Chemicals/Laboratory Case Study

There are almost 75,000 employees working for pharmaceutical companies in the UK. A large portion deal with chemicals while working in laboratories and face some unique risks. Stored chemicals with old expiration dates can mean agents become unstable and in some cases, explosive. Also, dealing with chemical processes in the lab encourages a lone working scenario, especially overnight.

Kemira Chemicals, one of our clients, had technicians who routinely worked alone. They were concerned with unexpected chemical reactions, which could result in serious injury. Management shared their concerned. So naturally, they began performing check-in calls to their lab technicians working overtime at night. By doing so managers weren’t sleeping and it was starting to take its toll. Managers’ morale was depleting. The quality of their work was also suffering. Kemira Chemicals needed a way to continue with their safety checks, while relieving management of the duty.

Kemira Chemicals thought of hiring a call centre to perform check-ins, but they learned that getting setup would be prohibitively expensive. After a quick google, they came across Ok Alone and decided to give it a try. From doing so, they learned how their check-in process could be automated. Lab technicians were required to check-in on the Ok Alone smartphone app every 2 hours. If they missed their check-in, they’d received automated alert reminders. If they missed these reminders they’d get a call from a live agent at our 24/7/365 live monitoring service. Live agents would escalate the situation accordingly if the technician wasn’t responding. It was very simple and straightforward for them.

Confident in their new automated process, management was able to rest easy at night knowing their lab technicians would be properly taken care of. Morale was back up and the quality of their work was no longer suffering.

Ok Alone turned out to be an excellent fit for Kemira Chemicals.