Safety buttons have been around for a while – a lot of homeowners have emergency alert buttons as a part of their home security system, and elderly people use them in case of a medical emergencies. But now, they are becoming a necessity in the hospitality industry.
Unfortunately, sexual harassment in the hospitality industry has recently become a growing concern that needs to be addressed. Forty-nine percent of hotel housekeepers reported that guests had exposed themselves, flashed them or answered the door nude.”[1] Why has this gained so much attention and what can hotels do about it?
In May of 2011, a housekeeper in a Manhattan hotel accused a now former IMF chief, Dominque Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. The housekeeper’s alleged accusation was that as she was cleaning the room, Strauss-Kahn attacked her. While the case has now been settled, it resulted in public outcry and quite a bit of media attention.
As a result of this case, a New York assemblyman Rory Lancman introduced a bill that required hotels in New York to provide emergency safety buttons for housekeepers. Seattle is the first city that has followed a similar path and has recently approved the Seattle Initiative 124 (highlights detailed below).
Relevant Safety Button Provisions Under Seattle’s Initiative 124:
- Provides safety buttons to workers and requires posting of anti-harassment policy inside all guest rooms; and
- Creates standardized response procedure for employee reports of guest-initiated harassment and assault including documenting such incidents, banning harassing guests and giving workers advanced notice when known harassers return.
Chicago is also considering a similar ordinance, which would require Chicago hotels to give their workers safety buttons in efforts to protect them from harassment by a guests. It won’t be long before other cities and states follow through with a required safety button for employees in hotels.
What can hotels do about the growing requirement for safety buttons?
The safety button is used to de-escalate the situation; it is meant to be a wireless alarm to alert the hotel’s security to know the location of the distress call and respond to it quickly. The safety button empowers the employee to make them feel secure while working alone.
Therefore, hotels are looking for safety buttons that comply with the ordinance, help their staff feel safe and is a cost-effective solution. There are several companies that can provide an approximate location of the employee during a distress call. But if the employee is moved, then the approximate location i.e. where an employee is supposed to be, is not helpful. The solutions that do provide exact location use antiquated alert buttons and yet are cost-prohibitive because of their infrastructure requirements.
When looking for something that complies with the local ordinances, but is not antiquated, why not invest in something that will not only give you the safety button but an entire infrastructure in hotels?
TraknProtect is the only solution that not only provides real-time location of the employee upon alert, even if they are moved, but also provides an Internet of Things platform for hotels to use for other purposes such as inventory tracking, vendor tracking and room service tray tracking. TraknProtect’s system is easy to retrofit into existing hotel infrastructure without the huge costs to rewire entire hotels. The idea is to make sure hotel operations are running smoothly and a big part of that is to ensure the hotel staff feels safe and will be taken care of.
References:
https://www.tnooz.com/article/strauss-kahn-panic-button-for-hotel-maids/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/10/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-settled
http://abc7chicago.com/news/panic-button-ordinance-proposed-to-protect-hotel-workers/1885056/
http://www.seattleprotectswomen.org/about/
[1] https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170418/downtown/panic-buttons-could-protect-hotel-workers-from-assault-ald-harris-says
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