Unfortunately you have made the rod for your own back by brining in a wholly unecessary APP in to workplace procedures. Sheer numbers sees thousands of people every day who would fall under what your company has decided to define as "lone working" - delivery drivers, postmen, lollipop persons all manage quite well without having an APP.

Yes travel is a risk, road use is a risk, being away from home overnight is a risk would I want an APP monitoring me and reporting back to my line manager at frequent intervals? No.

Would my line manager want disturbing because I had not responded due to being in the hotel pool? No.

Nothing I currently do necessitates being monitored - I travel around sites, I stay in hotels I am never alone with unfamiliar machinery or at sites with water or significant fall hazards.

Working in a higher risk industry with automatic plant we had a lone worker alarm - its purpose was to cover those periods when there was the potential of significant danger e.g. working at the side of water treatment and no one present to respond - the car drive to and from the site was considered ordinary travel.

Have to ask how was this system briefed to the management in line with your current concern i.e. were they told they would be expected to respond 24/7/365?

Do they regularly update the monitoring station of holidays or illness and do their deputies know when they are "on call"?

Personally I work to live - @ 40 hours are my employers the other 128 hours are mine - a sentiment I am lucky to share with my line manager.

Hi David

I think you are over thinking this!

You say  what should happen if “a time-out alarm goes off and the user doesn’t respond.”?

The users must understand that when they are working the tracking app must be kept on and when they have  finished work then  must notify the system that they are no longer at work. You don’t need to track them when they are back in the hotel. But it is the user’s responsibility to use the system correctly and they should appreciate that there will be consequences if they fail to hit the acknowledge button on their app when required and as a result someone is dragged out of  bed to deal with a non-existent emergency.

Edited by user 17 June 2024 15:22:06(UTC)  | Reason: missing words

David- I think you have fallen into the trap of not understanding how these systems work/ or perhaps I should say not analysing how they will work for you.

I have used similar systems for a couple of employees now and its very important that you start with a very clear procedure/ policy (call it anything you want) on how it will be used, and an understanding of the risk assessment for lone working.

Fist of all be very clear what counts as work time – I travelled an hour into my work base this morning and will do the same on my way home tonight – clearly not work activity its my own choice. However I have colleagues that don’t have a fixed base and could set off to different sites every morning – as their base is home then yes their journey is a work activity for me.

Then what work are they doing – we have staff who carry out very low risk office based work at home – I would not expect them to be tracked all the time, managers usually give them a quick call as part of work day. Some people would argue there is a risk of a medical emergency but for me that’s not part of the work activity in someone’s own home.

Then I have colleagues working in lots of locations, often with power tools, or going into confrontational situations. I had a manager tell me a while ago that he had not spoken to one of his staff members for a week and would have had no idea if this lady had been injured on the Monday morning! (She lived alone). His staff now use the app to “check in” every 2 hours.

If a colleague has to stay in a hotel, then I agree with others – as soon as they check in they have checked out of work. But I also think its reasonable that their arrival at the hotel is logged in some way – ring a colleague, use an app etc.

Do you need a 24 hour call out procedure? Not unless you have staff working 24 hours them possibly.

As with all these apps/lone worker procedure its important to remember that they are part of your procedures, not a total answer and you can never abdicated your duty towards lone workers totally to someone else or the worker themselves.

Sorry a bit of a longwinded answer.

Now I have a problem that there is an assumption being made about hotel check-in and in particular about when it occurs.

In the ideal world we would like to presume it is around the time we would normally roll in from the office.

There will always be the potential for delays due to weather, accidents or combination or even the actual travel plans that can see much later (or missed) arrival at the hotel.

If you are running a system it needs the flexibility to adapt to enforced change otherwise it should be thrown in the bin.