Rank: New forum user 
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We currently have members of staff who are attending schools and colleges for outreach after work and getting home late at night. The current procedure is that they check in with their Line Manager when they return home. We don't think this current procedure is workable nor is it fair on the Line Manager who has to stay up late waiting for their staff to check in to say they have returned safely. I just wanted to check in with this forum to ask what procedure is in place at other workplaces? Control measure we are looking to possible introduce include: - Risk Assessment review to ensure control measures are adequate
- Training on how to travel safely
- Pairing up of staff when travelling to high risk areas
- Possible use of an app to provide staff members location when travelling to high risk areas
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I'm unclear about what the risks are here that you are trying to address - obviously travel (presumably driving), but are there risks (such as violence) while they are at the college doing whatever they are doing there? What makes the high risk areas high risk?
Without knowing any of that it just sounds like normal business travel to me subject to usual business travel risk assessment (especially considering fatigue if driving at night).
I completely agree that the current arrangement isn't fair on the line managers - nor does a call when getting home seem to have any point.
How would the app fit in - who would be looking at the movements and what would they do if the movements were not as expected?
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Rank: New forum user
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The main risks we are concerned about is regarding lone travel such as violence. We would leave it for the department to decide which visits would be of higher risk but this could be due to a higher crime rate in the area. The app would be used to ensure staff arrived home safely by a certain time and to send an alert if they were not. Again this isn't without issues as the member of staff could go elsewhere without informing anyone.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Thanks for expanding. Just to check my understanding - the college is a safe working environment but they might be randomly mugged or otherwise attacked while walking to a bus stop or the like? Is there anything about them that puts them at more risk than the general public, such as a uniform that identifies that they have an unpopular job? If so then I wouldn't be looking at getting them an app, but a taxi.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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After whose work - are they "off the clock" / acting in a voluntary capacity?
What aspect of an outreach programme - homeless, mental health, away care, other.
Lone travel violence - from clients or just in general? Private or public transport?
As to apps great when they are working as sold - pointless in the real world of no signal / battery drain / lost or damaged phone and when you do get a notification it is likely to be a largish search area amongst the known destinations let alone the unknowns when someone goes off-piste.
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Rank: Super forum user
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After whose work - are they "off the clock" / acting in a voluntary capacity?
What aspect of an outreach programme - homeless, mental health, away care, other.
Lone travel violence - from clients or just in general? Private or public transport?
As to apps great when they are working as sold - pointless in the real world of no signal / battery drain / lost or damaged phone and when you do get a notification it is likely to be a largish search area amongst the known destinations let alone the unknowns when someone goes off-piste.
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Rank: Super forum user
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So the college is carrying out outreach work in the evenings? Where are these people going? Are they going into people’s homes or are the meeting up in a neutral venue like a coffee shop? If they are going to be put at risk of violence, you need a system to make sure that they are safe. Work related violence is definitely covered under H&S laws including RIDDOR. What you really need to do is invest in a monitoring system. These cost money and some staff don’t like them because they feel you are spying on them but these systems work. In particular there is someone monitoring it 24/7 so if there is an alert or of the person does not call back at a particular time the company will raise the alarm and contact who ever they need to contact. Including in some cases the police. The police will respond if you give them proper information: they will not respond if all you can say is that one of your employees is possibly in trouble, but you are not sure what sort of trouble or exactly where. If you tell them that an employee is in trouble at a particular address, then they will act. When I worked at a government agency, we adopted just this technology for our inspectors while visiting farms and other agricultural/horticultural businesses. I am not sure what technology is out there now but I suspect that it is better now.
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 1 user thanked A Kurdziel for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I can see the term "outreach" has created some very different mental images among us in the absence of information about what this outreach consists of (and indeed who it is reaching out to). Unlike the images of homeless people and of meetings in clients' homes or in coffee shops mentioned above, my first thought was events aimed at persuading young people to take up careers in science and technology. It could be anything as far as we know, and of course the risks involved in each of these are very different.
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1 user thanked Kate for this useful post.
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Rank: New forum user
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Apologies for the confusion. The members of staff work for a University and would be attending schools and colleges in the evening to try and attract prospective students to the University. This would normally take place from 5pm-9pm roughly. Once finished the staff members would go home by car or public transport. As mentioned by previous replies we would be looking at possibly using an app for some staff to monitor their location which their line manager would be able to check due to lone working risks.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I'm glad Kate cleared that up, I was thinking social workers dealing with clients who had complex needs at a home location - which would be entirely different.
In this case, the school is a relatively public space, so I would be looking at some kind of clocking in and out system. I personally would veer toward an app with an appropriate escalation process built in, rather than relying on support staff staying available - as this could fail to danger (and as others said, ties those staff down until a call is received). But then I do not hold a budget and can't make the old "reasonably practicable" call from this angle.
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1 user thanked Yossarian for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Glyns We use a lone worker solution, in just the situation you have described (and other areas), Apps are becoming more popular and more reliable over the years. All of the systems i have looked at have some kind of logging system (they use various names) where staff can log that they are lone working for a specific period, and if they do not log back to say that are OK a 24/7 call center will try and contact them to say they are OK. It does not remove all your duties as the center will frequently need to pass it back to you to follow up, usually when someone has forgotten to log off and turned there phone off when they get home, but at least it reduces the number of call managers have to make/monitor.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Interesting that today the telecoms providers announce a suspension to the roll out of digital telephony citing issues with internet outage effectively cutting off emergency alarm calls a matter subject to many campaigns. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/protecting-customers-during-the-migration-to-digital-landlines
IF you are operating via APP how resilient is the service in the event of internet outage?
Do you suspend the work activity whilst the APP is down? Do you carry on regardless which then questions why adopted the APP in the first place?
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2 users thanked Roundtuit for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Interesting that today the telecoms providers announce a suspension to the roll out of digital telephony citing issues with internet outage effectively cutting off emergency alarm calls a matter subject to many campaigns. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/protecting-customers-during-the-migration-to-digital-landlines
IF you are operating via APP how resilient is the service in the event of internet outage?
Do you suspend the work activity whilst the APP is down? Do you carry on regardless which then questions why adopted the APP in the first place?
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2 users thanked Roundtuit for this useful post.
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Rank: New forum user
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Rank: Super forum user
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Originally Posted by: Roundtuit  Interesting that today the telecoms providers announce a suspension to the roll out of digital telephony citing issues with internet outage effectively cutting off emergency alarm calls a matter subject to many campaigns. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/protecting-customers-during-the-migration-to-digital-landlines
IF you are operating via APP how resilient is the service in the event of internet outage?
Do you suspend the work activity whilst the APP is down? Do you carry on regardless which then questions why adopted the APP in the first place?
Thanks for this - the one thing i always make clear to my colleagues is that these systems are not foolproof and they should be PART of your lone working controls, they dont replace your management responsibilities.
As to what to do if in the case of an internet/phone outage - well its just part of the risk assessment process. So Chances of lone worker being attacked X consequences = Risk level A which may point you to one of these system. Chances of lone worker being attacked X consequences at time INTERNET OUTAGE = RISK factor B - which is going to be much lower than A.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I imgine companies who have outreach workers on their own is mainly for cost purposes but why not have risk assessments for all their different types of outreach work and those that come in with High Risk send our teams of two people.
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Rank: Forum user
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We use a lone worker solution that has an app as as part of that, who has the app and who has a device is dependant on the their role and unsociable hours of work. A risk profile was done and a bit of blanket job role application for the solution. It works ok so long as people answer the phone when they set the alert off accidentally.
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