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This week we will look at workforce technologies and the physical problems that can result from heavy labor.
Problem Statement: The modern day workforce still has a lot of physically intensive occupations where the body of an employee has to endure stress during the entire career. With increasing retirement ages, people are working longer and with more complaints.
The Result of Chronic Workplace Injuries: At the end of their career, a workers body is exhausted and can no longer fully enjoy everything that a retirement has to offer. Besides that, from an employer’s point of view, employees who walk around with physical problems and therefore can no longer work efficiently or end up at home, still have to be paid by the employer.
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Why It Matters: With an increasing number of companies realizing the importance of keeping workers healthy, they start to invest in technologies that can prevent injuries the same way as they do predictive maintenance on their industrial equipment. Reducing down time on a machine works the same way as on a human. If you think of it, we try to service our equipment as much as possible to reduce down time, why shouldn’t we do the same with our employees?
Innovation Within This Space: There are various technologies that prevent the employee’s physical problems. For example, there are wearable exoskeletons that can relieve the joints of a worker like Rotterdam-based Skelex, along with sensors that register whether an employee lifts heavy loads in the correct ergonomic way or even virtual reality applications that provide an employee with insights on how to work optimally. These products are innovative and promote the physical wellness of employees, but what about the return on investment that can be achieved on these hardware products and visualization of the benefits for the employer?
Solution of the Week – StrongArm Technologies: Founded in 2014 in the United States, StrongArm Technologies provides insight into the ROI of smart wearables that improve an employee’s physical health. In this way, companies gain insight into the returns that can be achieved by using the wearables. In addition, the employee can be given constructive feedback based on the data so that they will not overload their physical condition. Thus, StrongArm claims a central role in the pursuit of a stronger and healthier workforce!
Helping Reduce COVID-19 Risk at the Workplace: What is also admirable is that StrongArm Tech have beeen able to add more utility for their services in response to COVID-19. They enchanced their risk management platform to include Physical Distancing Alerts, Contact Tracing Capabilities and Customizable Daily Reports, reporting that their current deployments have seen COVID risk drop by as much as 95% in just 10 days.