EMPLOYERS USE WEARABLE DEVICES TO MONITOR, LEARN MORE ABOUT WORKERS

To combat carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive motion ailments, wearable monitors are becoming increasingly important.

Could a simple wrist monitor have spared Nicole Thomas years of pain?

Thomas, 70, retired in 2014 after 40 years spent working for a “bunch of companies” in a “bunch of different cities.” At each stop, Thomas says she did the same thing: “Sat at a desk and punched in numbers.”

Thomas, who worked in finance for each of her employers, says she wakes up in pain every morning due to damaged nerves in her wrists and arms. “I stretch, take some pills with my coffee and I’m OK for most of the day,” she says. “But it’s always there. I feel it.”

A mother to two and grandmother to six, the Chicago resident says she sat in the same desk at her final job “right up against a wall” for more than 20 years. She’s currently seeking financial compensation from that employer, who she says, “was helpful when I was working there but since I retired, they don’t do anything.”

While working, Thomas says her wrists and arms hurt so badly that she would wrap them in ice packs when she came home each night and would “zone out” while she watched TV with her husband. “He used to call me Mrs. Freeze,” Thomas says.

Although the medical industry recognized Thomas’ ailment, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, in the 1950s, it didn’t take hold with the public until decades later. Today, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, defines as “a numbness and tingling in the hand caused by a pinched nerve in the wrist,” is found in employee handbooks and on breakroom posters across the country. It’s one of the reasons that employers recommend workers who use a desktop keyboard take hourly breaks. In many cases, companies will provide seating options, such as standing or kneeling desks, to help employees maintain a certain degree of movement and fluidity during the workday.

“I guess I started working too early,” says Thomas. “In 1974, no one said anything about Carpal Tunnel. In the ’70s, if I told my boss my wrists hurt, he probably wouldn’t have even looked up from his desk. I had one boss who I bet would have just told me to get him a cup of coffee.”

Warning signs

Today’s employers, while hopefully more sensitive than Thomas’ old supervisor, rely more on tangible evidence than personal statements when determining processes and practices. That’s why wearable monitors will become increasingly important in the future. Had the technology been available to Thomas’ employers, data might have shown that her unnatural wrist position was causing her unnecessary pain and hampering her productivity. Her company could have taken steps — wrist braces, correctly adjusted chairs and desks, information sessions — that might have prevented pinched-nerve injuries to all employees. Instead, the company likely dealt with more employee absences, decreased productivity and ultimately, increased workers’ compensation costs.

Thomas, who wears a wristband that monitors her steps and heartbeat, says she would have been all for a wearable tracker. “I wish someone monitored me,” she says. “I would have been a guinea pig.”

Today, companies are using personal tracking devices to monitor the habits of their employees. With open enrollment in full swing, many employees are considering the offer of a free Fitbit or Apple Watch — and a potential reduction in health care insurance costs — in exchange for stats on their heart rate, steps per day and more.

Several employers provide employees with back braces, knee bands, heart-rate monitors and other tracking devices to monitor their movements at work. As employers collect the data, they often consult with medical professionals to modify workplace patterns and methods. For example, if stockroom employees show signs of heart-related stress when moving certain products or materials to store shelves, employers may change drop-off and pick-up points, implement a team-moving approach or find a way to automate the process. Considering the potential medical costs to injured workers, putting employees at less risk of injury is smart business.

“Mainly motivated by increasing health-care costs and propelled by recent technological advances in miniature biosensing devices, smart textiles, microelectronics and wireless communications, the continuous advance of wearable sensor-based systems will potentially transform the future of health care by enabling proactive personal health management and ubiquitous monitoring of a patient’s health condition,” wrote Alexandros Pantelopoulos, a senior research scientist at Fitbit in San Francisco, in the journal “Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.” “These systems can comprise various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, and can thus facilitate low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for continuous all-day and any-place health, mental and activity status monitoring.”

In other words, if what you’re doing is going to cost us money, we’re going to change what you’re doing.

Who’s protecting who?

Lance Ewing, the executive vice president of Cotton Holdings Inc. in Katy, Texas, told risk-management publication “Business Insurance” that employers use data collected from SmartBelts, weight-bearing belts wired to monitor various body reactions, given to warehouse employees, to make changes to day-to-day procedures. “Employees do things all the time, a lot of twists and turns,” Ewing says. “If I have to pick up a large object and I don’t bend at the knees, it will data-mine what I’m doing.”

While some employees might find the watching eye of their corporate master too much to endure, Eric Martinez, founder and CEO of Modjoul Inc., of Clemson, South Carolina, the company behind SmartBelts, told “Business Insurance” that his company didn’t develop SmartBelt technology to fire employees. Instead, Martinez insists the technology will help improve employees’ long-term health. “After you’ve been working for this company for 35 years,” Martinez says, “you won’t have an aching-back situation.”

Still, Martinez says there will be black-box readings three minutes before and after an on-site accident so employers can use the data to protect themselves against fraudulent injury claims. Thomas says she would have risked the potential pitfalls of a wearable wrist device if it could have spared her some of the pain she’s experiencing in her retirement. “I plan on being here for a long time,” Thomas says. “I know some people have it a lot worse and I’m used to the pain but that doesn’t mean I accept it. If I could have avoided it, the quality of my life would be much better.”