FYLD, the digital platform that has been designed to revolutionise the safety and efficiency of field teams based on real-time, data-driven decision-making, has partnered with Safer Highways as the technology supplier powering its ground breaking Stamp It Out campaign.
FYLD will invest its own resources to develop and deploy the worker engagement app to support the campaign at no cost to Safer Highways with the app being designed to combat the endemic abuse of road workers on the local and strategic road networks in the UK. With the FYLD app being embraced by field workers in their daily lives, the team at FYLD see this as an opportunity to support the community that has embraced them. Stamp it Out is a highways, transportation and infrastructure industry campaign, led by Safer Highways, Transport Scotland and the Department for Transport. FYLD will power the new app, which has been developed to make it easy for road workers to report incidents of physical or verbal abuse or incursions into zoned areas. It will provide a long wanted source of data about the scale of the problem, emerging hot spots for incidents and the analytics to finally stop the abuse of roadworkers. Karl Simons OBE, Executive Director at FYLD and member of the Stamp It Out taskforce, commented: “Any system implemented will only work if you get the user experience absolutely right, so our engagement sessions were a must to ensure we fully understood the challenges presently faced. I have been disgusted over the years at the levels of physical and verbal abuse I have witnessed towards those working out on our public highways. The outcomes we have gathered through the engagement are staggering: our evidence showed that over 70% of fieldworkers spoken to had encountered either physical or verbal abuse in the past calendar month alone! This is grossly unacceptable and why we believe our new solution will empower anyone working on our public roads to report issues of abuse as they happen”. Why has the tool been developed, what’s typically being done, why is this an issue? As part of the development process, FYLD kicked off with with visiting multiple depots to conduct a series of frontline user engagement sessions. The aim of this engagement process was to ensure raw feedback from those who will use the app was harvested, and that the product being developed would meet their needs and be embraced as a positive step forward. The app will be rolled out to the first users in December for trials, which will be followed by a broad launch across all Safer Highways member companies during ‘Respect Our Roadworkers Week’ in March next year. FYLD’s Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology lends itself to the Stamp It Out app, as the AI-driven platform enables anonymous reporting of incidents. It can capture voice notes, video, photos and text - which will let workers report in a way they are comfortable. FYLD will power a central repository of incident information and real time data and historic trends, letting remote managers really understand the challenges being faced by their teams and broader industry insight and change.
Kevin Robinson CEO at Safer Highways reported: “I am delighted with the extensive support being provided by FYLD to Safer Highways, our member companies and - most importantly - our worers out on the Public highway. The values of the FYLD team are well aligned to Safer Highways, and their willingness to provide their cutting edge technology for free to keep our roadworkers safe is commendableEnsuring the safety and wellbeing of road workers is Stamp It Out’s main priority, and we are confident the app will make a positive change to the way in which they report the unfair abuse they receive while undertaking their vital work. I have watched for many years the negative impact this relentless abuse has on our workforce and we will Stamp it Out. The app is not only going to make it easier for workers to report all that is happening, but also for us to finally have a clear picture of the scale of this catastrophe’
'Our aim is that this becomes just the first stage in our drive to improve safety across not just the public highways but also for field workers in other sectors such as rail, something which the ORR (Office of Rail and Road) and ourselves are actively engaging with other member companies such as Clearview Intelligence to do. Our aspiration is to go beyond abuse and into a full circle approach to ensuring our people go home safely every day.
'The approach is something which we have undertaken, not just as a short-term, quick fix solution, but instead to provide a free to access tool which can be of benefit to the whole of the transportation sector for years to come."
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