Safety Wearables Could Help to Save US Businesses US$200 Billion Annually on Insurance and Treatments from Workplace Injuries

Wearable safety devices designed to protect workers from numerous work place hazards are becoming increasingly prevalent, offering companies the ability to monitor the safety of workers, prevent issues from occurring, receive alerts to potential hazards, and respond to issues immediately. Currently the roughly 8.5 million annual occupational injuries and illnesses cost employers in the United States alone around US$200 billion in insurance and treatments, with 27 million working days lost each year. The wearable safety devices are aiming to help reduce the number of injuries and illnesses, and therefore the costs to the employers.

There are a number of companies that offer businesses devices to help protect their workers from a number of hazards, either preventing an accident from occurring by warning the user of a potential issues, or by ensuring that assistance is sent to the user immediately, such as medical care. Some of the devices include Honeywell’s wearable Connected Plant Skills Personal Gas Safety system, SoloProtect’s remote lone worker ID and key fob devices, Redpoint Positioning’s indoor wearable real-time location system, and Caterpillar’s fatigue monitoring wearable.

Honeywell’s wearable integrates with the company’s distributed control system, Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), to enable companies to protect remote plant workers and speed up emergency response times. The wearable gas detector monitors gas, radiation, and dust levels, sending alerts to control room operators and plant operators in real time in the event of harmful exposure levels. Alerts are also sent when the integrated panic button is activated by the user or when the device detects a worker has fallen. Detailed trends, data analytics, identification, and location data are also provided to ensure workers receive emergency care faster, preventing more serious issues and reducing worker downtime, and to allow plant operators to identify and stop gas leaks, recognize malfunctioning gas monitors, and generate safety reports for regulatory compliance.

SoloProtect’s ID or key fob devices allow the user to discreetly link to a 24/7 alarm receiving center where a controller can hear the user and the sounds from their environment and send help as required. This ensures that if the user is being threatened or is injured, he or she can receive immediate assistance. Redpoint Positioning’s wearable real-time location system shows employee location and provides alerts in the event that a user steps into a hazardous area, preventing injuries or exposures to harmful substances. An emergency call button allows the user to call for help if required, and the location technology ensures that the user can be found accurately and immediately. Caterpillar’s worker safety wearable that monitors fatigue, allowing companies to understand the connection between sleep, fatigue, and accident risk, and ensure that a fatigued worker is not completing a high-risk task.

These worker safety wearables, as well as an increasing number of others, with form factors most commonly including wristbands, ID cards, key fobs, and already required personal protective equipment like helmets and safety vests, allow companies to monitor various aspects of worker health and safety, ensuring that any issues are detected and rectified immediately. This reduces the chances of serious, long-term injuries and worker downtime, increasing a company’s safety record, saving worker costs, and reducing the chances of high worker turnover as workers are less likely to leave if they feel safer. The small, easy-to-use form factor of the devices ensures that workers do not leave them behind and enables them to easily use the technology correctly. This helps to increase compliance and ensure that all workers are kept safe at all times.

The safety wearable market will continue to grow as the number of companies looking to protect the workforce and improve worker safety records increases. To take advantage of this trend, wearable companies, and other types of device manufacturer, should look into the vendors currently offering the devices, such as those outlined above, particularly the different types of form factor on offer and what the devices monitor, and consider entering into the worker safety monitoring market. This could be via developing new devices with different, specific use cases to ensure that workers are fully protected from the hazards that they are facing and to help progress the market further. Alternatively, partnerships or acquisitions including current wearable safety device vendors may be undertaken to aid with the large-scale production of the devices that will be required as the number of companies looking to monitor worker safety increases, and to help ensure that the technology monitors exactly what is required of it.  

Companies that are looking to take advantage of this market and develop safety wearables need to ensure that the devices that are created accurately monitor the required information, such as fatigue, environment, and location, as false alerts or missed issues may cause workers and managers to abandon the technology. The devices must also be waterproof, drop-proof, and hard-wearing, as it is likely that they will be used outside, in extreme conditions, and in all weathers. They also require long battery lives to enable them to throughout a worker’s entire shift as this will ensure that the worker is fully protected at all times with a device that does not require regular charging or multiple devices to be used across a singular shift.

Companies with vulnerable employees should consider looking to use the devices to monitor worker safety to reduce costs, down-time, and worker turnover, as well as to help fulfill the legal duty of care to remote and lone workers, such as under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in the United States. These companies need to be aware of a number of aspects before participating in full-scale deployments. The company must fully investigate the capabilities of the device that it is looking to deploy to ensure that it monitors exactly what is required of it, such as fatigue levels, environmental conditions, and falls, while still providing cost savings. For example, according to a study conducted by the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, the University of California Berkeley’s center for the study and practice of tech-centric entrepreneurship and innovation, 850,000 U.S. soldiers were injured in the most recent wars, costing the government an average of US$2 million per injury. The study predicts that if wearable safety devices were used and prevented just 10% of those injuries, up to US$170 billion could have be saved, reducing costs for the government and avoiding unnecessary injuries. In many other instances, the use of these devices can help to reduce a company’s insurance costs due to the reduced numbers of accidents and injuries. Companies such as Transport for London, Sky, Amey, and more have participated in worker wearable safety device trials and deployed them due their ability to reduce costs associated with worker injury, downtime, and turnover.

Once a device has been identified, small-scale trials should be undertaken to ensure that it functions as required, has a suitable battery life, is easy for workers to use, and integrates well into the company’s current infrastructure. If the company decides to deploy the devices full-scale, it is vital that the workers that will be using them are alerted to how the information collected by the devices will be used and will not be detrimental to an individual’s prospects as this will help to avoid potential worker resistance.

With the number of worker safety wearables set to rise over the coming years, the enterprise wearable device market will continue to see an increase in shipment numbers, with the share of the overall wearables market also set to increase. In 2017, enterprise devices constituted 20% of all wearable shipments, but by 2022, ABI Research expects that to rise to nearly 30%. Wearables are increasingly being used in the workplace for a number of purposes, with worker health and safety monitoring becoming more established as larger numbers of companies now offer the technology to ensure that workers are protected in any location.