Workplace safety for employees has increasingly gained widespread attention and concern owing to the heavy health and safety risks it poses for workers. Construction and mining industries, for instance, often have workplaces in which injuries and fatalities are very common, putting firms under heavy security into taking responsibility for ensuring the safety of their employees.

According to the United States Department of Labor, 14,000 employee fatalities occurred before the development of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). While the number has dropped to around 12 fatalities a day, it still raises concerns on what steps organizations can take to minimize such incidents. Firefighters, mechanics, metal crafters, sanitation workers, construction workers, and miners all face tremendous health and safety challenges. Therefore, it is imperative that employers implement the right policies and tools in providing adequate protection to their workers.

Technology is one of the ways through which organizations can ensure employee health and safety.

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How technology can improve workplace safety?

Whenever technology is mentioned in the context of business, one usually assumes that the purpose is to advance IT strategy or enhancing worker productivity. However, technology for the purposes of health and safety is gaining more traction due to the pressures placed upon organizations to comply with HSE laws and standards.

Employers have recourse to a number of software applications that can enable them to incident reporting, OSHA record-keeping, leave and medical management, employee safety monitoring, training, and reporting, and worker compensation. While technology has been preventing worker fatalities and injuries for many years, the emergence of more sophisticated tools and gadgets offers a fresh perspective on how workplace safety can be further improved.

3D visualization technology

The 3D visualization software technology is allowing employees to become more aware of their workplace surroundings and its related dangers. The software works by generating lifelike images by

recording the image using two angles. This brings about immense advantages for employers for training their workers on using 3D visualization software for a given environment. New workplace sites and environments can easily be recreated and imagined, allowing workers to know the dangers and risks well in advance. It can further notify managers on what safety equipment and materials workers would require to ensure no casualties or injuries occur.

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The use of high speed communication and real-time data technology

Another way in which technology can be utilized to improve workplace safety is by harnessing the strengths of high-speed communication. Workers that are required to work within remote and isolated environments, experience many risks. For example, sales workers, who are required to travel domestically and abroad are very likely to encounter situations of vandalism, theft, kidnapping, and political disorder.

As a result, employers can find it difficult to ensure the safety of their workers in such situations and be able to conform to high worker health and safety standards. However, with the use of advanced reporting tools that can collect real-time data and transfer information, employers will be in a much better position to remain updated about the health and safety status of their employees. Nowadays, they can make use of highly responsive communication technologies that are incredibly easy to deploy and efficient in meeting health and safety standards.

Journey management software

The prospect of travel work can be nightmarish to say the least, especially if there are considerable risks involved while flying, driving, or using any means of transport to another location. This is why a journey management software program can allow employers to be instantly alerted when an employee has not checked-in at their scheduled time. SafetyIQ’s journey management software, for example, is WHS compliant and allow organizations to conform to the best travel risk management practices.