Man Down and Lone Worker Radios

Lone Working - The Law. 

Although there is no definitive prohibition on a company allowing staff to be working on their own, under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) and the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999, it is the responsibility and duty of the Employer to assess the risks associated with an Employee working alone and to deal with any health and safety risks before allowing staff to work alone.  

Of course in many environments and job functions it is perfectly safe to work alone, but the law states the duty of the Employer towards lone working staff whether they work in an office or shop alone, or in a factory where they may be with many other people, but the job function does not allow close interaction or monitoring.

The onus of the law is for the Employer to assess the risks, put measures into effect to avoid or control risks by implementing control instruction, training, supervision and protective equipment.

Two-Way Radio as a Protective Equipment Solution:

Two Way Radio solutions offer an ideal form of protective equipment, allowing an increase in operational efficiency by using as a communication tool, and having the additional safety benefits and fulfilling the Employers “duty of care” with inbuilt “Panic Button Alarms”,  “Man-Down” Alarms, and “Lone Worker Alarms”.  Their operation is typically as below:

   PANIC BUTTON

     A Panic Button is the simplest and sometimes the most effective way of using a radio to summon assistance.

    Most radios which have this feature deploy a top mounted Panic button which can be programmed to send an
    alarm signal when pressed.   Some radios transmit a beep or alarm signal over the air, which does not have any
    identifier of the alarming radio, and the more sophisticated units use “5 Tone”, “7 Tone”, “MDC1200” or similar
     signalling systems to allow the identity number (ID) of the radio in panic mode to be identified.    
     Most Digital Radios have a Panic Button feature and their Digital ID is sent.
     

It is important to understand that with all two way radios with Panic Buttons, Alarms, Lone Worker or Man-Down alarms it goes without saying that you will need some method of decoding the Alarm signals.  This can be done with a radio with either "5tone", "7tone" or "MDC1200" in analogue radios, and with Digital Radios.

You need to see what sort of alerts you need?  It is cost effective to use a radio that will decode these alarms but just "beeps", but that does not give you the specific Identity (ID) of the person who has activated that alarm condition.  A Radio with an LCD and decoding capability will be able to show in the display the decoded alarm ID, but at the added cost associated, and to date there is only one radio - the DR5100 which can decode the alarm signals and annunciate the number of the alarming radio.  See DR5100 for more details.