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Health and safety is becoming more prominent in service. Engineers who work remotely are more susceptible to risk and firms are now recognizing the hazards they face daily. Following a Field Service News Think Tank held in London last year which had the issue of health and safety at the top of its agenda, Mark Glover – who attended the meeting – reports on some of the safety challenges that firms encounter.

Mark Glover explores the health and safety risks associated with lone working including a recent emphasis on wellbeing and mental health and how technology and attitudes at board level can enhance a firm’s approach to implementing a strong safety culture...

In the UK it is estimated there are six million lone workers and approximately 23 million in the US. Workers sent to fix a coffee machine, lorry or an offshore wind turbine, by definition, are lone workers.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) who oversee the regulation and enforcement of occupational health and safety in the UK define lone workers as “people who work by themselves without close or direct supervision”. Given the spectrum of lone vocations in field service, we can assume that most workers fall into this category.

In the UK, while there is no specific legislation that governs lone working, the act is encompassed by the overarching Health and Safety at Work Act which requires employers to provide a duty of care to their workers and to do all that is “reasonably practicable” to protect them.” Similarly, in America, there exists no defined legal requirements but the framework of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) expects firms - as part of their legal duty of care - to have a lone worker policy in place.

Today, firms across both sides of the Atlantic are now taking health and safety far more seriously. What was once seen as a paperwork-heavy burden, necessary to keep inspectors from the door, is now appearing higher up a firm’s agenda resonating in
the boardroom and becoming integrated within a firm’s business strategy. Directors can see tangible numbers such as lost time
and accident statistics that can visibly affect a company’s bottom line; as well as the impact the effect on a company’s brand if they are found in breach of the regulations. Employers are now also taking a more holistic view of their workers’ health and safety. As well as the obvious risks in lone working such as sudden illness or injury, violence, threats or abuse, employers are now taking more notice of their employee’s wellbeing and the risks associated with mental health. Lone workers have been identified as vulnerable in this regard, susceptible to issues such as depression and anxiety. But why is this?

The very nature of lone working means interaction with others is not as frequent as that between office workers, for example. As social creatures we work best in groups, bouncing ideas around and receiving affirmation from each other on challenges and solutions. And while those who work alone are in touch with colleagues or managers, it is often conducted remotely and task-focused with little opportunity for informal conversation. The desk-based employee can usually find relaxed, pressure releasing conversations at the office kitchen while making a coffee with another colleague.

"Lone workers have been identified as vulnerable, susceptible to depression and anxiety..."

It’s this removal of a lone worker’s relaxed workplace interaction that can have a detrimental affect on their wellbeing. However, communication software such as the consumable cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp is being utilised by working populations to interact and share challenges, becoming a virtual coffee between workers in a virtual office kitchen.

Technology has also played a part in physically protecting lone workers with a sharp advancement in safety devices, particularly in alarms and monitoring systems.

The first wave of tech was very much stand alone, connected to very little. Those in danger would press a button and hope that someone hears it. Now devices have become much smarter with GPS and IoT connectivity, in turn creating tracking and
therefore productivity metrics. This was further ring fenced in the UK by the introduction of the 2016 BS8484 standard, meaning
companies offering technology-based solutions had to comply with. A key requirement of which, is that a lone worker’s alarm once activated, supersedes the 999 British level of emergency response, and be directed immediately to the relevant control unit,
guaranteeing an appropriate action.

This regulation has led to another level of lone worker devices encompassing video, analytics and the use of IoT. Solutions now include personal ID tags that incorporate video technology and small fob alarms, triggered discreetly triggered if an incident occurs
that can also integrate with a mobile workforce management platform. Like service management platforms, analytics software specifically for lone workers exists that covers usage, training and alarm elements and produces graphically-friendly reports
to showcase progress to the CEO or department heads.

Financial, moral and legal: three reasons why firms should take their health and safety management systems seriously. Far from being a burden, it’s about making sure your workers go home unharmed. People are your biggest assets and they deserve to be protected to the highest possible standard. Physically, and also mentally.

