Lone Worker Safety Devices: Are your Hotel and Hospitality Workers Safe?

Table of Contents

1. What is your company doing about worker safety?

2. Here are the risks hotel workers are facing 

3. What is a panic button device? 

4. Smartphone safety app and hotel panic button

5. Hotel room safety devices are a smart investment

6. Practice proactive safety

The hospitality industry captures a broad range of professions within the service sector, including food and drink services, lodging, transportation, event planning, and other jobs within the tourism industry. It contributed over $570 billion to the US economy in 2017, making it the second-largest contributor to the country’s GDP falling only behind the Government. According to Statista, the hospitality industry employed over 16.5 million Americans in 2018, representing a 2% increase from 2017. Given the importance, size, and popularity of this industry, it’s hard to believe that hospitality jobs are identified amongst the most dangerous jobs in the US each year but thankfully, safety concerns are starting to be addressed. This article will identify the unique risks that hospitality workers face, as well as how the implementation of a lone worker monitoring system will keep your people safe.

What is your company doing about worker safety?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 517 work-related fatalities between the years 2015 and 2017. Similar statistics show that out of every 100 hospitality workers, approximately 3.2 workers suffered an injury on the job. Many organizations only consider worker monitoring systems to be a necessity for workers whose jobs involve physical dangers, such as construction laborers, water workers, agriculture workers, or electricians. However, employees who work with people are also at very high risk. Hospitality workers are primarily at risk because of the social nature of their work. It’s no surprise that the majority of hospitality workers would feel safer if they were equipped with a panic button. Businesses are likely to be held responsible if some form of workplace violence or injury occurs in their location, especially if they do not have adequate safety precautions in place. How prepared is your organization to deal with the safety risks faced by your hospitality staff?

Here are the risks hotel workers are facing 

During a normal shift, hospitality workers face a wide range of safety hazards and risks while on the job including muscle injuries, pathogens, and infectious diseases and viruses. One of the most common hazards is slips, trips, or falls. These types of injuries are more likely to occur in situations where a worker is cleaning a bathroom where surfaces may be slippery. Exposure to toxic cleaning chemicals can also cause respiratory conditions. Workers may encounter hazardous waste material such as bodily waste, broken glass, or pathogens that could result in the contraction of infectious diseases. Stress is another key contributor to injury in the workplace, which is often caused by excessive workloads and unreasonably long hours, which are quite common in the hospitality industry. Repetitive movements on the job can also cause muscle injuries. Hospitality staff are often required to vacuum, scrub, dust, and perform other duties that involve repetitive body movements.

Perhaps the most threatening risk faced on the job is harassment and violence. This phenomenon is steadily increasing across US hotels and captures any situation where a worker is abused, threatened, intimidated, or assaulted at work. Hospitality workers, such as housekeeping staff or night shift managers, often work in rooms either alone or in the presence of a hotel guest. Intoxicated, irate, or unpredictable guests can create huge safety threats for employees. These workers are increasingly vulnerable: hotel workers are primarily women, required to work quickly, often work alone, and must enter the private spaces of unknown and unfamiliar guests. Harassment and violence in the hospitality industry have become an issue of such magnitude that hotel panic button laws have begun to spread rapidly across the US.

What is a panic button device? 

Also known as an Employee Safety Device (ESD), hotel panic buttons are wearable Bluetooth devices or in-app panic buttons on a smartphone that is compatible with the SafetyLine’s lone worker monitoring app. Its most significant advantage is its ability to quickly and discreetly signal an emergency. Hospitality workers can benefit tremendously from the use of Bluetooth panic buttons because these devices would give them the means to indicate that something is wrong instantaneously. If a worker enters a room where a guest is behaving in a threatening way, a simple push of their panic button will let a monitor know that they are in distress, and help will be on the way. Hotel panic buttons have the capacity to significantly reduce the instances of workplace harassment or violence experienced by hospitality staff.

Smartphone safety app and hotel panic button

Bluetooth hotel panic buttons are compatible with SafetyLine Lone Worker monitoring app. When implementing SafetyLine to your safety solution, your company will have access to many other features that will ensure the safety of your hospitality staff. In addition to panic buttons, the use of a check-in system is a fail-proof way to protect your staff on the job. Employees will be able to check-in at predetermined intervals throughout their shift to let monitors know they are okay. Time intervals can be customized to suit the riskiness of the task at hand. For instance, if a hotel worker is entering the room of a guest at night, they can shorten the time interval between each required check-in to confirm their safety more often. If they miss a check-in, an emergency will be detected, and help will be sent to that employees’ location. This feature is useful if an employee is unable to push their hotel panic button for whatever reason.

SafetyLine covers all of these needs and requirements for Hotel Panic button legislation:

• Panic Buttons 

• Multiple Monitor Alerts 

• Location and GPS Information 

• Man-down and fall detection  

• High-Risk Check-ins 

• Audit Logs and Reports 

• End Shift Reminders 

• Minimize False Alarms 

• 24/7 Live Monitoring

Hotel room safety devices are a smart investment

The unique risks faced by hospitality staff make this group of industry workers exceedingly vulnerable to workplace violence, assault, abuse, and injury. The impact of a workplace injury can be severe, for both the worker and your company. Medical treatment costs, disability payments, life pension payments, re-training costs, and death costs make up a large portion of the direct costs associated with a workplace accident. Lost productivity, administrative time, and reduced employee morale are amongst some of the indirect costs of an accident. These can add up from 4 to 10 times the dollar figure of direct costs. It’s important to appreciate that regardless of the accident, your company will have lost one of its key assets for an unknown period of time. 

Investing in the well-being of your people is not only a personal one, but a business one as well, and workplace injuries can be one of the single largest costs a business will face, and therefore should invest in safety.  

Lost productivity: Productivity will necessarily decrease if an employee is unable to fulfill their job duties. Other employees will often take on additional duties, which negatively impacts both the quality of work and their abilities to accomplish their own tasks.   

Administrative time: Properly documenting the accident can be extremely time-consuming. Hours spent processing the necessary paperwork represent the opportunity cost of time that could have been spent performing daily job tasks.   

Damaged employee morale: The aftermath of the accident will linger in the workplace which can create a toxic work atmosphere and once again lead to reduced productivity. This is understandable and very likely, given that a fellow employee has suffered an injury performing the same duties other employees in the company perform. Employers should have a plan in place to address the aftermath of a workplace incident.  

Long-term psychological impact: Rarely discussed, the psychological trauma associated with a workplace accident can be more harmful than the physical injury itself. Depression, PTSD, and anxiety are a few side effects that may result from a workplace injury. Post-injury depression has been found to extend recovery times, prolong time off work, and make returning to daily tasks at work exceedingly difficult. 

Practice proactive safety

Being proactive about safety is a great way to reduce the risk of a member of your hospitality team experiencing a workplace injury. By implementing an automated worker safety monitoring solution like SafetyLine, your company will benefit from Bluetooth panic buttons, check-in procedures, motion sensors, and many other benefits that work together to keep your people safe.

Ensure the safety of your hotel and hospitality workers with advanced monitoring solutions. Use our Lone Worker Safety Solution App and explore our pricing options. Visit our FAQ page for more details, and discover the benefits of our solutions.

Protect your hotel workers today! Partner with SafetyLine for your hotel panic button solution.