Safety is considered to be of utmost priority in the agricultural industry. However, accidents still happen due to certain unavoidable instances while harvesting or performing other agricultural tasks. Now, the technology is proven to prevent those accidents and reduce injuries before they occur.
The Western Growers Insurance Services has rolled out the Connected Worker Program, which leverages the latest wearable technology advancements to identify specific motion and determine the unsafe movements of workers. The data gathered by this tool will be shared with the supervisor to detect the risk trends, enhance the existing safety measures, and train the employees on injury prevention tactics.
Their intuitive app gathers and monitors the data from the wearable devices such as smartphone worn on the belt or body sensors. It delivers the ongoing analysis of employee’s movement. If there is an occurrence of an injury, its coordinated messaging application sends real-time wellbeing cautions to the worker and the supervisor.
WGIS President Jeff Gullickson says, “In developing the data-driven Connected Worker Program, we were equally focused on worker safety and workplace productivity. With several hundred thousand hours of worker data logged, this solution is proven to lower the risk of injury from field to facility, simultaneously increasing the earnings potential of employees and lowering worker’s compensation costs and insurance premiums for employers.”
The Connected Worker Program works as follows:
- It assembles and monitors data from a wearable device worn by the employees during their work time.
- It recognizes the laborer’s movements and distinguishes any wrong developments. It could be a lousy twist or lift that impacts the employee’s health.
- The integrated messaging feature immediately notifies the supervisor and the employee to lessen the risk of injury.
Gullickson further adds, “In applying the data trends from the Connected Worker Program, agricultural businesses can identify and evaluate necessary changes to equipment or processes, ultimately promoting a safer work environment, improving operational efficiencies and cutting costs.”
Moreover, the Connected Worker Program comes with the COVID-19 features for the agricultural segment. Now, the workers can log their everyday temperature readings, store the answers to health screening questions, and trace the contacts using the data collation and GPS options of this application.
This program is also proven to be helpful for businesses in several ways. They can save money by taking more control over employee’s safety and reducing the rate of injuries. That is, fewer injuries results in fewer compensation claims and lower premiums. Similarly, evaluating the data trends help them identify all the necessary changes to equipment or processes, and improvise the operations and cut costs.
Microsoft Band is another example of such wearable technology used by agro-industries. Started with a Microsoft financed venture, it connects the temperature of the subjects to the biometric tracker from the band, like internal body temperature and pulse. Such tools were designed to optimize sports person’s performance, but now they are found to be useful in monitoring worker health and safety.
On the off chance that the band shows the spike in the laborer’s pulse, it is in all probability, an indication of something wrong. In case of such incidents, it signals the machinery to disengage or shut down quickly. This methodology is as yet being investigated for commercialization.
