If you have employees who work alone, you’re legally obligated to keep them safe with a lone worker monitoring program. Even if their job isn’t necessarily a “high-risk” occupation, the fact that they work alone poses a safety risk.
Here we outline your responsibilities to employees that work alone and how CommAlert’s lone worker safety solutions can help.
Lone worker safety
The truth is, there is a safety hazard to working alone. If an accident or an emergency should occur, no one would no, and no help would arrive. Therefore, there must be someone your lone-worker employees can check in with and someone who is checking in with them. If not, this could lead to serious trouble, both in the moment and down the road.
When you have lone worker monitoring set up, you can protect your employees and safeguard your business. Plus, you build a reputation as a responsible employer who cares and that strengthens employee retention and loyalty.
Duty of Care
Most provinces across Canada, as well as two territories, have specific regulations regarding lone worker safety. However, even if your province doesn’t have distinct regulations, you, as an employer, must ensure the safety of all our staff under Duty of Care.
Duty of Care is one of the core principles of personal injury law. Under Duty of Care, you will be held responsible if a lone worker encounters an emergency and/or becomes injured at work and you do not have adequate lone worker protocols in place.
Duty of Care requires someone checking in on and monitoring your lone workers. The person, or organization responsible for checking in, must also be able to initiate a call-out procedure and provide emergency assistance if an accident happens.
Lone worker monitoring
CommAlert offers a lone worker monitoring service to take care of your lone worker safety needs. As a business, you won’t have to worry about what could go wrong and how this will fall under Duty of Care when you use our services.
We can customize a lone worker program specific to your organization and employees’ needs. For example, we use live operators who are available 24/7 to check in with your lone workers at both the beginning and end of their shifts. We will also set up times for our call monitoring to check in throughout lone worker shifts at a rate that seems sufficient to both you and your employees. They can check in via phone, text, or a mobile app. This way, you will perform adequate Duty of Care without implementing an in-house work alone monitoring program.
If there is ever a situation where a worker misses a check-in and cannot be reached, CommAlert will begin our emergency call-out procedure. First, we’ll work through a previously provided list of contacts to get in touch with someone who can send help. Then, if necessary, we will also be ready to contact first responders.
Contact us today to discuss how we can set up lone worker monitoring for your business.
