In May 2023 we carried out an employee survey and we had some comments from our UK Hotel Teams that the Oysta Lone Working device doesn’t always work as well as it could and they are not feeling confident with it. It’s really important to us that Team Members feel safe when they’re on shift, so we carried out a more detailed survey of our UK Hotel Teams to find out exactly what your concerns were with the Oysta device.
You told us that sometimes the devices aren’t charged well or that you don’t feel confident using them. So, we have taken some small steps to address this. All our hotels are equipped with two devices to ensure we always have a device that is fully charged, so we’ve refreshed the training for our Hotel Managers on the process for keeping the devices at full charge so you should never have to worry about battery life. We’ve also reviewed and updated the process around testing so that we’re continuously checking that the devices are functioning as they should be and we’ve circulated revised training materials for HMs to use with their Teams to help everyone feel confident using the device.
Finally, we requested some data from Oysta to see if this could help us understand more about how we’re using the devices and if we can improve. Since we started using the device, the vast majority of activations were false alarms however there have been two ‘verified activations’ including one at Sheffield where a member of the public was causing a disturbance. In this case, the Team Member pushed the button and shortly afterwards the Oysta call centre called Katie Mather (the second responder) to advise they had received an activation and couldn’t contact the hotel. Less than a minute later the button was pressed again and Oysta immediately called the Police and asked them to attend. Katie contacted the hotel and was able to advise the member of staff that the police were on their way. The police attended and removed the person causing a disturbance.
This is one example of where the Oysta device works well, and while we hope you don’t have to use it, in the event that you do, we want it to provide assurance that you can get support if you need it. If any team members have any feedback about the Oysta device and it’s operation, please don’t hesitate to pass your comments on to your Hotel Manager or Nathan White directly.
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