In retrospect, at the turn of the Millennium the world seemed not such a bad place. Conflict in South East Europe was essentially ended. Saddam Hussein was more or less back in his box and Al-Qaeda was but a distant threat.
9/11 and 7/7 had not yet happened, there was no War on Terror and who knew what a Tsunami was?
At home in the UK the outlook was a little different. Despite what ‘Government statistics’ were telling us all, town and city centres gave the impression of simply being out of control, knife crime was rife and the police service appeared to be in a state of paralysis.
Then, as the early years of the new Millennium unrolled, we heard of Huntley and the Soham murders, Hannah Foster, Sarah Paine and Milly Dowler.
9/11 in New York realised the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the second Gulf War.
7/7 in London was a very personal episode, and the spectre of terrorist bombings on our streets again made for the perception of an increasingly dangerous and unsafe country.
On top of all that were the major civil accidents: on the railways there was Southall, Potters Bar and Hatfield, for example.
It was set against this background – wherein almost anything might happen to anyone without warning – that a small number of entrepreneurial-minded characters saw a market opportunity in the application of technology to the protection of people at risk.
It was interesting that companies with varying backgrounds and different technologies came to a similar conclusion, independently of each other and at around the same time (around 2002-2003, in fact).
Almost without exception they selected the corporate as ‘the market of choice’ (the simply reasoning behind this being that one ‘sell’ meant lots of units sold.
The market to provide such protection became known as the ‘lone worker market’. This market was new: nothing was defined and so the first task was to create a market.
Four main influences for creating a market
These ‘lone worker pioneers’ believed there were four main influences which would help them to enable such a market.
The first was the national perception of living in an unsafe country in an unsafe world.
The second was the dominance of Health and Safety legislation and, in particular, the Duty of Care required of employers towards their employees.
In 2006, Birmingham City Council paid out GB pound 330,000 in an out-of-court settlement to a teacher in a case where a man had broken into her classroom. Although uninjured, the teacher concerned suffered from stress and had not worked again.
A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: “The city council takes the safety of its employees very seriously and will review procedures”. As well they might with so much of taxpayer’s money now down the drain.
The third was one of the consequences of the continuing trend for companies to outsource their non-core services.
Service companies delivered their services through employees working on their customer’s business away from their own organisation. In these cases, employers lost their ability to give their employees the supervisory protection the workplace demanded, quite rightly, through Health and Safety legislation.
The fourth was revision of corporate manslaughter legislation as promised by the Labour Party in its 1997 General Election manifesto.
Historically, there had been no successful prosecutions in such high profile disasters like Piper Alfa, the Zeebrugge Ferry episode and the Marchioness sinking. The demand for revision was driven by a number of failed prosecutions including those relating to the aforementioned Southall rail crash in 1997 and the Hatfield rail disaster of 2000 where the action against Network Rail and Balfour Beatty on corporate manslaughter grounds failed (although they were found to be in breach of Health and Safety legislation).
In the event, the revised Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (known as the Corporate Homicide Act in Scotland) didn’t come into being until ten years later in 2007, and was effective on 6 April 2008.
However, it was the general belief in the early days that first the Act would become law soon after Labour came to Government and, second, that it would place a heavy burden on organisations to conform. Neither turned out to be true.
Failure to respond to expectations
While the above reasoning may have been sound, the market failed to respond to expectations. There were perhaps four reasons for that situation pertaining.
First, Health and Safety legislation had ‘enjoyed’ a bad press as the bulk of the good work was lost in the perception by many that it was applied without necessarily much regard to common sense. Therefore, any appeal towards companies buying lone worker solutions on such grounds was regarded, at least by the decision-making levels in organisations, as being suspect.
Second, the reason for outsourcing and single working was to reduce cost. There was therefore a natural reluctance to increase capital outlay by providing lone worker services.
Third, there existed a lack of understanding as to how such services based on technology could provide an answer (if, indeed, an answer were needed).
Fourth, application of the Corporate Manslaughter Act initially showed itself to be uncertain until the first case (which came to light earlier this year).
Cotswold Geotechnical was successfully prosecuted earlier this year, resulting in a fine of GB pound 385,000. This was a small company which hardly tested the Act as it might apply to a major corporation. The judge made the award even while acknowledging that the fine and terms of payment may well put the company into liquidation.
These four areas – namely suspicion, cost, understanding and suspect legislation – meant that the early pioneers faced a steeper uphill battle in creating the market that they’d initially supposed.