IoT connectivity and remote monitoring, used by companies to monitor the safety of their lone workers, straddles into medical sphere to keep tabs on patients' health. 
The number of remotely monitored patients grew by 41% to 16.5 million in 2017 as the market acceptance continues to grow in several key verticals, according to research by Berg Insight.

This number includes all patients enrolled in mHealth care programs in which connected medical devices are used as a part of the care regimen. Connected medical devices used for various forms of personal health tracking are not included in this figure. Berg Insight estimates that the number of remotely monitored patients will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 31.0% to reach 83.4 million by 2023.   The two main applications are monitoring of patients with sleep therapy devices and monitoring of patients with implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices. These two segments accounted for 82% of all connected home medical monitoring systems in 2017.






The number of of remotely monitored sleep therapy patients grew by 37% in 2017, mainly driven by Philips and ResMed that together dominate the sleep therapy market. The CRM market is led by companies such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific and Abbott that started to include connectivity in CRM solutions more than a decade ago. Telehealth is the third largest segment with 0.8 million connections at the end of the year.

Leading telehealth hub vendors include Tunstall Healthcare, Resideo (Honeywell), Medtronic, Philips and Qualcomm Life. Other device categories – including ECG, glucose level, medication compliance, blood pressure monitors and others – accounted for just over two million connections. “The most promising segment is medication compliance, which we expect will become the second most connected segment in the next five years”, says Sebastian Hellström, IoT Analyst at Berg Insight.  

More than 60% of all connected medical monitoring devices rely on cellular connectivity today and has become the de-facto standard for most types of connected home medical monitoring devices. The number of mHealth devices with integrated cellular connectivity increased from 7.1 million in 2016 to 10.7 million in 2017.

The use of BYOD connectivity will increase the most during the next six years, with a forecasted CAGR of 48.2%. “BYOD involves low cost and the technology is mostly adopted in patient-centric therapeutic areas such as diabetes and asthma that have younger patient demographics compared to many other chronic diseases. Many of these patients prefer to use their own smartphone as the interface instead of carrying around a dedicated device for remote monitoring”, concluded Mr. Hellström.

The increase of remote monitoring usage across professions, including health and safety, was highlighted in a further report by Berg Insight who found the number of monitored lone workers in Europe and North America reached 900,000 in 2017,

Download report brochure: mHealth and Home Monitoring 

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Given the many industries field service straddles, the crossover of its employees into lone working is huge. Field Service News’ Mark Glover looks into this area of health and safety and discovers how technology - and positive human engagement - can play a huge part in its successful implementation.

The last five years has seen a shift in worldwide attitudes to health and safety. Emphasis has shifted from ‘safety’ to ‘health’ with more focus placed on long-latency diseases such as asbestos-related workplace cancer and musculoskeletal conditions such as tendonitus. Employee wellbeing and mental health is attracting greater awareness and safety professionals are having a stronger role at board level, with CEOs understanding the business case for a robust health and safety system.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is an agency of the UK Government’s responsible for regulating and enforcing health and safety law. As well as providing information and guidance, they also investigate workplace incidents and accidents and bring forward prosecutions if a company has been in breach of legislation.

Having spent five years as a health and safety journalist, I have seen the profession and HSE come in for criticism for pandering to the Nanny State and stifling society with its regulation. As such, the sector gets a bad reputation, not helped by UK subeditors keen to brandish the “health and safety gone mad” headline above a piece on a children’s party or a village fete being shut down. Often though - and newspapers will fail to report this - the reason for intervention is justified as ultimately, lives were most likely at risk....

 

Legislation and lone working

In the UK alone, it is estimated there are six million lone workers in the UK, and approximately 23 million in the US. Workers sent to fix a coffee machine, lorry or an offshore wind turbine classifies them as a lone worker; the spectrum of lone vocations is a vast one and those in field service will often come under the lone worker category.

 

"Employers are required to provide a duty of care to their workers and to do all that is ‘reasonably practicable’ to protect them..."

