LIBERTY UTILITIES TRANSFORMS LONE WORKER SAFETY

Due to rising occurrences of security events and the need to facilitate faster emergency response, Liberty Utilities (Liberty)—a major provider of electricity, water and natural gas services in the US, Canada, Bermuda and Chile—needed to do more to protect frontline workers.

Direct service interactions with customers could turn hostile, with some incidents escalating into verbal abuse or even physical aggression against staff, many of whom worked alone. These interactions were impacting Liberty’s people both physically and mentally, leaving them feeling unsafe, stressed, and, in some cases, physically injured.

The company needed a reliable, connected lone worker safety solution that could scale across their gas, water, and electric divisions, along with a system to record interactions. Previously, employees documented these security events manually in an ad hoc way, and a more efficient, formal process was required.

Liberty explored several solutions before selecting Blackline Safety’s G7 wearables and associated Blackline Live software platform, which came highly recommended by both internal business units and industry peers. In particular, the following capabilities were especially well-suited to meet Liberty’s needs:

• Connectivity anytime, anywhere: can get both cellular and optional satellite connectivity with G7 for a failsafe way to keep in touch with workers, in even the most remote locations.
• Real-time awareness: can access worker location and instant, geo-stamped notifications in Blackline Live when a worker is in distress to support a quick response.
• Communication options: can reach employees via two-way voice, text or push-to-talk (using G7 devices like a walkie-talkie).
• Lone worker protection features: can receive manual (emergency SOS), automatic (falls, no-motion) and time-based (missed check-in) alerts.
• 24/7 live monitoring: can outsource monitoring to professionally trained agents at Blackline’s Safety Operations Center (SOC) to respond to alerts around-the-clock.
• Automated reporting: can harness actionable information and a hassle-free way to understand compliance (Usage Report) and record incidents (Alerts Report).

Following a successful pilot, Liberty deployed their first 300 Blackline devices including both the G7c (cellular) and G7x (satellite) models. All are primarily monitored by Blackline’s SOC safety agents and feature push-to-talk (PTT) and lone worker protection features such as no motion, fall detection, and missed check-in alerts.

To support the technology rollout, Liberty developed a new lone worker policy with a clearer and more prescriptive definition of a lone worker, and a mandate that employees wear their Blackline device, regardless of division or region. It’s a shift that has led to a change at Liberty, fostering a deeper culture of safety excellence.

While there were initial adoption challenges—primarily related to concerns around ‘big brother’ monitoring—internal safety leaders successfully built trust through open dialogue, ongoing training and education, and early engagement with unions to secure their support and advocacy for the solution.

Workers have expressed appreciation for the PTT feature so they can directly communicate with other teams, and no longer having to manually record incidents thanks to the Blackline platform’s automated reporting features. The emergency SOS latch and fall/no motion alerts also offer greater peace of mind that if help is needed, someone is there to respond.