Those apart, the other factor helping to form the market was the existence and high profile of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. The appalling event which led to the formation of said Trust and its subsequent activities was, and is, well known.
It’s not really my place to comment on the Trust’s excellent work. However, its appeal was perhaps a more emotional one which focused on both individual and organisational protection (particularly in the public sector).
There’s no doubt at all that publicity surrounding the Trust helped the market by highlighting personal vulnerability in the workplace.
The market was also affected by the conflict in organisations between managers responsible for Health and Safety (who, generally speaking, were very concerned about lone workers and their safety) and those at the senior manager/director level who maintained a degree of scepticism. It’s at these higher levels, of course, where the buying decisions were (and are)made.
Human factors affecting the take-up
Some very human factors affected the take-up. One was the institutional view that: “I know my job is a bit dangerous but that’s what it is and, hey, I haven’t been attacked yet”. Another is the macho male approach that said (in a deep muscle flexing voice): “I’m a man and I can look after myself.”
However, slowly but surely persistence bore fruit. By late 2009, the market had become better understood, better defined and penetration within that market gradually gathered pace. With these factors in play it became important that the market gained a degree of credibility and came to be taken seriously.
There were perhaps two ways in which this was achieved. First was the understanding by the police service that here was a market which could place major demands on its response resources (resources already heavily committed).
With the memory of the intruder alarms market and its very high rate of false alarms fresh in the mind, the police really needed an early method of controlling the demands for a response to personal safety devices with minimum false alarms.
The solution was a British Standard (BS 8484) which eventually came into being as a Code of Practice in September 2009.
The police service stated, through ACPO’s Security Systems policy, that it would only accept requests for police response at the highest level from Alarm Receiving Centres (ARCs) which met the requirements of the standard. In their turn, ARCs should only take alarms from supplier companies and devices also accredited to the standard.
The standard focused on lone worker services based on personal safety devices and came in three parts: requirements for the service provider, the personal safety device and the monitoring solution leading to a response.
The response from the industry was a mixture of existing ARCs which would also provide lone worker monitoring and a couple of specialist ARCs dedicated solely to lone worker monitoring.
The second factor to affect credibility was the adoption by the NHS of a national lone worker protection plan.
Following a few false starts, the NHS settled on what looks like an ID card and is effectively mobile phone technology which has been steadily rolled-out across the country.
The decision to implement such a major project based on tens of thousands of devices has been influential in showing that the protection of lone workers needs to be taken seriously by major organisations, whether public or private.
Finding an incident: GPS versus cell locating
Clearly, if the emergency services are to be asked to respond to a personal safety alarm they need to know pretty accurately where to go. The standard quoted an accurate location as one which is ‘within ten metres in the vertical and horizontal planes’.
Technically, GPS is quite capable of achieving the horizontal plane element of the definition, but for the vertical plane must rely on a message being left if the building has several floors.
Also, GPS needs to be able to receive signals from at least three satellites to calculate a location. These signals are not strong, which usually means the user should have a clear view of the sky.
It’s probably true to say that, with current available technology, the accuracy of GPS positions is probably not reliable in more than 75% of situations. There are ways around this, though, and 75% is a lot better than guesswork!
Cell locating is not sufficiently accurate to meet either element of the definition so has to rely on a message for both elements. The answer with the technical capabilities available at present is probably a combination where the GPS is backed up by cell locating with the facility for leaving a message giving a future location.
From the start there were two main types of lone worker companies: those providing devices and those offering a service.
Service providers focused on alarm monitoring and managing alarms, thus enabling them to request a response (usually from the emergency services).
This was important for two reasons. First, because providing a response was the entire point of the service and, second, because it was quickly appreciated that providing monitoring services enabled a recurring charge while supplying a device merely brought a one-off price for the box.
Most companies offering lone worker services appreciated that in order to help someone in trouble they always needed to know that there was problem, what the problem was and know an accurate location. However, methods of reaching that stage differed, mostly based on background.
Basic differences when compared to alarm monitoring
It also became quickly apparent that providing a lone worker monitoring service was not similar to other forms of alarm monitoring. The fact that lives could be at stake, combined with the vast range of difficulties us humans are capable of getting ourselves into – together with the sometimes horrific situations operators had to listen to – made this a very special sort of monitoring best performed by selected, dedicated and trained operators.