 

In the UK, health and safety legislation is underpinned by the Health and Safety at Work Act. Employers are required to provide a duty of care to their workers and to do all that is ‘reasonably practicable’ to protect them. In the sphere of lone working, there is no specific legislation as such. Speaking at a a recent lone worker safety conference in London, Sean Elson, a specialist Health and Safety Lawyer at Pinsent Masons said: “Most of the issues that I see around lone working are seen through the prism of the general duties of the Health and Safety at Work Act.”

And while the law, according to Elson “remains stable”, what is expected as ‘reasonably practicable’ is changing. “It does not stay the same. It is constantly moving,” he said at the same conference. “What is it we have to do to satisfy our duties?” The introduction of British Standard 8484:2016, the country’s Standard for Lone Worker safety devices, has further ring-fenced the effectiveness of lone worker solutions in the UK. Companies offering technology-based solutions have to adhere to the standard, a key requirement of which, is that an alarm, once activated supersedes the 999 level of emergency response, and be directed immediately to the relevant control unit, guaranteeing an appropriate police response.

 

Technology

Craig Swallow is Managing Director of SoloProtect, a company providing lone worker technology solutions in the UK and US. Clients include Sky, Domino’s Pizza and department store John Lewis. Typically, the end-users are working alone; sent to fix satellite boxes, deliver pizza and furniture. Soloprotect’s suite of solutions include personal ID tags that incorporate video technology and small fob alarms, which can also be discreetly triggered if an incident occurs.

Other products include an alarm watch system and a lone worker app, that can integrate with mobile workforce management. The firm also provide analytics software that covers usage, training and alarm elements and produces graphically-friendly reports to showcase progress to the CEO or department heads, an important element of a health and safety Manager’s modern role. “Our main point of contact is a company’s Health and Safety Manager,” Craig tells me over the phone.

 

"Alarms when I first started were very much stand-alone and weren’t really connected to anything, they were literally press a button and hope someone hears it..."

 

“They have always had the desire of providing their management team with the benefits of using the technology, and now they can provide a clear dashboard that justifies the ROI.” I ask Craig how open clients are to adopting new technology? “You’ve got the whole spectrum. Some are scared, some are really progressive. I was with a client yesterday,” he says, “and I was showing them what benefits they would get as a set of managers would be and they immediately got it.” So how much of an evolution has there been in the lone worker technology “It’s been massive,” says Nicole Vazquez (pictured), an expert in Lone Worker behaviour.

“Alarms when I first started were very much stand-alone and weren’t really connected to anything, they were literally press a button and hope someone hears it. Then it got a bit smarter and pressing that button would make sure somebody hears it. Now it’s connected to GPS and some companies will link it into their tracking and their productivity.”

 

Disingenuous

Nicole, who runs Worthwhile Training, a training and consultancy firm specialising in lone working and security, however has seen a down-side to the employee tracking features. “If you’re giving somebody a device for safety but they also know that you are using it to monitor productivity too, then it can feel a little bit disingenuous from the end-user’s point of view,” she suggests.

Convincing workers that the technology is a compliment rather than a hindrance is an ongoing challenge in the lone worker arena and Vazquez tells me of a client, a kitchen appliance manufacturer, who gave engineers tablets to register their arrival and departure at a job and to take pictures before and after to prove no damage occurred after completion. Ultimately the technology was there to protect workers, but it wasn’t perceived that way.

 

"Rather than it being a spy, it would be their witness. The difference between those two words is huge..."

 

“When we talked to the engineers about it, they said they felt uncomfortable,” Nicole remembers. “We took the angle that this was about protecting them.” However, after the workers said their safety wasn’t an issue, Nicole took another approach: “We asked them if they had been accused of, for example, causing damage when they hadn’t, and suddenly everybody wanted to have a conversation about it.” She continues: “Rather than it being a spy, it would be their witness. The difference between those two words is huge. It’s not somebody keeping an eye on them, it’s somebody keeping an eye out for them.”

