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Every day we are in virtually constant communication with our family and friends through our cell phones.
On a limited basis, we may even use our cell phones to conduct business activities. We do this through email, text and other applications that exist enabling us to instantaneously connect and communicate. Yet on a larger-scale, this high degree of communication is lacking in the workplace. At the management level, it’s true that the many of us use our cell phones to communicate with our coworkers but this communication takes place infrequently and certainly not as a universal communications tool within the plant.
Within the workforce, while individuals may communicate with selected coworkers, there is little utilization of cell phones for general communication. The result is there can be a significant negative impact on personal safety, increased productivity and in general, plant-wide communication.
While some firms believe that cell phones can be utilized to achieve a high level of in-plant communication, within both management and the workforce, they are wrong on several levels. Let’s examine why using personal or company-issued cell phones to improve communication, increase productivity and provide an enhanced level of personal safety is not the solution.
Let’s address personal cell phones first. Your cell phone is your personal space. You selected it, you purchased it and on a monthly basis, you pay for its use. While you may use it at times to communicate workforce-related issues it is not designed for this purpose and more importantly, individuals are reluctant to use their cell phones in this manner. A survey conducted on this topic clearly indicated that over 80% of the personnel both within management and the hourly workforce would not choose to use their personal cell phones as a primary tool for communication within the plant. When asked why the most prevalent comment was that they believed that utilizing their cell phone in this manner was a violation of their personal space and an imposition on how they chose to use their personal property.
Further, if a company was to support the use of an individual’s personal phone for business activity many questions and problems immediately arise; who will reimburse the owner for breakage or loss, who will pay for company-related charges, how will these charges be differentiated from personal use and how would a company address the additional charges if someone was to exceed the usage limitation covered by their cell phone plan. To further complicate matters, cell phones are not typically weather or dust resistant and certainly are not designed to stand up to the heavy use that would be required in a plant environment. Additionally, many plants have an issue with using cell phones in potentially flammable work environments such as oil refineries. While cell phones are now considered non-incendiary devices (there is no potential for the phone to potentially be a source of ignition) there are still many firms out there that will not permit their use in the field.
On the system side, there are many different cell phone devices in use which could easily cause connectivity problems and network issues if they were being utilized for communication or large data transfer. On large projects with hundreds of workers in the field trying to utilize personal cell phones, it is easy to understand how this could overload the capability of the cell tower system ultimately breaking down communication entirely.
Consequently, it is very clear when you think about it that personal cell phones are not the answer, both from the cell phone owner and from the company’s point of view. There are firms that have tried using the personal cell phone approach, while they may experience a short-term gain, as usage levels increase and as various new applications are identified that can further improve on the work effort, the ability of personal cell phones to accommodate this new technology will be lacking.
Now let’s address company-issued cell phones. The issue of a common device with standard applications doesn’t exist. After all, the company will be issuing the phones and has control over what applications are installed. That’s not the problem with company-issued phones. The main issue is that company-issued phones do not allow you to attain your goal; providing communication across the entire workforce – management and hourly alike. Equipping everyone with a company-issued phone would be cost-prohibitive and as a result totally impractical. Even if a distribution plan of this sort was attempted it would be exacerbated for large projects or turnarounds with literally thousands of people on site. How would you issue and control the phones? How could you confine their use to company business, and how would you get them back when the work was completed? When all these problems are taken into consideration it should be clear that just like personal phones, company-issued phones are also not the answer.
What is needed is a standalone and interconnected device that is not a cell phone, can be provided to all employees by the company and which can be used to promote safety, a high degree of interpersonal communication, can accumulate and transfer data and will vastly improve the productivity of the organization.
Another benefit of a standalone interconnected device is its ability to locate employees within the plant. Conceptually this might be a problem for many in the workforce who could feel that management was tracking their whereabouts with the potential for punitive action if they were not at their assigned location. However, when you stop to think about it, the tracking aspect of these devices can provide an enormous benefit. For example, if an employee was to wander into a restricted area, they could be alerted thereby avoiding potential safety exposure. These devices also would provide immense value if there was a need to evacuate the job site. With a locator system, the safety organization would be able to determine if there were any individuals left in the area that needed to be evacuated. From a worker’s standpoint tracking also has immense value, and the individuals while worried about being monitored by management certainly would take an entirely different view if they were disabled on-site and needed to be quickly located for immediate assistance. While tracking of personnel may initially be an issue, there is a strong belief that based on the overall benefits over time it will be as accepted as normal behavior the same way we feel about wearing a hardhat, safety glasses, Nomex, safety shoes and earplugs when going out into the field.
Using personal or company-issued cell phones in the plant for company business on a daily or project basis is not the answer, but there is a solution provided by PK Technology. It’s called the weavix™ “Smart Badge” and delivers a wide variety of benefits in the areas of safety, plant-wide communication and increased productivity. The device is wearable, it is lightweight, Class 1 Div 2 compliant, weather and dustproof and inexpensive which makes providing it to all employees easily attainable. A list of potential applications that can be provided using the Smart Badge coupled with the weavix™ integrated data-sharing platforms is extensive. The value of this new approach can provide your organization will be a game-changer.
For more information please contact Justin Nickel (jnickel@pksti.com) or visit www.weavix.com.