Staff safety becomes key concern amid growing global insecurity

Vismo, a York-based developer whose software helps employers to locate and protect their mobile workforces globally, has reported a significant increase in demand for its technology in the face of recent catastrophic world events, especially from the US.

Scale-up company Vismo has seen an increase of over 50% in sales of its software which immediately locates staff and can notify them of imminent dangers. The firm has also recorded a 100% increase in enquiries from US companies.

Seismic global shifts including the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, climate-change disasters such as Hurricane Ida and the California forest fires in the US, as well as geopolitical upheavals such as the Taliban gain of power in Afghanistan, have driven employers to recognise the need to safeguard employees working remotely in potentially dangerous regions.

Craig Swallow, CEO, said: “Vismo has always been used to protect employees in potentially harmful situations, but now the safety of the whole workforce has rapidly become a huge concern for organisations. Whereas historically employers would adopt our location technology to protect their c-suite people from threats such as kidnapping, or for staff in particularly dangerous regions of the world, recent global events have acted as a prism and changed those priorities.

“Employers now realise that, with Covid for example, especially in the healthcare and social care sectors, you can’t apply different levels of protection to different seniorities of workers. The whole mobile workforce needs to be protected from danger and there are massive benefits for employers in knowing where their staff are, and that they are safe.”

Vismo’s global traveller, lone worker and home worker software enables managers to quickly locate and communicate with staff when they could be at risk of infection, natural disaster, civil unrest or from role-related dangers such as falls or verbal abuse. Security teams are alerted when users press the red alert button and use Vismo’s secure portal to identify a place of safety for them. They can remain in contact until staff are safe, with a full audit trail.

“Demand for our products has increased especially dramatically in the US over the last couple of years,” said Swallow. “Last year they were invaluable in the wave of mass protests that swept through Portland, Oregon and elsewhere, enabling organisations with staff in those areas to guide them to safety.”

Although the Vismo app is typically used in the oil and gas, healthcare and retail sectors, other employers adopting the technology include NGOs, whose staff and volunteers work in high-risk situations; and media companies with reporters and camera operators posted in danger zones worldwide.