Meath County Council
The Customer
Meath County Council, located in the Republic of Ireland serves a population of over 185,000 people. Employing around 800 employees, the Council are responsible for a number of services within the community.
In order to protect employees that work alone, the Council turned to Peoplesafe to implement 125 MicroGuard personal safety alarms. Employees who lone work within Meath County Council include Traffic Wardens, Engineers, Social Workers, Planners, Environmental Employees, Water and Wastewater Caretakers, Clerk of Works, and Winter Maintenance Drivers.
The Challenge
Services provided by Meath can involve lone working. Social Workers provide outreach services, visit tenants’ homes and attend meetings at various locations throughout the County. Traffic Wardens, Planners, and Environmental Employees also visit homes and businesses which often involves enforcement actions. Water and Wastewater Caretakers and Winter Maintenance Crew travel and undertake work activities at various locations. Operating alone makes employees more susceptible to assaults, or incidents which may result in injury.
According to a report focusing on Ireland’s Health and Social Workers, as many as 8,000 community-based staff are reportedly assaulted each year across Ireland.
As a reputable employer, Meath County Council needed to mitigate the potential risk of assaults against their lone working employees.
The Solution
Meath County Council utilised Peoplesafe’s service via the MicroGuard device, having felt it fully met their needs.
The MicroGuard is one of the most advanced and compact GPS personal safety devices available in the UK and Ireland. Featuring a one button alarm activation, users connect to Peoplesafe’s Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) at the touch of a button.
Trained Alarm Controllers within the ARC will assist the user via the device’s two-way voice capability. They’ll follow the client’s pre-defined escalation preferences. This can involve summoning the emergency services if necessary or alerting and informing a nominated responder.
The MicroGuard device has a fall detection feature which will automatically raise an alarm when the user slips, trips or falls. This feature can either be permanently enabled or switched on when required.
The flexible design of the MicroGuard allows users to wear it in a number of ways, depending on their activity. The device can be worn discreetly as a pendant, attached to a belt, keyring, or identity card holder.
The Benefits
Since implementation, the Peoplesafe service has provided reassurance for Meath County Council. Mary added, “the most important element for employees is the confidence they have gained. When an alert is activated, there will be a response.”
The service was put to the test during an incident inside a treatment plant. An employee fell, activating the fall detection element of the device. Automatically alerting the ARC, the Alarm Controller handling the alarm was able to act immediately. Help promptly arrived at the scene to assist the employee. The speed of response and advice received from the Support Team reinforced the users’ trust in the Peoplesafe service.
Having signed up to a multi-year agreement with Peoplesafe, Mary expressed her delight at the service she has received so far: “the Customer Support team have been excellent in answering our queries since we began using the service. More importantly, our employees are confident in testing the system, so if a situation arises, they are certain and assured of the device use and response.”
