Welfare check (worker check-in)
A welfare check is a scheduled confirmation that a worker is safe, with escalation that triggers automatically if the worker fails to check in.
The traditional version is a supervisor calling at agreed times, or the worker texting 'all good' every couple of hours. It works until it doesn't: calls get missed in meetings, a quiet afternoon lulls everyone, and the one missed check-in that mattered is noticed forty minutes late.
Automated check-ins invert the burden. The system prompts the worker; the worker confirms with a tap; a missed confirmation escalates on its own - to a colleague, and then to a monitoring centre - without relying on anyone remembering to notice. In the FY26 Duress data, missed check-ins accounted for 5.8% of all activations, each one a moment where silence itself raised the alarm.
Welfare checks complement rather than replace a duress button: the button covers 'help, now'; the check-in covers 'nobody has heard from them'.