This article was originally published on Safety Solutions and is republished here with permission.
Source: Safety Solutions – On the road and in the field — how technology can safeguard workers
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For businesses with mobile and field workers, occupational health and safety obligations can be harder to meet. Zetifi founder and CEO DAN WINSON sets out how connected fleet safety can help.
While Australia’s stringent occupational health and safety frameworks have helped ensure our country’s workplaces are among the safest in the world; in recent decades, workplace fatalities remain a sad reality of life.
In 2024, 188 workers across the country lost their lives due to traumatic injuries incurred at work. Four in five fatalities occurred in just six industries: agriculture, forestry and fishing; public administration and safety; transport, postal and warehousing; manufacturing; health care and social assistance; and construction.
Machinery operators and drivers accounted for 32% of those fatalities, with vehicle incidents the leading cause of fatal injuries (42%), according to Safe Work Australia.
Ensuring the businesses they work for don’t add to these tragic statistics in 2026 should be an overarching goal for all occupational health and safety teams.
How best to do so is the question, particularly for businesses and organisations which employ large teams of mobile and field workers.
For many of these organisations, identifying the gamut of potential risks their workers face when they’re out on the road is a sensible place to start.
And then there are the incidents and events over which employees have rather more control — think erratic braking, speeding events and unsafe overtaking.
Developing policies to mitigate these unavoidable and avoidable risks should be a priority for businesses that have not already done so. Mandating employees drive to conditions, avoid speeding and seek shelter during severe storms, for example, is a straightforward way of reducing the likelihood of them coming to grief on the road.
But having policies in place that require workers to take sensible precautions is just one piece of the puzzle. Being able to enforce them is the other. To do so necessitates having access to up-to-date insights into how workers behave when they’re behind the wheel of company vehicles.
That’s where technology has a vital role to play. Devices today can sense worker environments, deliver precise location awareness and create intelligent connections between devices, systems and people through connectivity, telematics and applications such as duress and lone worker safety alarm tools.
The signals they detect and transmit can be swiftly and seamlessly interpreted and sent on to key personnel, who can use that intelligence to enhance worker safety on several fronts.
However, what’s required is reliable coverage anywhere, with alerts able to be transmitted kilometres away across the likes of a farm, mining site or national park. Smart antennas and seamless integrations with third-party applications such as telematics can help here and provide robust information on issues such as driver speed, braking, acceleration and cornering performance.
This type of connected fleet safety is ultimately about visibility and proof. By combining radio-based safety features with telematics, organisations can better understand risk, improve behaviour and demonstrate that safety controls are operating in practice.
That’s reassuring for workers, particularly those who are regularly sent out on the road solo. For businesses, meanwhile, it demonstrates a willingness to walk the walk when it comes to occupational health and safety.
The data collected can also be used to build detailed pictures of driver behaviour; identifying individuals who regularly exceed the speed limit and those whose driving patterns are erratic or unsafe.
Training and coaching can then be employed to help these drivers modify their behaviour. In the long term, that can foster a more accountable, safety-oriented workplace culture, while reducing the risk of accidents and injury for the individuals involved and those with whom they share the road.
An engaged, high performing workforce is the most powerful asset any business can have. Protecting the people whose contributions are pivotal to your organisation’s success is a moral imperative and one that makes excellent commercial sense too. Technology can help you do so, when they’re in the field and on the road.
If creating a safer workplace is a priority in 2026, it’s an investment that will pay dividends now and for many years to come.
