11/29/2021—With the evolution of the Internet of Things devices (IoT), products enabled with everything from sensors to location tracking, major advancements have been made in how businesses are run. The IoT market is predicted to top $1.3 trillion by 2026, a huge growth from the $761.4 billion seen in 2020.1 As more businesses adopt IoT, utilizing the technology to do everything from monitoring employee productivity to streamlining data collection and creating business forecasts, privacy is a valid concern. With Connected Resources™ or CoRe, the world’s most comprehensive IoT-enabled resource management platform, we aim to streamline business practices while protecting the privacy of your company and workforce.
Mobile apps are a component of IoT devices and are downloaded to someone’s cellphone for analytic purposes, including contact tracing, onsite location tracking, employee clock in or out time and more. In a previous article, we discussed in-depth seven reasons why timekeeping mobile apps are counter productive. The privacy issues with this kind of application are obvious, as requiring the use of an employee’s personal cellphone can not only endanger their personal data but also be discriminatory, should an employee not have a cellphone for personal reasons. VOS Systems custom designed their own privacy-centric IoT devices to be distributed to employees, protecting their right to personal privacy and ensuring everyone in your workforce is utilizing the same software.
CoRe smart badges are worn by your workforce to enhance safety, monitor productivity, record work hours, and track training and safety records. Our devices can also manage materials used on worksites, create AI-developed forecasts for your business, and effectively remove human data collection errors. Smart badges can simplify payroll, enhance safety with features like SOS-button alerts and emergency evacuation management, create a more accurate real-time view of budgets and worksites, creating more accurate estimates, and so much more. While the many capabilities of CoRe are vast, privacy is a value we work hard to maintain.
All data collected through CoRe smart badges can be anonymized and encrypted end-to-end to ensure employee identities and information are accessible only to designated admins in your company. Employee information collected with CoRe smart badges is only recorded during time spent at the worksite, within a designated Geofence that stops tracking devices when employees leave. For extra assuredness, employees can turn off their badges at the end of a workday.
While badges utilize location tracking to provide employee safety, foster productivity, and guard hazard zones, tracking stops when a worker is offsite. Tracking is also customizable, such as if your worksite changes due to travel. For example, lone workers whose worksite includes traveling to multiple areas can be tracked to ensure safety, and should an emergency occur in the field, they can quickly notify admins of their location.
In accordance with our privacy policy, VOS Systems and CoRe Connected Resources products are designed to protect all personally identifiable information of any company or individual using our products. No personal identifying information is stored on smart badges or is transmitted by or stored in our systems, other than personal information which a company using CoRe chooses to include. To specify, smart badges do not store or transmit any information that can identify an employee’s age, gender, movement, location (except for jobsite tracking), language preference, expertise (except for information in a smart badge’s training and safety profile), date of birth, or internet and social media contact information.
The only information used by CoRe is that which is provided by you for the purposes detailed above, with regards to smart badge usage. That information is sent to our servers and is non-identifiable, only admins of your CoRe dashboard can use the information and smart badge designations to identify workers. We also have a do not sell policy, assuring customers that we will not sell, trade or share user-provided information, including their name, phone number, email or physical address, with non-VOS third parties. Nor will we send mailings on behalf of other unrelated organizations. This policy applies to all information received by VOS and CoRe products, both online and offline, as well as any electronic, written or oral communication.
Improving safety and workplace productivity cannot be at the expense of personal privacy. At VOS systems, we’ve invested millions of dollars to deliver a solution that is cellphone independent and backed by software architecture that guarantees that.
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1 Crane, C. (2021, April 21). Re-hashed: 27 surprising IOT statistics you don’t already k..now. Hashed Out by The SSL Store™. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/20-surprising-iot-statistics-you-dont-already-know/.
1. Increase the Safety of Your Workforce
One benefit of CoRe’s analytical technology is reducing job site dangers, thus increasing the safety of your workforce. This is important for both employee retention and attraction. When taking on new recruits, conveying that their safety is a priority can provide reassurance and a sense of wellbeing. CoRe technology provides worker safety profiles, which can identify areas where workers need more training, keeping them from performing jobs they are not equipped for. These data-driven methods create positive motivations, as those starting at entry-level can enhance their safety and increase their value as a skilled worker.
2. Increase Workforce Skillset and Value
Adding growth opportunities to construction can attract younger workers. CoRe technology can assess skill level and provide training accordingly, thus enticing a younger generation as it increases their value and skillset with no cost to them. Skilled labor needs will continue to grow as the need for more construction and skilled laborers in the field grows. In fact, industries with the highest increase in jobs are skilled labor occupations like construction.4 Utilizing CoRe to identify skill gaps and provide additional training is one way to increase your company’s attractiveness to prospects.
3. Increase Overall Job Site Productivity
Another benefit of the analytical tech from CoRe is increasing productivity within your workforce, which can be especially helpful if you are still trying to bring on more workers. CoRe gives data to management with real-time views and insight into job conditions, productivity and issues that may slow down productivity. Managers can address these issues, such as worker downtime or a worker-job incompatibility with a job. A boost in productivity not only boosts employee morale, but the ability to complete jobs faster, leading to more revenue and more funding for recruitment.
4. Monetary Motivation
Monetary motivation is an efficient way to appeal to prospective employees. “One of the things construction is facing at the entry level is that if other jobs are paying wages of $15 to $17 an hour with bonuses, suddenly a construction firm that is paying $19 to $20 an hour doesn’t seem as attractive,” Ken Simonson, AGC’s chief economist said.1 CoRe can help you save costs by providing analytics around wasted time, inefficient resource utilization, and productivity per task (number of actual hours spent to complete one unit of a task). CoRe also uses AI-enabled algorithms to forecast expenses based on facts and trends, to help you better plan your resources. With the reliable data provided by CoRe, you can help your project and your company reduce redundant cost of labor, equipment, and material by up to 7%, which can then be used as bonus incentives for your workforce.
5. Monetary Incentives
Data can also help provide monetary incentives through setting quantifiable targets to complete specific tasks, and monitoring how the actual performance compares to those targets. With technologies like CoRe, you are able to understand the exact number of labor hours spent to achieve a target and can invest engaging execution, incentivizing your workforce for optimal results
As a new generation enters the workforce, it’s now more essential than ever to show them the benefits of working in the growing and demanding construction field. CoRe Connected Resources is honored to provide the technology and analytical insight to help convey and increase those benefits for your company and help you get your workforce back in action.