The standard was flexible, giving functional requirements not technical specifications for devices. This allowed different approaches to achieving the aim.
In general, companies with a background in communications focused on mobile phones and their derivatives. Meanwhile, those with a background in vehicle tracking examined the potential of GPS.
Both types of companies designed their services around the capabilities of their technology. For example, a company with a communications background tended to think in terms of how to use the cell locating capability and, realising its inherent inaccuracy, designed services based on the ability of the user to let those monitoring know where they intended to be in advance or, more problematically, at the time of the emergency.
Customers: the vital point in the chain
It’s a statement of the blindingly obvious that no market can ever succeed unless it provides the customer not only with what the customer needs but also wants.
The problem here was that because lone worker solutions was a new market the customer didn’t really know what he/she wanted or needed and relied on the supplier to tell them. This raised the problem that the supplier could only guess at what the customer wanted because they couldn’t find out from the customer as those customers didn’t really know either!
Eventually, this situation resolved itself as both supplier and customer sorted themselves out. Once they grasped the principles the customers adapted lone worker services in unexpected ways to suit their specific needs.
Some managers could quickly see that, used in a certain way, lone worker solutions could bring benefits which allowed them to make the business case for purchase.
As with many market sectors, customers also gradually separated themselves into the serious and the ‘box tickers’. The serious ones understood the need, evaluated the risk and then selected appropriate solutions. ‘Box tickers’, on the other hand, took the view that if they had to do it they would take the cheapest option (often times regardless of the risk).
Leaving the legislation aside, practical and sensible customers took the approach of looking at the risk first and then seeking a solution to mitigate that risk. Commonly, there was a need for more than one solution within an organisation. Consequently, suppliers who realised that and could offer a range of solutions had a definite advantage.
Where to next for the lone worker market?
It’s interesting to note both convergence and divergence in the market. Convergence in the sense that, as the market developed, the two technical approaches have tended to converge. Divergence has happened in the sense that most suppliers have stayed with the B2B market whereas a few have focused on the consumer market.
This has effectively changed the market from lone worker to a personal safety market with two sectors: lone worker or corporate and consumer. The selling proposition is very different: one is essentially based on legislation and the other, for want of a better word, on fear.
Within these, the range of problems which the personal safety service can be instrumental in resolving grows wider by the day as suppliers and customers think of new applications.
Those applications range from high risk individuals such as those in witness protection schemes and domestic violence victims through to customer-facing employees meeting their customers in their homes to those suffering from debilitating medical conditions, dependents (young and old) and allowing the elderly to remain a few years longer in their own homes. Tracking is also an increasingly desired service.
Regarding technical convergence, GPS-based services have tended to also use cell locating to allow for those circumstances where the GPS device has provided an out-of-date location. Companies selling mobile phone-based services have also started to sell GPS devices.
Venturing into the consumer market is a more recent development with its own problems. Organisations (ie end users) in the lone worker market will vary the way they use the service to suit the requirements of their business set against a defined assessment of risk. In general terms, employees use the service in well-defined situations for the purpose the organisation decides.
By contrast, consumers will – by definition – vary from individual to individual. A few will take the service against a defined risk but, in general, the risk is likely to be less well defined and based on, for example, concern over a dependent’s general safety where the dependent may be younger or older.
Both risk and response will be less rigorously thought through so consumers are likely to be less disciplined in the way they use the service (and in the range of situations in which they call for help).
In this wider range of situations some will be facing a serious and immediate threat to their personal safety but many will not. The result will be to widen consumer’s demands on the service. Focus will inevitably expand from that on lone worker safety (which we are used to in the corporate market) to a wider and more general definition of personal safety in the consumer market.
Bringing a degree of safety in an uncertain world
What’s related here is the story of a few entrepreneurs spotting an opportunity, making their own market and changing and adapting to circumstances as they worked through it.
At the same time, they can all take some pride in the fact that, in addition to building businesses, they also bring a degree of safety to real people making their way in an uncertain world.
Services supplied by lone worker companies have without doubt saved lives, prevented injury, given confidence to the vulnerable and been instrumental in putting people who deserve it behind bars.
From my own point of view, I take a great deal of personal satisfaction in having been involved in the development of this market from the start.
Patrick Dealtry is managing director of The Lone Working Group Ltd
*Although this article refers mostly to the application of technology it should be remembered that other, much simpler solutions are relevant for those at lower risk
