A study undertaken on behalf of communications business Daisy Group found that nearly three quarters (73%) of people in the hospitality sector were required to work alone as part of their job, either regularly or occasionally, and a quarter of all of those surveyed (25%) said their employer never checked their welfare of staff when working alone.
Of those required to work either alone or off-site (for example attending meetings), 66% said that the monitoring arrangements in the organisation they worked for were haphazard. Just one in four (23%) said they were aware that they had responsibilities to let others know of their whereabouts and to ‘check in’ with colleagues when working alone.
If incapacitated due to an accident whilst working alone, one in seven lone workers said that they would expect it to take up to seven hours for the colleagues to notice they were missing.
Under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, UK businesses have a legal obligation to protect their employees whilst working.
Marie Wheatley, Group Head of HR at Daisy Group, said: "Most businesses are very proactive about looking after their staff whilst they are on site, but it seems that there’s a real case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ when it comes to their lone workers.
“Lone worker protection used to be very expensive, but there are now a variety of options available to suit businesses’ needs and budget, whether it’s lone worker devices or apps, GPS tracking for staff smartphones, or simply getting a special phone tariff for inter-company calls to operate a buddy system.
Daisy Group provides unified communications across a product portfolio including data, mobile systems, maintenance and voice.