Who: Arena Housing
What: Programming staff mobile phones for speed dialling
Why: To allow lone workers fast access to help when threatened
Ensuring the safety of employees in the workplace is hard enough, butwhen it comes to staff who regularly work off-site - and alone - it getseven tougher. Arena Housing has a subtle way of protecting its loneworkers when out visiting its 7,500 tenants. Instead of issuingspecialist panic devices - for fear of them being left behind in theoffice - it programmed employees' mobile phones.
Speed dials that connect through to Arena's own response centre areprogrammed onto the keys, so help can be sent to the scene if needed. Insome cases, this help arrives faster than by dialling 999. Staff havealready benefited from the service, with one employee pressing the '5'panic button when subjected to aggressive behaviour.
"Because there are fortunately few incidents of employee attacks, loneworker protection can drift from people's consciousness," says HowardCover, director of operations at Arena Housing. "This can lead tospecialist protection devices being left behind. However, staff needtheir mobile phones to do their job so they rarely leave them behind oruncharged. So even out of hours they are protected."
