Your Healthcare IT Clients Employees: Surprisingly Open To Workplace Wearables

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Your clients are likely inundated with exciting new advances and growth in the healthcare arena. It can be difficult for them to decide which technologies and initiatives would have real impact on their businesses, but thankfully, employee feedback can help get them going in a productive direction.

Employee Attitudes

It’s worth questioning how employees actually react to the concept of wearables (a fast-growing market), and a survey from Cornerstone OnDemand reveals a surprising level of openness to the technology.

A small number of employees surveyed (12 percent) said they use wearable tech in their work. Of that group though, 71 percent said it aided their productivity. A whopping 72 percent believe that wearables will eventually become standard in the workplace, and 66 percent would be open to using it if it helped them perform better at their jobs — that’s up 7 percent from the previous years’ survey.

In The Health Arena

If your clients want to take advantage of these trends and attitudes, they’re going to have to take some proactive steps in getting their employees and staff involved and commit to an ongoing focus on overall employee health.

The founder and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, Adam Miller, weighed in: “Workers say they are feeling overloaded and unproductive, but the bigger question is whether their employers know they’re feeling this way. The survey results emphasize how critical it is for organizations to have a better pulse on their workforce, whether it is gaining the right insight, having the right conversations or enabling the right levels of transparency. The ability to help employees tackle productivity roadblocks and thrive in their roles not only helps businesses to stay competitive but also can increase employee engagement and loyalty.”

Implications For VARs

What this means for VARs, is that you’ll need to address employee acceptance and attitudes, along-side other concerns around wearables.

As discussed before, wearables provide multiple opportunities for data collection, and this is no different in the work environment. With companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung announcing RPM (remote patient monitoring) devices, the opportunities are great.

This also touches on the analytics market. Companies are bridging the gap between wearable collected and generated data, and clinical applications. This especially pertinent in the area of chronic conditions, many of which are exacerbated by workplace environments, specifically back pain, and other issues that result from sedentary jobs.

Going Deeper

Read up on the potential benefits of custom, mobile apps for your clients here.