In the utilities sector physical risks come with the territory, be they working on live electrical lines or gas installation systems. Less well known are the risks surrounding lone working in people’s homes.
According to the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), a lone worker is defined as someone who works by themselves without close or direct supervision.
With the advent of numerous in-home offerings to UK households and the development of technological advances, including smart metering, the numbers of utility workers visiting UK households have notably increased over the last decade.
This rise brings with it a potential for workers in the home to face significant challenges as regards safety and risk.
Reports of aggression from home owners against visiting electrical engineers have been cited as a cause for concern by the HSE – though thankfully none of the seven deaths recorded in the utility sector between 2013 and 2014 were due to lone working in customers’ homes.
Nevertheless, threats to lone worker safety do pose a major financial burden on the industry. The HSE predicts a cost of between £17,000 and £19,000 to investigate a physical assault arising from social threats associated with lone working.
Lone workers face two potential challenges: first, the complexity of the job is increasing with any challenges they face being initially dealt with by the individual.
Second, the potential to face conflict and aggression – be it verbal or physical – calls for high levels of interpersonal and specialist skills. There is an increasing level of expectation that engineers, who were recruited for technical skills, now hold interpersonal skills in equal measure.
Legally, employers have implemented policies to reduce risks to lone workers. Obligations from the Health and Safety Act (1999) require employers to conduct a suitable and efficient assessment of the risks employees are likely to face while at work and efficiently address them.
More recently, the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act (2007) means company directors can be held responsible for serious failings in their processes and procedures with the potential for personal and criminal prosecution if a death in the workplace results.
With these burdens of responsibility hanging over senior managers and executives, what actions should they take to ensure measures to protect both employees and themselves are robust?
Sierra Support Services has developed hands-on training schemes which are designed to equip workers with practical and technical skills.
These schemes recognise that purely focusing on technical training is obsolete. There is a requirement for team members to be equally equipped with interpersonal skills, which not only assist in risk mitigation but also help in the provision of an excellent customer experience.
Workers must be able to communicate successfully with customers and be sensitive to the needs of the more vulnerable. This, in turn, increases the trust a customer has in the engineer and reduces any unnecessary negative feelings they may have during a home visit.
As well as developing soft skills, you should have a strategic plan to ensure risks are successfully accounted for, overcome and tracked. There are four key areas for ensuring lone worker and client welfare:
• Training. Ensure all team members are adequately trained on practical and technical skills as well as developing soft skills for interacting with clients. This includes how to deal with vulnerable customers in the home.
• Risk assessment and planning. Prior to a home visit, a customer service representative will determine any risks that may be prevalent in a client’s home, for instance, aggressive dogs, difficult access, and so on. It will also be identified at this stage, whether vulnerable individuals are present in the home so the appropriate measures can be taken to ensure their safety throughout the visit.
• Communications. Communicative skills are one of the most important aspects of soft skills. Teams should be trained in interpersonal skills so they communicate well – both listening and explaining – in a variety of situations during client home visits. This also optimises client satisfaction.
• Technology. In order to ensure the safety of teams during client home visits, each must be tracked by IT systems that can update and flags up any issues in real time.
Training field teams well in conflict resolution, organisation and communications provides a healthy return on investment. And it keeps your people safe.
Grace Kelly, safety, health, environment and quality manager, Sierra Support Services Group