By Simon Chandler – It might sound like the stuff of dystopian science fiction, but connecting workers and employees through the Internet of Things (IoT) will provide a significant boost to workplace productivity and safety. Even now, startups and major corporations are providing services which help businesses track their staff, and in the process their improvements to efficiency will force other businesses to follow suit, or risk falling behind.

First of all, connecting workers to IoT-based platforms and clouds isn’t really about keeping tabs on them like some kind of workplace Big Brother. As solutions from the likes of Oracle, Accenture, Intel, SAP, and Romware all show, safety and security are the primary goals of most smart devices used to monitor employees.

For example, Oracle’s IoT Connected Worker Cloud service lets companies monitor the locations of their employees in hazardous environments, alerting and notifying workers whenever they approach particular dangers or hazards, as well as controlling access to restricted and potentially dangerous areas. Likewise, Intel produces a range of wearable devices which have been used by fire and rescue services to track where exactly firefighters are in a building or environment, so that they can easily be assisted if in danger or redeployed to different areas. And in much the same vein, the Belgium-based Romware provides the logistics, construction, and energy industries with an all-in-one Smart Worker Wearable which sends out alerts when un- or undertrained employees use dangerous machines, and which emit distress signals whenever a worker accident occurs. Read On: