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The Manual Handling Technology That is Saying Goodbye to Workers Comp Claims

A New Era of Industrial Ergonomic Safety is upon us. Technology is changing the way forward when it comes to improving productivity in the workplace; by keeping workers injury free.

• By Toni-Louise Gianatti
• Feb 14, 2021

Get ready, safety leaders - are you geared up to push the boundaries of manual handling safety? Pretty soon your workers will be wanting these pocket-sized wearables to assist them to move safe at work. The upside? Less injuries = happier workplace = improved productivity.

The Soter Clip&Go is as simple as the name suggests. A worker clips it to their shirt and off they go. Ready for an engaged program of learning about how, when and how many times they move, and when they are fatigued. They receive individualized notifications when a hazardous movement is made, optimizing training and health. The real-time biofeedback has been proven to prevent injury and overuse issues, creating sustainable behavioral change.

With 10,000 plus workers already on board, this technology is not just a trend. Organizations around the globe have seen up to 55% injury reduction, changing the standard of industrial manual handling training and improving productivity by reducing the risk factors that lead to injury.

A product that keeps the safety conversation going amongst workers as they track, share, compare and improve their movement data. With a 93% positive feedback rating, workers are saying:

“I love how it made me more aware of how I was moving” 

“A great demonstration that certain movements I might have previously considered unimportant can still have an impact either singularly and/or cumulatively” 

“The device made me think about my movement before commencing activity” 

These high-tech tiny devices are flipping the process around. Individual workers can be responsible to follow their own injury reduction program, harboring an autonomous learning experience.

Using AI and machine learning, the Soter device alerts the worker of exposures to known risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders that according to OSHA increase a worker's risk of injury:

• lifting heavy items
• bending
• reaching overhead
• pushing and pulling heavy loads
• working in awkward body postures
• performing the same or similar tasks repetitively

Head of Health, Safety & Environment at Travis Perkins plc, Mr Vimel Budhdev says, “In one simple instance, the device highlighted that one of our colleagues was bending at a low level roughly around 100 times a day so by easily moving some things around we have reduced around 26,000 high-risk bending movements in a year”.

Data Benefits
The lightweight Soter wearable not only alerts a worker to any movements that can potentially cause them harm, but also pings all data back to a communal hub where they can personally check their progress and gain virtual medals for improvement.

With a divide and conquer strategy, the Soter Clip&Go solution approaches the safety of workers from two angles:

1. Assists workers to reduce their risk factors through awareness, self-learning and individualized training via biofeedback
2. An online dashboard provides safety leaders with data driven insights to assist with implementing engineering controls or targeting training requirements

The use of data can assist in the opportunities to improve safety performance in the following ways:

• Consideration of hazards and risks when planning and designing facilities, processes, plant and equipment, and materials
• Modification of working processes including the alleviation of monotonous and repetitive work
• Introduction of new technology to ameliorate high risk activities
• Introduction of job safety analysis and task-related assessments
• Implementation of ergonomic and other injury prevention-related assessments

Soter Clip&Go Process in Brief:

1. Soter devices are collected and scanned out from a communal charging and data hub at the start of a shift.
2. Throughout the day, the device provides real-time audible and vibration biofeedback alerting workers of any hazardous movements.
3. At the end of the shift, the user returns the device to the hub, rescanning it, with the option to view all their own personal data and collect virtual medals to assist improvement.

Approaching employee safety from all angles to protect and eliminate risk factors improves productivity of your team.

If you want to know more about how Soter Clip&Go technology can engage your team, prevent injuries and increase productivity. Visit https://soteranalytics.com/solutions/clipgo/ or email [email protected] and one of our local representatives will be in touch.