Safety and medical technology company Draeger Safety UK, has issued a call for greater adoption of digital and connected safety technologies in light of changes to working styles post-Covid. This follows a warning issued by the company last year that British industry is ‘missing an opportunity’ in this area to improve employee safety.
The safety and medical technology leader, which has undertaken research on this subject* found that only half (54%) of UK managers believed that their organisation is making progress in relation to the availability of improved safety data through Industry 4.0 technology. This is despite 89% of managers indicating that their organisation would like to make better use of safety-related data, and 79% of managers reporting that increasingly dispersed workforces and lone working was a significant challenge for workplace safety.
Dräger hopes its campaign will raise awareness of technological safety advances amongst businesses, and improve understanding of the benefits – for both employee safety and corporate accountability.
David Head, Senior Marketing Manager at Draeger Safety UK, said: “Recent advances in technology, such as the increasing strides made in relation to connectivity, offer huge potential to improve workplace safety, particularly in light of new ways of working post-Covid. But there is a real lack of awareness amongst many businesses, and a slow pace of adoption of life-saving technology as a result.
"Advances in areas such as gas detection are a good example of the improvements being made; gas detection devices can now feed information back to live interactive data dashboards which can be securely accessed by managers working remotely, via a web app. At any given moment, a manager can assess the live situation in relation to gas safety at any given site, check whether any colleagues are at risk, and if so, what action can be taken to safeguard their wellbeing, including sharing the real-time monitoring information with emergency services, if needed.”
As part of its work to improve understanding in the area, Dräger hosted a ‘safety surgery’ at Safety & Health Expo 2022 on the topic for those keen to know more, where specialists were on hand to answer questions about digital and connected safety. The company is also undertaking further independent research in this area to develop broader understanding of the issues around better adoption connected and digital safety technology.
