NTIA partners with safety app to protect staff

07-Nov-2022 - Last updated on 07-Nov-2022 at 10:56 GMT

Safety first: NTIA partners with app to protect workers walking home (Getty/ urbazon)

The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) has partnered with a personal safety app to safeguard staff travelling home from work.

The ‘Help Me Angela’ app was launched in 2020 with the goal of helping people feel safer and more confident in their everyday lives.

A team of highly trained personal safety specialists help user feel safer 24/7, through connecting users to a live UK based personal safety specialist.

NTIA chief executive Michael Kill said: “The welfare and safety of our staff within our businesses is of paramount importance. Throughout the pandemic and with the very difficult current trading conditions operators have worked hard to bring their workforces back up to full strength and to reinforce job security, safety, and support for all workers."

Keeping people safe

He added: “As an organisation we have been working closely with ‘help me Angela’, which looks to safeguard staff travelling home from work at night, using a unique personal safety app which has some exceptional features which will allow staff to feel confident and safer as they travel to and from work at night.”

Other features include the ‘Follow Me’ feature for journeys where the user feels unsafe, and a new ‘Guardian’ feature which allows friends and family to come on a user’s journey home with them.

What’s more, the ‘Urgent Messaging’ feature is for when somebody needs help but can’t talk, and the ‘Get Me Out of Here’ feature is designed for when the person needs to leave an uncomfortable situation.

Helping hand

If a user experiences assault or abuse, the app’s incident recovery programme can pick them up and take care of them. This could look like replacing stolen items and providing bespoke therapy sessions.

Help Me Angela director and chief ambassador Michelle Roycroft said the app’s team were “passionate” about helping organisations revolutionise the way they support employees.

She added: “Our partnership with NTIA will allow us to provide operators in the night-time economy with a well-being tool that offers reassurance and 24/7 live support when you need us the most.

“We believe that feeling safe is not a privilege, it’s your right.”