No one doubts that since 2019 December and the events of 2020, working remotely has taken centre stage for a lot of office workers, with all its pros and cons. Working from home was not a choice for many employees to begin with, but because of the global pandemic, majority of the businesses have realised having a ‘virtualized office’ might be the way forward from a safety perspective and even an economic stand.
Internet of Things has always been a buzz word in the past decade and now more than ever it is very instrumental in keeping remote workplace ticking. However, a lot of business in various industries do not foresee remote working as a forever thing and their options are being considered to help the workforce back to working in the office pre-covid and meanwhile fitness has taken a toll as well.
Lately as lockdown restrictions across most of the world begin to ease, organisations are looking at ways of safely returning their staff to offices and even non-essential factories like automotive etc.
Things that used to be the norm like desk sharing, car sharing, long meeting in conference rooms, could well be things in the past with many businesses in the electronic parts supply industry like oemsecrets.com stating they will encourage their staff to work from home where they feel safe and meet occasionally to maintain those close bonds that keep the organisation what it is with team building days.
In this article, we look at how smart devices and industrial IoT products can help workers in companies that need their workers inhouse more for better work efficiency return to work faster.
Table of Contents
Reconnecting the smart enterprise
Recent research shows that nearly 30% of organisation are planning on investing in IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) smart devices to assimilate the workforce back safely for when come back. 50% have already started improving the workplace with contactless smart devices with sensors and according to Rangersdog.com wearable technology tracking geolocation like gps trackers used for cars, pets, and fitness.
These devices do not only apply in the internal environment, but they have practically been used in the external location. For example, one small construction and development company has given it workers hardhats with sensors that pretty much monitor their vitals from oxygen intakes, heartbeat, temperature and programmed to detect elements within the environment like dust, heat (hot or cold), toxins and feed back to the system.
These wearable products are helping executives help shape the safety of the workplace and lets see how this can be applied to ensure we maintain our social distance, increase ventilation and improve hygiene both personal and workplace surfaces.
Where and How can this smart IoT devices be used in workplace?
- Ventilation
Since most building is tightly insulated to keep heat in and save on energy it will be hard to control ventilation unless they build hospital style ventilation that suck bad air rather than distribute it round like old-school air-conditioning systems. This might be a costly investment and simple systems using sensors to check and monitor indoor air quality including humidity, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide level and pathogens can be helpful. Good ventilation will help in isolation as well as preventing the virus from spreading to co-workers.
- Symptom checks
Technology has gone such a long way and organisation now have installed cameras that can pick recordings of high temperature on staff which is one of the key symptoms of covid. Temperate checks on controlled access doors that will not allow your though if you had a fever. Artificial intelligence can now identify symptoms through simple requests like coughing on a browser app before coming to work and this can ID healthy people from asymptomatic people. This test was done by university of Massachusetts Amherst and was 98.5% accurate on picking up people with covid.
Social distancing
Sensor especially proximity sensors work well for this task. Employees can have wearable devices that will be programmed to help maintain safe distance and warn you to avoid locations that have been isolated.
Conclusion
Smart technology devices are the answers to making the workplace a safer place post-covid. When we eventually begin to return to work, we will need to use common sense and also rely on technology to guide our every move to keep us and our work colleagues safe and healthy.
Article written by https://www.electronicscomponents.co.uk/ editor: Matt Hankcok
My passion of providing Tech to Gadget lovers with the latest ups & downs happening in the World of Technology and innovation made this blog come true.