If You Go Down to the Woods Today

05 February 2016 | Updated 01 January 1970

To better meet its duty of care to its employees and accurately monitor their safety while they work, Coombes has launched BS 8484 accredited lone worker safety system StaySafe.

The latest HSE statistics show that the risk of an employee being injured from a fall or using machinery is present in nearly 50% of workplaces in the UK. Lone workers are particularly vulnerable in the event of an accident as there is no one to raise the alarm.

StaySafe is an app and surrounding cloud-based monitoring service which tracks a lone workers location via GPS and alerts their manager if they do not check-in within a specified time.

The app works on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry and is said to offer a wide range of functions including a panic button, working session expiry, GPS tracking, inactivity and duress alerts. If an employee activates the app’s panic button or fails to check in, alerts are automatically triggered on screen and via text and e-mail, allowing an employer to take immediate action.

Coombes undertakes the monitoring of its employees in-house via an online hub but monitoring can also be outsourced to one of StaySafe’s 24/7 monitoring and response partners.

“StaySafe is a powerful app that has been quickly adopted by our staff as they carry smartphones already,” explained Kim Bedford, Coombes Forestry. “As well as the check in features and GPS monitoring the non-movement alert was a key selling point for us. We now get an alert if an employee has been inactive for a period and if we can’t get hold of them we can start procedures to check on their wellbeing immediately. This early indication that something might be wrong can provide us with vital time to get help to an employee who may have had an accident but was unable to signal for help.”

Picture: The need to protect lone workers led to Coombes using the StaySafe system for its staff

Article written by Mike Gannon | Published 05 February 2016

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