Written by John Swire
Staff safety solution Safepoint has announced its new partnership with the Anglia Farmer Group (AF Group) – the UK’s leading farmer-owned buying group – to offer a tech-based safety solution to protect their members working within the farming sector.
According to the latest HSE report, agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries in the UK – in fact 18 times higher than other sectors – the highest rate of fatal injuries of all the main industry sectors. Amongst the main causes of death are being struck by moving vehicles, killed by an animal, and contact with machinery.
Recognising these risks, the AF Group have partnered with Safepoint to promote safety in the farming industry, allowing members to sign up through their existing AF Group account.
Callum Coombes, CEO of Safepoint, says: “Having spent my childhood growing up on or around my grandparent’s farm I understand first-hand the risks involved when working in agriculture. Safepoint is extremely proud to be partnering with the AF Group and providing a solution which will ensure safety becomes the utmost priority for workers when out on the farm”.
Safepoint’s safety solution makes use of automated alarms that don’t require a mobile phone signal – perfect for use in rural areas – therefore suitable for those working in agriculture. Alerts can be triggered in two ways – either by a manual emergency trigger via the app or the safety button, or a time-out alert which alerts guardians when a worker’s task duration expires. Guardians are designated people within the workplace who have access to the web portal to monitor workers locations and job status.
Michael Simnett, Communications Projects Lead for the AF Group, says: “We have been looking for a system that gives farm owners and farm managers the ability to look out for the welfare of their staff, especially during tasks undertaken whilst working alone. Mental health and farm safety are key areas within the farming industry with owners looking out for the wellbeing of their staff. The Safepoint system is very user friendly, easy to navigate and a perfect for all types of memberships of our AF members”.
This month also sees the launch of Safepoint’s GuardianPlus service providing a dedicated 24/7 emergency response team on hand to manage any emergency situations for those businesses that have signed up to the plan. Based in East Anglia, Safepoint’s GuardianPlus Response Centre is a fully accredited state-of-the-art monitoring and alarm receiving centre (ARC), manned by a team of highly skilled and qualified experts, trained to deal with emergency situations.
Commenting on the new call centre, Mr Coombes says: “Our goal at Safepoint is to make protecting your staff so easy and accessible that there’s no reason not to do it. Up until this point, businesses were responding to emergency alerts internally when using Safepoint, so we wanted to take this responsibility off their hands. This makes 24/7/365 real-time staff protection as easy as just downloading an app to your phone, there’s really nothing else that you have to do”.
Mr Simnett adds: “The ARC out of hours monitoring support offers peace of mind to all of our users, especially smaller farms where it is not always possible to have someone monitoring the portal. Another benefit for us is Safepoint’s incorporation of What3Words technology, meaning it’s possible for farm workers to be located quickly in even the most rural of locations”.
Safepoint’s partnership with the AF Group is supported by Comm-Tech, a leading supplier of business communications, who are assisting with the sales and support for AF Group members.
Since officially launching a year ago. Safepoint’s innovative technology has helped hundreds of workers stay safe across a number of sectors including agriculture, health & social care, property and offshore / shipping.
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