App keeps community workers safe

The StaySafe app is used by the Calgary Urban Project Society to monitor the safety of front line staff working across three divisions.

The app and surrounding cloud-based monitoring service tracks a lone worker’s location via GPS and alerts their manager if an employee triggers an alert or they do not check-in within a specified time.

Lone workers within health care and housing provide support to individuals dealing with addiction and mental health. The unpredictable nature of clients, especially those in vulnerable situations, poses a greater risk of aggression and violence towards staff members. Having a discreet way to panic and a duress pin, are important in these situations.

Within the education services, lone working bus drivers transport groups of children to education programmes. The risks of the road are very different to those associated with client outreach and can be both unpredictable and difficult to control. Using a phone itself is dangerous while driving so the missed check-in and session expiry alerts are used to indicate that something may have gone wrong.

Prior to launching StaySafe, CUPS were using a different service to monitor staff safety but felt that it wasn’t enough to carry out their duty of care. While it provided a rough idea of where staff were located, it was not enough to locate them quickly in an emergency. As a result the organisation began searching for a more reliable solution to use across the board, with accurate GPS monitoring being key.

CUPS also had an issue with staff regularly dropping and breaking their phones which meant that supervisors were unable to check-in with them until the devices were fixed or replaced. Replacing mobile phones on a regular basis was not a viable solution for the organisation so they made the change to the more robust and durable Cat phones. The StaySafe app is available to download through the Cat app store, and with employees no longer breaking their phones, CUPS are able to stay in contact with their staff any time they are out working alone.

Richard Mugford, director of Housing and Education, said: "We are impressed that StaySafe is able to offer all of the features we require while still remaining so user friendly. Our whole monitoring process has become much more efficient as we now have one solution rolled out across housing, education and health care."