The duty of care to lone and at-risk workers

Lone working is not banned, but the risks must be assessed and controlled. For public-facing staff, that increasingly includes the risk of violence and aggression, which retail, housing and healthcare have all seen rise.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require suitable and sufficient risk assessment. Where a worker is alone in a property, a stockroom or a community setting, the assessment has to answer a simple question: if something goes wrong, how does anyone find out, and how fast can help arrive?

A credible lone-worker control gives the worker a simple, discreet way to raise an alarm, delivers that alarm to someone who can act, and carries a location so help is directed rather than searching.

Check-in regimes and phone apps help, but they depend on the worker remembering, having signal, and being able to reach the device. A safety tag that raises a located duress alert at the press of a button removes several of those failure points.

Regulators, boards and insurers increasingly want proof that a control is real and used, not just written down. A system that logs when an alert was raised, where, and that it was answered, turns duty of care from a policy into demonstrable practice.

The Salvus Network provides that located duress cover and the record behind it across retail floors, housing stock and clinical settings alike, protecting people and evidencing the duty at the same time.