HR Daily is a free eNewsletter that I often find has useful advice for employers. You need to go to www.hrdaily.com.au to subscribe, but I draw your attention to today's article by Lisa Berton, partner at Kemp Strang.
She points out that if something goes wrong and a worker working alone is injured or dies, the last thing a court will consider is the cost of safety measures when they are determining whether you or not you took reasonable steps to ensure safety.
The Work Health Safety Act is the thing to consider. You need to ask what is applicable to your business, your work situations.
Do you have people working alone after business hours? Do they work in a remote area? Are they the last ones to lock up? Do people travel to visit clients or make home visits as part of their work? Have you considered fatigue risks if they are working late - do you pay taxi costs so they don't have to take public transport after hours?
Even a periodic check that people are safe - this needn't be expensive - may be considered enough to establish a workable communications strategy in line with the safety risks.
It's no wonder then that we at Well Done have had so many enquiries in the past two years about lone worker welfare. We thought that if we are going to do this, let's produce our own application that can do more and work smarter than has been the general model in the contact centre industry to date.
We've produced a stand alone welfare service to fit the bill - the Lone Worker Check System. It's affordable, flexible, and offers self-service features that can reduce the cost of routine checks, and it's backed by our 24x7 Australian Network that handles a raft of complex escalation services for many industries - local government, trades, industry, mining and resources, infrastructure, IT...
I do invite you to read the original HR Daily article - sensible free legal advice is worth having - but I've noted the key details from the piece above in case you don't! Work Health Safety is something that all employers need to consider, and if there are some situations like those noted above in your operations, please talk to us. We have an affordable, workable solution that it would be prudent to check out.
Call us 1300 551 796 or use this contact form.
