Minimize the health hazards and improving the well-being of employees remain a critical role of an HR team in any organization.
As per a report by the Indian Labor Organization, organizations spend an average of 3. 94% of the GDP in employee treatments. This same study revealed 2.78 million deaths and 3.74 million non-fatal injuries occur every year at work. This figure and the entire expenditure organizations are making towards mitigating these fatalities can be decimated with the help of various IoT devices. These IoT wearables are quite helpful in monitoring workers’ health. The IoT wearables are embedded with modern smart systems that can gather and send critical information about employee’s health, working conditions, their exposure to risk and so on.
From monitoring employee vital details, measuring driver performance, collecting injury data, accelerating emergency evacuation and monitoring heaving lifting activities, the IoT wearables shall cater to everything. There is now a long list of top wearable technologies to adapt today.
Let us have a look at a few of them here:
Developed and manufactured in London, Eleksen are essentially fabric sensors. When industrial safety is of utmost important, Eleksen comes in handy. This British start-up has helped a lot of industries improve their workers safety in its entirety. They offer a Tap&Go connected worker solution that can be integrated with other safety solutions adopted in the industry.
Retenua is a Swedish start-up that offers Emitrace. Emitrace is an intelligent sensor system for driver assistance and mobile machinery. This technology embeds a camera within that always alerts the driver if there is a potential collision ahead. This wearable technology is an on-going vision system to prevent potential accidents in manufacturing and construction sector.
A German start-up, Qoowear develops an intelligent garment, which is controlled through AI. This is essentially a heating garment that is infused with the capability to change its temperature to keep the body temperature balanced. This is helpful when the workers have to work under sub-zero degree climates. This wearable technology is truly helpful in boosting safety and productivity in real time.
Read More: Five Simple Steps to Improve Your Employee Experience
There is a huge communication gap in manufacturing industries where there are various connecting aspects that need to stay connected always. It is imperative for these industries to collect data about the workers, the environment, equipment, vehicles and so on. A Canadian start-up Behr Tech has come up with end-to-end wireless connectivity solutions designed for manufacturing sectors. Their innovative solution helps connect workers, equipment, machinery to improve the response time, safety and productivity.
This start-up has innovated a product to optimize and track sleep among athletes and those from the workforce 24*7. We have observed some of the mining, healthcare and transportation industries leveraging the benefits of such technology. Their products include Readiband Sleep Tracker and SAFTE Fatigue Model. They can be worn as an arm band and offers a battery life up to 30 days.
Blackline Safety is a Canadian Company offering various wearable devices to improve workers safety. G7 is the most popular offering from the company for gas detection and lone worker monitoring. Other devices and technologies offered are G7 Dock, diffusion and pump cartridge and so on. Their devices are being used in mining, gas, public works, healthcare, construction and many more industries.
This US based tech start-up manufactures voice controlled wearable devices for contract and hourly workers working in retail, manufacturing and healthcare sectors. They have designed ‘heads up and hands free’ communication and management solution to increase the safety and productivity of the employees.
Read More: Rising Gravity of HR Tech Skills for Specialists in the Domain
Many industries need their employees to experience hand arm vibration to accomplish their day to day tasks. However, this vibration should not be acute and severe. Reactec has developed a technology to track this vibration, which is known as HAVWEAR. This wearable device continuously monitors an employee’s hand and arm exposure of the vibrations in the industry.
Besides those arm bands, wearable garments, we have a smart wearable hat developed by a Birmingham based tech start-up Guardhat. This is a safety hat equipped with sensors, which monitor the working environment, number of hours spent and any physiological activities. The hat also sends signals to the worker if any dangerous equipment is approaching.
While we have wearable devices to measure the temperature, potential equipment around, pulse rates and so on, we have this smart patch to monitor the sweat of the workers. The patch monitors are developed by a San Francisco based company Kenzen that is targeted at workers and athletes. Soon, they are planning to target general consumers too.
Besides monitoring blood pressure, normal pulse rate, fatigue, sleep and so on, it is important today to monitor your employees health and safety with respect to the current pandemic. These wearables could be upgraded and updated so that they help you know if any of your employee is suffering from any critical disease.