Case Study: AM Fresh Group – Lone workers in Agriculture
The AM Fresh Group is a fresh produce company working in the UK 24/7, 364 days a year. The group employs around 5,700 people across more than 20 global operational centres.
In 2021, Senior Technical/Quality Manager, Marta Esteban, reached out to Safepoint to discuss the safety of her team’s lone workers. Recently, we got in touch with Marta to discuss how her team is getting on.
What risks face do lone workers face in the agricultural sector?
Agriculture, by most measurements, is one of the most dangerous industries in the UK. Risk factors include working with machinery, working with animals, working alone, and working in remote locations.
As an established international company with many moving parts, AM Fresh Group takes safety management seriously and understands the complexities of overseeing an extensive workforce.
In our interview, Marta explained the safety considerations her team were looking at. She explained how getting fresh produce into shops and businesses is an around-the-clock operation. This means that some of the quality-control team work throughout the night at third-party operations, where they are alone until the day staff arrive in the morning.
Marta’s team accurately assessed that having staff working alone, at night, in a large site would put them at higher risk. As the HSE guidance makes clear, it’s perfectly legal for staff to work alone, so long as efforts are made to understand and mitigate their risk, including methods of providing support and supervision.
How did Safepoint help AM Fresh Group’s lone workers?
“Safepoint is a very easy to use tool, easily accessible to members of staff and very easy to set-up. Within days of creating an account and paying the invoice we had our safety buttons delivered and our staff could use the alert system right away.” –Marta Esteban, Senior Technical/Quality Manager at AM Fresh Group
After creating a risk assessment for their late-night lone workers, Marta reached out to Safepoint. It was decided that the affected quality management staff would be equipped with Safepoint’s app and wearable panic alarms, backed up by Safepoint’s 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centre.
Using the Safepoint app, the team’s lone workers create 1-2 hour long ‘tasks’. If at any time, a staff member runs into trouble, they can request emergency assistance by tapping a button on their app or on their wearable panic alarms. An alert will also be triggered automatically if the user takes a fall or fails to check-in as safe before the task times-out.
Marta said she chose Safepoint because it was ‘accessible’ and ‘easy to use’. What’s more, Safepoint’s simple system makes it easy to get set up.
She adds that, fortunately, her team have had no ‘real’ emergency situations, but they have had a few ‘false-alarms’. From time to time, a staff member may forget to check in but, in those cases, Marta appreciates that someone from the 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) is always available to call and confirm the staff member is safe.
If ever something were to happen to one of Marta’s team members, and our professional and accredited 24/7 emergency responders were repeatedly unable to get through, they would notify the worker’s supervisors who could then assess the situation. If it was clear the worker was in trouble, or if they deemed it necessary, the responders are also trained to work with the emergency services.
Designed for agriculture
We know that working in rural areas comes with its own challenges. That’s why Safepoint is designed to work in low reception.
Even if a worker were to walk into an area of absolutely zero signal, their task will continue to run, updating information whenever it can. If they were unable to check-in as ‘safe’ before their task timed out, the responders would be able to use their task history to assess the best course of action.
What’s more, Safepoint is partnered with what3words –which makes locating people in rural locations much easier.
In summary
We are proud to be working with AM Fresh to keep their lone workers safe. Agriculture can be a high-risk industry to work in –with remote locations and unsociable hours being commonplace– but we’re glad that Safepoint’s lone working system can provide support, safety and supervision.
Keeping lone workers safe in agriculture
All sorts of businesses rely on Safepoint’s lone worker solutions and 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centre to keep their staff protected and organised. Some agricultural and rural organisations that use Safepoint include:
