> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Lone worker safety for security guards in South Africa - URL: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/lone-worker-safety-security-guards/ - Published: 2026-10-06T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-06T08:00:00.000Z - Description: On a single-guard night post, the next shift change can be the first time anyone notices something went wrong. How welfare checks shorten that gap, and how to choose the interval. - Author: Liam van Huyssteen - Tags: Security operations, Sentry, #kw: lone worker safety, #link: guard-sleeping-on-duty | And the ordinary one: a guard asleep at 03:00 | a guard asleep at 03:00 Lone worker safety for security guards comes down to one question: if the guard alone at this post cannot respond, how long before anybody knows? On a single-guard night post the honest answer is often the next shift change, up to 12 hours later. A lone worker safety system exists to make that time short and to prove you were checking. ## What does South African law expect for guards working alone? The Occupational Health and Safety Act does not have a section on lone workers. Section 8 puts a general duty on every employer to provide and maintain, as far as reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risk to employees' health. "Reasonably practicable" is the part that matters. When a guard collapses, is assaulted or simply does not answer for six hours, the question afterwards is what the employer did to find out sooner. A supervisor's call once a night, with no record, is a hard thing to point to. ## What can go wrong for a guard on their own? A medical emergency, where the guard cannot call for help. An assault at a remote gate, where the phone may be the first thing taken. A fall on a dark perimeter. And the ordinary one: a guard asleep at 03:00, with the site unguarded and nobody the wiser until morning. The first three are about the guard's safety and the last is about the client's. The same check covers all four, because in each case the guard stops responding. ## How do welfare checks work in Sentry? Sentry runs welfare checks on the shared handset at the post. An admin sets two things: - How often the check runs: every 15 or 30 minutes, or every 1, 2 or 4 hours. - How long the guard has to answer: 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 minutes. When a check is due, the handset wakes, even locked and dark, and plays a sound that forces an answer. It is loud enough to wake a guard who has fallen asleep on duty, which is the point. The guard confirms they are fine, answers an arithmetic question so a pocket cannot answer for them, and then identifies themselves. Each check is answered, missed or failed. Answered means the guard responded in time. Missed means nobody responded before the window closed: the control room gets a notification on the dashboard, and the department heads get a WhatsApp and an email. Failed means the guard got both arithmetic questions wrong. They still have to identify themselves, so the record shows who was holding the handset. The control room can see every check, successful or not. Over a month that becomes the answer to the question the OHS Act leaves open: here is how often we checked, and here is what happened each time. ## How often should lone worker safety checks run? There is no standard number. The right interval depends on the site. A short interval finds a problem sooner and interrupts the guard more. Every 15 minutes on a quiet post all night gets tiresome, and a guard who is tired of the alarm starts looking for ways around it. Every 4 hours is easy to live with and leaves a long gap. Check more often where the risk is higher: a site that has had incidents at night, a remote post far from help, or a guard who is new to the job. Where a post is quiet and the guard is experienced, a longer interval is easier to live with and the guard is less tempted to work around it. ## What about emergencies? A welfare check finds a guard who has stopped responding. It is the wrong tool for a guard who needs help now, because the next check may be an hour away. That is what the panic button is for. Every screen in the Sentry guard app has one, and a press reaches the control room as a notification, a webhook and a WhatsApp at the same time. We wrote about why [the panic alert will not guess who pressed it](https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/panic-button-unidentified/). ## Where to go from here Welfare checks and the panic button are both part of [Sentry](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry), alongside clock-in and the occurrence book on the same handset. If you run [staff who work alone across many sites](https://beathantechnologies.com/services/staff-management), security or otherwise, talk to us about how it would run on yours.