In the States, employees are perhaps more cautious about being spied upon while working. Swallow suggests the role of Unions has made workers more aware of such technology. “In lone working,” he says, “you still have the same challenges – the same in field service - of workers wary of being tracked. I would offer that it’s a greater concern in the US because the Unions are very powerful.

The engagement, therefore, between both parties is often a greater consideration in America.”

 

The Potential

But what about the advantages of linking lone worker and field service technology? Efficiency and compliance can surely compliment a health and safety solution? Swallow, suggests the engineer’s tablet or rugged laptop aren’t quite suited to the lone worker discreet hardware just yet. “It’s not an ideal terminal to use from a health and safety or alarm perspective,” he says, “but if you could create relationships between our system and the field service system, whether that’s sharing information about known-location or risk, for example then there could be advantages.”

 

"The potential of IoT and machine learning on lone working technology is an exciting one..."

 

Expanding further, Craig recalls a client, a large rail operator, who require confirmation that track-side maintenance is being carried out by an engineer with the correct training and credentials but they also want to know when the job is being carried out. “They want to use our device,” Craig explains, “because those individuals are lone workers so there’s a health and safety angle too.” “It’s also about audit. They [the client] are managing a complex chain of sub-contractors and sub/sub-contractors. Ultimately, it’s about making sure they’ve got a full audit trail and the task in hand is being done by the right guy with the right credentials.”

The potential of IoT and machine learning on lone working technology is an exciting one, and Craig, who used to work at PSION, the British company who pioneered the Personal Digital Assistant in the early 80s, is convinced the industry is headed in that direction. “Traditionally, our devices use circuit switch voice and SMS,” he explains.

“We have a data product, where the voice; audio or video call, or whatever data is being sent will come through a middleware platform. The theory is, as long as you’ve got an Application Processing Interface (API), that data can interface with that middleware platform, with as many other platforms as you like.” Nicole is also encouraged by the “joined-up thinking” between safety and efficiency. However – and this is a big question in field service at the moment – she remains cautious about the cross-over between the asset and the engineers.

“It’s about making sure the productivity or efficiency tracking does not blur the boundaries of staff, she says. “People are your assets.” Lone working technology is a part of health and safety which exists so that, after a day’s work, workers go home unharmed. Indeed, as Nicole says, people are your biggest assets and they deserve to be protected to the highest possible standard.

Infinis, who generate power from sites across the country, have launched StaySafe as a safety solution to enhance the protection and safety of its staff when working on unmanned sites and out of hours.

StaySafe is an app and cloud-based hub which monitors a lone worker’s safety and location on a real-time map and alerts Infinis’ Logistics Centre front desk operators if they do not check-in within a specified time.

Infinis required a more streamlined and secure solution to help enhance the safety of employees whilst working alone on remote sites.

In light of this, Infinis replaced their previous lone worker system which relied on workers to update their location every hour via text, with the StaySafe app which provides clear and consistent GPS reporting to determine a user’s last known location and their safety status. The switch to this mobile app offers a rich range of bespoke features, relies less on the user and provides a safer solution.

Infinis’ HSQE Manager, Mark Skidmore comments: “Over the last 12 months, we have rolled out smartphones within the company and launched StaySafe as a practical and improved safety solution. We understand the risk to our workers who may be vulnerable when working on sites alone and are able to mitigate risk through the app’s hourly timed check-in sessions.

Additionally, we find the app’s note function really useful, allowing staff to provide us with extra detail about their location in order to narrow down our search if they are based on larger sites and in need of support. Overall, we are very satisfied with StaySafe and confident it meets the company’s standards and expectations, to enhance protection of our lone workers.”

Don Cameron, CEO, StaySafe adds “Employees in Energy and Utility based sectors can be vulnerable as they are frequently required to work and travel to sites alone, often outside of normal working hours. We’re seeing a big trend in the sector of companies moving away from user-driven/company manufactured systems and dedicated safety devices towards apps because of the prevalent use of smartphones in the workplace. StaySafe provides a way for organisations to know exactly where staff are and if they are safe – with the added bonus of using equipment staff already carry”

 

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