The category, explained
Man down alarms, explained.
A man down alarm raises the alert automatically when a worker falls, is impacted, or stops moving, with no button pressed. It exists for the incidents a worker cannot report themselves. In our FY26 monitoring data, 17% of all alarms were raised automatically, which is the strongest argument for having one.
How man down detection works
Man down alarms combine motion sensing with escalation logic. Accelerometers detect a slip, trip, fall or impact; a no-movement timer catches the worker who is down and still; and a pre-alarm gives a false-positive grace window so a dropped device does not dispatch an ambulance. When the pre-alarm is not cancelled, the alert fires with the worker's live location.
Detection is only half the system. The alert has to land with someone who can act. In a monitored system, an operator opens the case, attempts voice contact, and escalates to emergency services with the exact location if the worker does not respond. Without that, a man down alarm is a sensor with nobody watching it.
Who actually needs one
Man down protection matters most where a worker is alone AND a medical event, fall or assault could leave them unable to call for help: community and home-care visits, remote field work, night shifts, working at height, plant rooms and confined spaces. For these roles, the button-press alarm covers the incidents a worker can report, and the man down alarm covers the ones they cannot.
It pairs naturally with check-ins and safety timers. A timer that expires unanswered and a worker who has stopped moving are two independent signals of the same problem, and good systems use both.