Working alone outside of the traditional office is commonplace for tens of thousands of staff in New Zealand, but it needn’t stand in the way of safety
Employers owe their employees a duty of care, and as such need to consider the risks for a person entering situations that have the potential to become a hostile environment.
A major reform of New Zealand Health and Safety legislation in September 2015 placed further responsibility on the shoulders of employers to ensure adequate systems are in place to monitor and protect all members of staff.
As technology evolves, the ability to provide staff with effective systems that can enable swift, effective responses if they get into difficulty are now in high demand.
Restrata developed its SecureLocate™ Protect mobile app to meet the needs of lone workers, providing peace of mind that they can call for help and receive support no matter where they are operating.
The solution combines tracking and duress alerting technology with 24/7 monitoring and emergency response from the company’s Incident Management Centre ‘IMC’.
SecureLocate provides operational control, emergency response, and post incident audit capabilities. In addition to duty of care, benefits include fleet management & real time monitoring, insurance implications, employee retention, and security assurance through panic alarms and exception reporting notifications.
While SecureLocate provides an industry leading tracking capability with more than 100 different tracking and monitoring hardware solutions integrated to date, the platform is capable of much more than just tracking.
It provides true sensor fusion allowing integration and management of other technologies such as IP video, and audio collection.
The ability to display all sensor feeds as well as additional open data sources such as weather, traffic, and intelligence reports onto a single pane of glass is truly revolutionary.
“Following the introduction of new health and safety legislation, the SecureLocate Protect solution benefits government organisations by supporting them in their efforts to align themselves with the law, protecting their staff working in potentially high risk environments,” says David Nicholls, vice president of situational awareness and telematics ‘SA&T’ at Restrata.
He adds that the solution is also cost-effective, with no purchase of additional hardware required – the user simply downloads the app to their phone.
“Not protecting staff who work alone presents a serious business risk to any organisation – it can easily affect the financial position due to the penalties imposed as punishment for non-compliance, as well as its share price, perceived brand equity value, and its ability to attract the best staff and customers.”
The product was launched to market in mid-2016 with the first contract secured with a New Zealand government agency in October.
Restrata is currently in discussions with several other public and private-sector organisations in the region.
Founded in 2001, Restrata is a British-owned group with headquarters in the UAE, focused on delivering security solutions around the globe from a consultative perspective in order to build client resilience and optimise operations through effective management of safety and security risks.
