Openreach Launches Peoplesafe to Protect Entire Workforce
Openreach, the largest broadband and telephone network operator in the UK, is rolling out Peoplesafe’s personal safety app across its UK workforce of 27,000 employees. This solution is designed to support the safety and wellbeing of their engineers who face increasing levels of abuse and threats while carrying out essential work to build and maintain the infrastructure that connects the UK.
The need for protection
Recent incidents involving Openreach engineers have included being spat at, pushed down stairs, threatened with dogs and knives, punched and kicked and even barricaded into homes and vans.
Since April 2025 there’s been around 700 incidents of either physical or verbal assaults and threats, including incidents where staff have needed time away from work to recover. This surge in abuse and assaults has led to them becoming the leading cause of injury among its workforce.
For a business with a national mandate to upgrade and future-proof the UK’s broadband infrastructure, this increase in violence and aggression poses a direct threat to delivery. Injuries, absence, reduced morale and heightened anxiety among frontline teams all impact productivity and the ability to meet ambitious rollout targets. 1 in 5 workers who felt unsafe reported a drop in productivity according to research from our report, Lone Worker Safety: Perceptions Realities and Business Impact. Over time, unmanaged risk also affects retention and recruitment in an already skills-constrained workforce.
Finding a solution
By ensuring engineers have immediate access to help, clear escalation pathways and reassurance that support is always available, Openreach can reduce the impact of incidents, support faster recovery when they do occur, and help keep vital connectivity projects on track. Protecting frontline workers is not only a duty of care, it’s essential to maintaining momentum on the UK’s digital infrastructure goals.
Engineer, Adrian, recently had to use the Peoplesafe app in an emergency while at work. He said:
Recently I was working in the street to reconnect a vulnerable customer which involved a road closure, when a local resident furious at having to wait a short time started throwing traffic cones around and swearing. He got into his car drove along the pavement and then directly at me.”
But safety concerns aren’t limited to incidents that happen at work. Peoplesafe’s own research, Overcoming the Employee Safety Gap, found that 60% of people feel unsafe commuting on public transport during unsociable hours, while 50% worry about travelling to or from work alone.
Increasing safety without impacting workload
Openreach wanted safety in the event of an emergency. But they didn’t want engineers to do another task. They needed it to be part of their current everyday work, which is exactly what Peoplesafe has delivered. As James Shew, Senior Channel Account Manager at Peoplesafe said:
The tailored features within the Peoplesafe app have enabled us to meet the safety team’s vision and, most importantly, help ensure every colleague gets home safe and well.”
The app enables users to raise an SOS alarm, trigger fall detection alerts, and connect instantly to Peoplesafe’s 24/7 Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). From there, trained controllers assess the situation, stay on the line with the user, and coordinate emergency response where required.
The rollout follows a successful trial within Openreach’s Service Delivery unit, where detailed user feedback played a critical role in shaping how the service is configured and deployed across the wider organisation. Insights from frontline engineers helped ensure the solution aligned with real-world working practices, risk scenarios and the environments engineers operate in every day.
Openreach worked closely with Peoplesafe teams across project delivery, technology and service operations to tailor the service to its specific operational needs and risk profile. A key outcome of this collaboration was the integration between Peoplesafe and Openreach’s workforce management system, enabling personal safety protection to be embedded directly into existing workflows. This integration delivers significant value by removing friction for engineers. Safety monitoring and protection happen automatically in the background, triggered by the tools engineers already use to manage jobs and schedules. Engineers do not need to open, manage or interact with a separate safety app, allowing them to focus fully on their work without additional steps or distractions.
Engineers, like Adrian, who have already used the service have reported increased confidence knowing that professional support is immediately available at the press of a button. He added, “It’s really reassuring to know that I can get help with just the press of a button.”
The deployment also supports Openreach’s wider safety culture and ongoing investment in measures that help ensure employees return home safe and well each day. Alongside training, specialist equipment and safe working practices, the Peoplesafe partnership strengthens the organisation’s ability to respond quickly when incidents occur.
Commitment to employee safety
Adam Elsworth, Safety Director at Openreach, said:
The Peoplesafe app gives our people an added layer of safety while on the job and particularly for many of our colleagues that work alone for long periods of the day. It also helps us to address an area we have less control: attacks by members of the public.
While Peoplesafe will only be mandatory for our field teams (due to the nature of their work) we hope all of our people will use the app to have peace of mind and support if and when they need it.”
Naz Dossa, CEO at Peoplesafe, said:
Protecting Openreach’s engineers has never been more critical as public aggression towards frontline workers continues to rise across all sectors. Partnering with Openreach reflects our shared commitment to setting new standards in employee safety and demonstrates how safety can be operationalised at scale – embedding protection into everyday operations while giving leaders clear, efficient oversight of risk across a vast workforce.
Together, we’ve created an integrated solution built around our technology platform that connects to seamlessly Openreach’s systems and enables them to protect their people at scale. “
