Earthquakes. Floods. Bushfires. Volcanic eruptions. New Zealand and Australia have had their fair share of natural disasters in recent years and these events simply highlight the importance of mass messaging when your staff are at risk.
The ability to mass message across the whole business, by teams, groups or individuals (including lone workers and remote workers) has been highlighted by this spate of disasters and underlines the need to:
- Know where everyone is
- Be able to quickly message them to advise not to enter particular areas
- Evacuate from particular areas
To help you perform these essential and potentially life-saving functions in your business, Guardian Angel Security has partnered with EVERYWHERE Communications. We’re the exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand and work with the company to bring you the Guardian EVERYWHERE Hub. This technology has been purpose-built for enterprises and governments and until now, it had been unavailable in New Zealand or Australia.
The SOS alerts are integrated via an Application Programming Interface (API) into our response software to guarantee a fast and reliable response in real-time (as opposed to relying on electronic messaging). In simple terms, API means one computer application can speak directly to another, and this is a far more dependable form of communication in a crisis.
Intelligent routing is at the heart of the Guardian EVERYWHERE Hub. Intelligent Routing is a proprietary decision engine for sending geo-tagged messages over the optimal paths to provide seamless communications amongst your remote and back-office workers. It allows your team to stay connected, even when moving in and out of cellular service. That’s because the Intelligent Routing Engine chooses between Wi-Fi, cellular, and Iridium communications paths. The goal is to send messages over the fastest, least costly, and most battery efficient method. All messages sent through Intelligent Routing are transmitted over secure channels.
With intelligent routing, your workers are reachable everywhere, whether they are beyond cellular coverage or inside the office. Other features include geofencing, heat mapping, pulse welfare checks, and team structure with customisable display filters. Meanwhile, all functionality is run through a smartphone-based companion app paired with your inReach device, or if staff are in cell cover, they would use the stand-alone Safeguard app.
Mass communication in a crisis needs to be fast, reliable and efficient. With Guardian Everywhere, it is. For remote worker solutions, and the ability to stay in touch with the whole team when you most need to, we believe this is one of the most powerful communications tools available on the global market. Contact us today to find out more about the hub and all the features this technology will deliver.
The article is behind a paywall: Kool, B. et al (2021). Potential survivability of prehospital injury deaths in New Zealand: a cross-sectional study. Injury Prevention, 27(3), 245. Chris brought the following section to our attention, and given what we do at Guardian Angel Security, it resonated with us:
“In New Zealand, the majority of injured people who die before reaching hospital do so from non-survivable injuries. More than one third have either survivable or potentially survivable injuries, suggesting an increased need for appropriate bystander first aid, timeliness of EMS care and access to advanced-level hospital care.”
This confirms what we have been saying for a long time. When it comes to remote worker safety, being able to raise an SOS from anywhere and activate a timely response is crucial to the chances of surviving serious injuries. The great tragedy is that too many New Zealanders die from injuries they would normally survive: what kills them is they weren’t treated in time.
The authors of the paper also wrote “Factors associated with not being immediately found in this study included: RTCs in remote areas which may have resulted in the vehicle not being visible from the road or no cell phone coverage; events happening in remote areas such as mountains; and being alone at the time of injury and not being able to call for help. The latter issue can be addressed by the use of personal panic pendants for workers working alone or in remote locations. These devices offer functions including a ‘buddy’ or check-in system, tracking and panic buttons, thus providing the potential to limit the survivability of an injury situation by providing immediate contact and thereby facilitating a potentially quicker EMS response time.”
Such devices and solutions, as provided by us, are both practical and affordable, so there can be no excuses. It should be possible to send an SOS from anywhere and set off a chain of events that culminates in a prompt response and life-saving treatment. We also know from experience that workers in possession of a hands-free, two-way voice device with an operator listening and dispatching help to the exact location report a feeling of calm in dealing with the situation at hand.
Time is of the essence in any crisis. It can be the difference between life and death. We have the devices that allow an alarm to be raised from anywhere, and a speedy response to occur as a result. To find out more about our life-saving solutions and hardware, please get in touch.
