BY ANNIE ASRARI ON AUG 1, 2018, SecurityInfoWatch
There are two trends colliding in the modern workplace: 1) businesses are increasingly asking employees to travel for work, and 2) the world is an increasingly dangerous place. In fact, there were 96.2 million mobile workers in 2015 and IDC predicts that mobile workers will account for nearly three quarters (72.3 percent) of the total U.S. workforce by 2020. While the growth of mobile workers is a boon to productivity both inside and outside the workplace, it also places a huge responsibility on the organization. Whether they’re on-site, at a different office location, on-the-road, in the field or in the air, all businesses must have the tools and processes in place to ensure their workers’ safety. If not for them, then at the very least for their employees’ families.
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Businesses Understand the Importance of Mobile Safety
In a recent research paper entitled, “Safety and Security for Business Travelers, Lone and Remote Workers,” we found that only 37 percent of enterprises maintain an accurate record of where employees are expected to be during working hours.
The feature that almost every enterprise is looking for in a mobile worker safety strategy is the ability to facilitate communication with an employee who is in an area affected by extreme weather, fire, explosion or even an active shooter. These types of incidents occur quickly and often without advanced warning so it’s important that companies have a suite of tools and procedures in place to help them move quickly.
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Additional stats from the research underscore how often mobile workers find themselves in harm’s way:
- 25 percent of employers stated that they have had their mobile workers in the proximity of a workplace violence situation in the past 12 months, while 20 percent have had travelers in the proximity of a terrorist attack within 72 hours of its occurrence.
- 84 percent of respondents said they had remote workers affected by a location-specific weather event in the last twelve months.
