The category, explained
Lone worker alarms, explained.
A lone worker alarm connects a person working alone to help: a wearable device or phone app that sends their identity and live location to a monitored response, triggered by the worker or automatically by a fall or missed check-in. What separates a good one from a bad one is the response: ask any vendor for their median operator pickup time. Ours is a published seven seconds.
The types of lone worker alarm
Lone worker alarms come in four broad forms. Standalone wearables carry their own 4G connection and work with no phone: a smartwatch format like Falcon, or a body-worn camera like Eagle for high-risk roles. Paired wearables like the Phoenix card trigger discreetly via the worker's phone. App-based alarms turn the phone itself into the device. And fixed panic buttons cover a counter or a room, but not the worker who walks away from it.
Most organisations end up with a mix, matched to roles: a discreet card for client-facing work, a standalone wearable for home visits and field work, and the app for everyone else.
What to look for
Four questions separate a working system from a beeper. Who answers, and how fast, with what accreditation? What happens when the worker cannot press anything (fall detection, missed check-ins, expired timers)? What travels with the alarm (live location, two-way audio, video)? And what record exists afterwards for incident review and work health and safety investigations?
The response is the product. In our published FY26 data the median time from activation to a trained operator was seven seconds, with 94% of alarms answered inside 30 seconds, on accredited 24/7 monitoring. Any vendor should be able to show you their equivalent numbers.