Rank: Forum user 
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Hi
Just wanted to know what other organisations do regarding protecting staff who visit the public in their homes.I am mainly intrested in the situation were a member of staff has felt threatened and what your organisation would do to protect staff who may have to visit that address in the future?
Many thanks
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Rank: Forum user
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Hello Confined, We have been looking at this company for lone workers. http://www.lonealert.co.uk/We have employees working on their own but these have a panic alarm system which would help you in this instant. There are many options you could look. The one we are looking at is the man down system which alerts us if they go past a 45% angle. Also the system can be set to call every 30 mins and if they don't answer then it sets off the alarm to us to warn us there has been no response. It has has a GPS system built in. Hope that helps.
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Rank: New forum user
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Hi,
We have over a 1000 workers who lone work, a large part of them visit people in their own homes and have various syatems in place, feel free to PM me and i will quite happily discuss with you.
Regards
Russ
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Rank: Forum user
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Hi,
As mentioned above the Suzy Lamplugh trust is a great source of information.
One of the systems we have in place are marker codes on properties which highlight a specific risk, a risk assessment of the tenant/property is also undertaken which may mean extra operating procedures are put in place when visiting a particular tenant - things like - call between certain hours, 2 employees to attend, no home visits.
Regards
Peter
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Rank: Forum user
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Hello pal, Our firm have around hundreds of workers who lone work, many workers among them visit people in their own homes and have various systems in place, If you like to PM me and I will feel happy to discuss with you.
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Rank: Super forum user
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We have lone working employees who visit private properties. We have several simple rules that we have tried to apply:
1. Your safety is more important that getting the job done. If you feel threatened or at risk you must withdraw and report the incident.
2. All staff should use the lone worker systems provided
3. All incidents of threatening behaviour or actual violence to staff must be reported
4. Wee also report such incidents to the police
5. We record these incidents and we circulate the name and address of the property holder to relevant managers both in our own agency or other related agencies. They share their information with us
6. Before returning to such a property we carry out a risk assessment and decide what the best way to proceed is. We may decide that all visits to a particular property might be suspended even if it has an impact on the owner’s business. In some circumstances (for statutory visits) we will ask the police to accompany staff.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Rank: Forum user
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Confined,
Noting you're from a public service background, as I am, do you have access to piper lifeline (the red cord system used in elderly persons residences). The company we use to provide out equipment have a bolt on that we use for lone workers. This may help as a solution.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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AK has the right pitch here. My employer has thousands of people, paid and unpaid, who work alone. These range from people on home visits to community fundraisers to lone wokers in shops, and one of my briefs is to sort out lone worker safety in the organisation. What I find is that people are going in at the wrong angle. The available technology might tell you when your worker is dead in a ditch or under attack, but is this managing the risks? The correct approach has to be based on risk assessment prior to the visit and dynamic risk assessment immediately before and during.
HSE has some guidance on lone working risk in Retail, this basically poses five questions, which supplement those in AKs response. Technology is useful, but don't confuse it with managing lone wokrer risks,
John
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Rank: Forum user
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I think John (JWK) makes an important point regarding technology.
There is a great temptation for employers to rely on mobile phones/ trackers/ man-down alarms etc to "solve" lone worker safety problems, but, in the main, these devices are essentially hand held safety devices. As such they would constitute PPE, and so should be the last resort in the hierarchy of risk controls.
In other words they certainly have a valuable part to play in the risk management strategy, but only once consideration has been given to "Eliminate; Reduce; etc..."
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