At a glance:
- Rising risk: Frontline and distributed workers are facing increased safety risks, while managers are being held accountable for safety challenges they’re unable to see.
- Bridging the gap: Sonder’s new Team Safe capability connects personal safety with organisational oversight, allowing mobile, frontline and distributed teams to share their location and safety status.
- Coordinated, expert response: Team Safe integrates directly into Sonder’s escalation framework with support that includes clinical expertise, coordinated response and deployment where required.
- A new, proactive approach: This strengthens governance, supports duty of care and moves safety management closer to prevention.
The nature of work is changing. Many operational environments are becoming more unpredictable, less safe and higher risk.
Critical incidents reported through Sonder are increasing year-on-year. 42% of incidents are now safety-related, representing a 9% increase compared to the previous year. Sonder’s 2025 Safety Gap Report also found that 75% of customer-facing employees experience customer aggression, with 25% experiencing it weekly or more. At the same time, leaders report limited visibility into what is happening on the ground until after an incident has occurred.
Together, this signals a clear shift. Many employees now operate in environments that feel less predictable and more risky. Managers are being held accountable for safety without always having the tools to meaningfully see what is happening in real-time. And organisations face increasing expectations to demonstrate active, preventative approaches to safety to meet their duty of care.
From personal safety to organisational visibility
For years, Sonder has supported members with personal safety tools such as Check On Me and Share My Journey, plus safety notices and help alerts. These tools empower individuals and provide access to immediate support when something goes wrong, all backed by Sonder’s 24/7 Support Centre and responder network.
As frontline and operational environments have evolved, so too has the need for greater organisational visibility. Senior safety and operations leaders have been clear that during high-risk work and everyday operations, visibility is no longer optional.
Team Safe is Sonder’s response to that need. It bridges the gap between personal safety and organisational oversight, giving managers appropriate, consent-based oversight of shifts and shared safety activities, and then connecting that visibility directly to Sonder’s 24/7 Support Centre and coordinated response capability.
How does Sonder’s Team Safe work?
Team Safe is a new safety module that has been designed for mobile, frontline and distributed teams. It introduces four core capabilities:
- Share My Shift enables employees to begin a defined work shift within the Sonder app, sharing real-time location with a manager or team member of their choice. Visibility is active only for the duration of the shift and ends automatically when the shift is over.
- Shared safety activities allow employees to share Check On Me and/or Share My Journey with a nominated manager, bringing leaders into the workflow earlier if something escalates. This shifts the leader’s visibility of safety issues from post-incident awareness to being part of the process as issues unfold.
- Manager visibility and oversight provides leaders with a structured view of team members active shifts and shared activities, enabling earlier oversight while work is underway rather than only after an incident is reported.
- Escalation and response provides coordinated escalation through Sonder’s 24/7 Support Centre, notifying the nominated manager and enabling clinical, safety or emergency intervention where required.
Importantly, Team Safe is opt-in and activity-based. Location is only shared when a member explicitly chooses to share a shift, or toggle sharing on for a specific safety activity. This is not always-on. It is contextual, time-bound and transparent.
Safety escalation when something goes off track
Team Safe integrates directly into Sonder’s established safety escalation framework. When location sharing is enabled, managers are brought into the process earlier if an activity becomes overdue or a member raises a Help Alert.
When a shared shift or safety activity escalates, Sonder takes the following steps:
- Sonder attempts direct contact with the employee
- The nominated manager is notified and included
- The 24/7 Support Centre assesses the situation
- Clinical, medical or safety expertise is engaged
- Sonder Responders or emergency services are deployed where required
With Team Safe, visibility is directly connected to coordinated expert response.
Closing the visibility gap for organisations
For organisations operating in distributed environments, this represents a structural shift in how safety is managed.
Rather than relying solely on retrospective incident reporting, leaders gain operational visibility while work is underway. Rather than assuming safety tools are being used, organisations can now understand adoption patterns and intervene where required.
This strengthens governance, supports duty of care and moves safety management closer to prevention.
Connecting safety to Sonder’s broader support
Risk exposure in higher-risk roles is not limited to violent incidents. It can include vehicle accidents, medical episodes, mental health crises or rapidly escalating customer interactions. In many of these situations, the right response is not simply an alert. It is clinical guidance, coordinated support or professional intervention.
Because Team Safe integrates directly into Sonder’s established escalation framework, safety events are assessed and managed by trained professionals in real-time. Support extends beyond location tracking or alarm triggers to include clinical expertise, coordinated response and deployment where required.
In this way, Team Safe becomes an entry point into a broader safety and care ecosystem, one that connects frontline safety events to medical, mental health and safety expertise and supports everyday risk as well as critical incidents.
A new control measure for at risk workers
Team Safe marks an important evolution in how organisations manage mobile, frontline and distributed teams. It is available as a cohort-based add-on for specific worker groups, enabling organisations to deploy enhanced safety capabilities where risk is highest, without requiring organisation-wide rollout.
This supports businesses looking for a more targeted and risk-aligned approach to safety investment, particularly in environments where exposure is uneven across the workforce.
Team Safe provides organisations with an additional control measure for higher-risk roles. It is designed to prevent harm, strengthen duty of care, and give managers confidence that their people are not navigating risk alone. Because when something does start to go off track, support should already be in motion.
To see Team Safe in action, join our upcoming webinar for a walkthrough of the features, plus a live Q&A.
To hear more about how Sonder could support your people, book a demo.
