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Public Launch of Staffsafe

Posted on Tuesday, 26 February 2008 11:01PM by

A company from Dumfries will this month publicly launch their staff safety device which they claim has been quietly revolutionising health and safety monitoring across the UK.

Staffsafe, designed and developed by Positive Response Communications, will be launched at the ‘Protecting Scottish Public Service Workers’ conference on 27th February. Staffsafe is a covert health and safety monitoring system which uniquely also looks after psychological wellbeing by helping staff in customer facing environments deal with verbal abuse, harassment and anti-social behaviour.

Staffsafe consists of hardware located in the premises and a flexible 24hour Monitoring Centre based in Dumfries, where responses are tailored around each individual customer. Covert alerts are worn by members of staff and can be triggered whenever needed. Audio links allow the Monitoring Centre to listen covertly to an incident while relaying information to the emergency services, or to interact in real time and at great volume to ‘encourage’ irritants to leave the premises. When the premises are unoccupied the same system then becomes an audio-verified intruder alarm.

Staffsafe was originally developed in 2003 and it is now being used in thousands of high street stores across the UK. It has been found to be particularly useful in lone worker situations and in outlets such as off licenses and petrol stations where anti-social behaviour can pose real problems for staff. However its application is wide and it is being used in a whole host of situations and working environments from customer service desks to morgues. A standard package costs around 700 pounds.

Feedback from their clients suggests that the system has had a dramatic effect on business performance. Higher staff morale, less absenteeism, a more confident workforce, less stress, a quicker return to work following threatening incidents, higher staff retention and a reduction in recruitment and training costs have all been cited as direct benefits, with the company’s largest client claiming a 50% reduction in theft from their stores.

Positive Response has deliberately maintained a low profile for Staffsafe, working closely with their clients and focussing on product and service improvement rather than company growth. However with violence and abuse of staff on the rise across most customer-facing sectors of industry Positive Response now believe the time is right to make Staffsafe more widely available.

Ian Hobson, Technical Director of Positive Response, said:
“Staffsafe uses cutting edge technology which to the best of our knowledge is unique in this industry. What makes Staffsafe so effective is combining that technological capability with a tremendously flexible and responsive approach to monitoring, whereby our operators can interact in an intelligent way with whatever situation has arisen in our client’s premises.

“Research by organisations such as Unison and the British Retail Consortium is showing again and again that the need for this product is on the rise. The verbal, psychological and physical abuse that we hear is shocking and our Monitoring Centre Operators have intensive and ongoing training to help them cope with the incidents they hear.

“We now feel a duty to encourage all employers, both in the public and private sectors, to take a close look at their responsibilities to safeguard their workers from harm, and the opportunities there now are through technology to do that in a highly cost effective way. So many premises have security systems to protect property and stock, but staff are the most valuable asset any company has. Investing in staff safety is simply common sense.”

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