?
The Choices Triangle
Choice
A Model of Personal Safety
Time
P.L.A.N
for your Personal Safety
Prepare
Look confident
Act to avoid risk and danger
Never assume it won’t happen to you
Exercise
• In groups work through the case studies
provided, thinking about the following:
– What actions could the person have taken
beforehand?
– What actions could the person take during?
– What could they do now?
– What could their colleagues do beforehand and now?
Working alone or from home
•
•
•
•
Insurance
Set up regular points of contact with others
Make others aware of your movements
Do you have to meet people in your own home,
or alone in your office? can you meet in public
places instead?
• If your work involves meeting clients in their own
homes, consider subscribing to an organisation
that can track your whereabouts
Telephone abuse
•
•
•
•
•
•
Listen – don’t interrupt
Let them blow off steam
When you respond, refer to them by name
Acknowledge their feelings
State your position
If the abuse continues, or if they are being particularly abusive, you
have the right to hang up@
1.
2.
3.
•
Warn the caller that if the behaviour continues you will hang up
If the behaviour does continue then remind the caller of what you
have said previously and hang up
You should report the incident in line with your violent incident and
reporting procedures
Any threats against your person are considered a criminal act.
You must report such incidents to your manager/organisation
Personal Safety policy
• If your organisation doesn’t have a Personal Safety policy, can
you raise it with them?
• Give some thought to the processes you think should be in
place for staff attending visits and meetings to ensure their
personal safety is promoted
• Who should it involve in the organisation?
• Personal Safety champions?
• Can a working group be put together to input into the
development of a policy?
Lone Worker - technology
•
•
There are many different technologies out there that can help support personal safety – for
example: SkyGuard, MyTeamSafe, Lone Alert, Alert-a-buddy, Blackline Safety, Call Handling,
Communicare, Crystal Ball, Guardian 24, Lookout Call, Lone Worker Solutions, People Safe,
Reliance Protect, Soloprotect, Staysafe, Trackplot
As an example, Children in Need uses the ‘Text You Home’ system to provide an additional
safety measure for lone workers attending meetings outside of the office – is relatively
simple to use, (ts important that an employer identifies the right solution for their specific
working arrangements – this system may not be appropriate for everyone):
– Staff identify 6 work contacts who should be contacted in the event of an alarm going
off
– Staff set their alarms based on when they are due to end a visit or a meeting
– If they do not cancel the alarm, then an alarm is raised to the first contact and quickly
cascaded to the other 5
– We then have a cascade process for dealing with an alarm.
– Staff put details of their whereabouts in their calendars which are shared across the
organisation
– If the visit/meeting is outside of office hours, then they flag up the visit with their first
main contact beforehand.
– There is also a panic button facility, which will raise an immediate alarm
Any questions?
Thank you – and stay safe!