Glossary

Check-in — a worker confirming at agreed intervals that they are all right. The cheapest control available, and worthless unless a missed one triggers an action rather than a judgement.

When glossary also depends on reliable work records, staff scheduling software can support time, attendance and workload review without being treated as the emergency response itself. Compare any workflow with HSE lone-working guidance and keep alarm ownership, escalation and dispatch responsibilities explicit.

Dynamic risk assessment — the judgement a worker makes on arrival. Requires training in what to look for and genuine permission to leave; without the second it is decorative.

Duress signal — a way of raising an alarm that reads as normal to anyone present: a code word, a wrong-but-plausible check-in, a disguised button press.

Escalation tree — who is called, in what order, with what authority and what timings. The part of the system that most often contains someone who left the organisation.

Man down — vendor shorthand for fall or no-movement detection. Finds impacts followed by stillness; misses slow collapses, which is what many medical episodes look like.

No-movement alarm — an alert triggered by stillness alone. Useful where the worker may be unable to press anything, and a reliable source of false alarms from lunch breaks.

Two-worker visit — attending in a pair because the assessment requires it. The strongest control in home-visiting work and the one most often dropped when staffing is short.

Withdrawal — leaving a situation the worker judges unsafe. Should be recorded as a system success; a service with none in a year has workers who do not believe the policy.

Terms used loosely by suppliers

"Man down protection" describes a detection feature, not protection. Nothing here prevents a fall.

"Real-time tracking" means position transmitted at an interval, and indoors frequently means nothing at all.

"Compliant" describes your assessment and arrangements, never a device. No jurisdiction requires a particular product.

"24/7 monitoring" should come with a contracted answer time and evidence it is met, or it describes an office that is open.

How to read these notes

Start with the foundations if nothing exists yet — particularly who counts as working alone.

Start with the response section if devices exist and nobody has tested what happens after the button.

Start with the sectors if your situation is home visits, retail, remote work or nights.

Start with the legal section before buying anything.

Nothing here is legal advice, and the notes say so where it matters.

Terms from the response side

Answer time — how long a monitoring centre takes to pick up an alarm. The only timing most contracts specify, and the shortest link in the chain.

Backstop — the final level of an escalation tree that is never unavailable. Usually a monitoring service or a duty rota, and the absence of one is what produces an alarm that reaches nobody.

Escalation interval — how long before moving to the next name. Should be short at the first steps and stated, because discretion at three in the morning is how a ten-minute delay becomes two hours.

Incident hold — preserving data beyond routine deletion for a specific incident. Triggered at report, not when a claim arrives.

Journey plan — where somebody is going, by what route, and when they expect to return, left with a named person. The oldest arrangement in this subject and still the most effective where technology cannot reach.

Stand-down — closing an alarm. Should require voice contact or sight of the worker, or an alarm stays open while everybody assumes somebody else closed it.

Terms from the assessment side

Hierarchy of controls — eliminate, substitute, engineer, organise, protect. Equipment is the last of five, which is a structural fact rather than an opinion.

Residual risk — what remains after the controls. An assessment that does not state it has not finished.

Situation-based assessment — assessing by shift and circumstance rather than by job title, which is how the intermittent lone workers get covered.

How this collection is organised

Foundations: what the system is, who counts, and the assessment.

Response: the links that actually fail — check-ins, escalation, monitoring, location, false alarms, incidents.

Equipment: devices and suppliers, honestly.

Sectors: home visits, retail, remote work, nights, and contracted staff.

Programme: training, testing, costs, ownership, near misses and consultation.

Legal: the assessment duty, data protection and health conditions.

Reference: the end state, the limits, and this glossary.

The order is deliberate. Most of the value is in the response section, most of the spending goes to the equipment one, and the gap between those two facts is the subject of this collection.