Against the stunning backdrop of Scotland’s historic capital, we had the pleasure of collaborating with Heriot-Watt University to host another SafeZone Alliance Day for our existing and prospective customers from across the Scottish higher education sector.
With attendees ranging from campus safety and security, emergency management, wellbeing and student experience teams, to IT professionals and association members, this inaugural event was incredibly productive for the sharing of best practises to enhance safety within and beyond Scotland’s higher-ed communities.
The overriding theme of the event revolved around the diverse value and uses cases of SafeZone, with particular focus on personal safety, duress alerting, and wellbeing assistance – the latter applying not just to students but also staff members like student counsellors.
Having deployed SafeZone relatively recently, Russell Wardale, Security Manager at Edinburgh Napier University was quick to express how the organisation was already gaining a great deal of value from SafeZone. This provided other recent adopters of the platform an opportunity to reflect on what they could be doing differently to get the best out of SafeZone for the benefit of their university communities.
Increasing SafeZone user uptake according to risk profiles
One of the very engaging topics discussed during the event was user uptake and the value of adopting engagement strategies based on highest risk and priorities, as opposed to general outreach campaigns. By segmenting the user community based on risk, universities can create and market more nuanced campaigns with specific messaging to users with the highest need for support and increasing uptake. These users gain the most value from SafeZone in terms of accessing the help they need quickly and easily from having the app on their person.
- LGBTQ+ groups and other similar societies that might feel more vulnerable
- Lone workers such as staff, faculty or members of professional services working late at night, in areas of heightened operational risk, or are often managing situations that can quickly escalate (e.g. students with mental health challenges or behavioural issues)
- Sports society members, many of whom are often travelling between varsity venues and encountering travel related issues or, indeed, could require first aid assistance resulting from sports related injuries and the like
- Civic organisations (e.g. business improvement initiatives, safe spaces, mental health and wellbeing services, as well as charities that provide support to victims of sexual or racial violence)
Among the discussions on user uptake was how universities can drive peer-to-peer influence, whereby students are actively communicating with each other about the value of SafeZone as a platform to get help or information from the university should the worst happen. These incidents could be a flood, fire, significant weather event, marauding attacker, or even a cyber security threat like a phishing email.
The deep dive into user uptake enabled many attendees to come away from the session with key learnings on creating marketing, outreach and engagement strategies that better resonate with users according to their risk profile, thus driving higher application uptake.
As with most of our events, the stage for the Scotland SafeZone Alliance Day was given over to our customers to impart their insights, successes and learnings.
Gerry Moore, Security Operations Manager at the University of Glasgow, kicked off proceedings with an overview of the decision to acquire SafeZone in 2019. Gerry explained that when he took on his role, he discovered that he was responsible for managing the safety of the university’s community whilst they were travelling overseas, but that there was no function for ensuring people’s welfare once they left campus.
He commented that during the time they were assessing potential solutions to their challenge, the university received a live improvised explosive device (IED) from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) via post. This triggered their emergency protocols, which included closing the campus, cordoning the affected area, advising people not to attend campus and warning those already on campus to avoid evacuating into the area where the IED was located.
Without the right tools to support them, the team quickly recognised how logistically challenging it was to communicate with and manage internal resources as well as those that fell under their duty of care. Within two to three weeks of this incident, the university approved and purchased SafeZone, concluding that it was the only solution capable of addressing their complex safety and security requirements.
Pride for Edinburgh Napier University’s win with SafeZone
Ross Brown, Security Officer at Edinburgh Napier University, also took to the stage to share some good news. Out of all the distinguished and compelling nominees for the highly coveted Pride of Napier award, the university’s campus security team was the winning nomination for the implementation of SafeZone. This impressive achievement spoke volumes of the value that the university has gleaned from using SafeZone as their unified safety, security, wellbeing and emergency management solution.
Using SafeZone to provide off-campus support during critical incidents
Les Allen, Director of Safeguarding Services at Heriot-Watt University, rounded off our customer showcase by discussing the challenges of providing off-campus support to travelling students, staff and faculty. This was particularly relevant for the university, which is responsible for thousands of community members who travel overseas every year to international campuses and partner exchange locations for a proportion of their studies.
Les highlighted some critical incidents, from the 2015 Bataclan attacks and the recent Nahel Merzouk riots in Paris, to the 2018 Strasbourg attack on a Christmas market, the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the current unrest in Bangladesh. In each of these examples, he explained how SafeZone enables the university to proactively communicate with students during challenging situations and vice versa. This means university executives remain appraised of what is occurring, the level of risk exposure to affected individuals, and what is being done to either repatriate students or communicate with them to ensure they are safe whilst travelling.
Recognising the role of universities in the wider community
CriticalArc’s Sector Leader, Iain Pennell, brought the event to a close with an overview of the SafeZone Alliance and examples of associated community safety initiatives that are currently in place. These include the Cardiff Safety Bus, the Connected Routes agreed between universities in Canterbury, and the Manchester Student Partnership programme that enables students to access support from different SafeZone user organisations across the greater Manchester area. Iain commented that with every city where a university is located comes the potential to work with local authorities, charities, and other agencies like those within the nighttime economy sector to help keep people safe.
He concluded: “Universities are at the heart of local communities and have a much bigger role to play in fostering safety and prosperity as part of wider civic engagement opportunities. This underpins the importance of the SafeZone Alliance and our CriticalArc company mission to provide Safety Everywhere® as more and more universities adopt SafeZone to support their community members around the world.”
To find out how your organisation could leverage SafeZone to transform safety on and off campus, book a demo today.