Health is wealth! So goes a popular saying. However, before you can fully understand what that phrase means, you need to know the definition of health and wealth. The dictionary defines health as a state of mental and physical well-being, as well as freedom from diseases or ailments. This also translates to your immediate environment. A healthy environment whether at home, school or work has a whole lot to do with your overall health. Wealth according to the dictionary is defined as a great quantity of money, property, valuable possession, and other riches. Now how does health and wealth relate?
Mankind, right from inception, has always attached superior value to wealth compared to health or any other thing they can possibly achieve in a lifetime. Although it is not wrong to chase wealth, you also need to pay attention to the kind of stress your body experiences on a day to day basis. Without frequent checkups, the levels of stress within the body continues to build up until a breakdown in the system occurs. At this point, you can no longer chase wealth. You must attend to the urgent need of your body before being able to continue with work.
Going for regular checkups is a good idea, however, technology has made life easier. There are various tech gadgets which helps you monitor the stress you face at work daily. The ability to considerably bring down the stress levels within your body system helps you work for longer period of time before needing to go for checkups.
Benefits of Technology on your Health at Work
Now that you are more-aware of the need to shift a little focus to your health while at work, you are probably wondering what and what you need to get started. Well, the first and most important thing is to ensure that your working environment is favorable to your health and general well-being. There should be a plan for every single activity within your office, encourage healthy behaviors, invite a health expert from time to time, and purchase furniture or equipment that promotes a healthy working environment. If you follow the advice in this paragraph, you are bound to experience positive changes all around your workplace. Let us discuss some of these changes below.
Improved Levels of Productivity
This is definitely one of the best changes you will experience when your workplace is favorable to health. Let’s say you have 20 employees working under you and 3 or 4 of them goes to the hospital weekly due to illness. If such a trend continues, your productivity level will definitely wane over time. What you need to do in this state is to check your work environment for tools or machines that needs to be fixed or replaced. Or maybe your employees are not executing their duties following the right procedures. Once you can identify the problem, your employees will no longer need to visit the hospital as often as before and their productivity levels will definitely improve.
Beneficial use of Data
There are a handful of tech gadgets that can help you collect data within your workplace. This data gives you an idea on certain things that could be right or wrong about your employees and work environment as a whole. You just need to have an idea of the type of wearables that are capable taking down this vital info. While your employees are busy with their various duties, the wearable gathers vital information about their health and general wellbeing. With this information, you can monitor the health and productivity levels of each employee.
Reduced Body Strains
In the opening part of this post, we discussed about stress and how it can build up over time. While the ultimate way of curtailing stress is by resting, there are ways by which you can reduce stress even while carrying out your job duties. For example, if you work at an office where you sit all day looking at a computer, certain areas of your body will start experiencing aches.
Your back, for example, could get sore and your only way out at that point may be to get off the seat and take a walk. One way by which you can reduce stress in this kind of environment is to purchase a reclining chair and probably a height adjustable desk. With both of these, you can adjust into multiple comfortable positions while carrying on with your duties.
More Motivation for Work
Feeling good is the fuel that drives motivation and motivation is the fuel that drives success. You can see how your wellbeing is interlinked with your motivation and success levels. Without good health, you cannot be motivated, and you consequently will not achieve success.
Let’s look at it from this angle. You are in sound health but on some days, you lose motivation to work far too easily. This could happen due to various reasons. Your mind may even suggest to you that some sort of illness is knocking, even if that is not the case. This kind of feeling will affect your mental alertness and you will just not be able to work at your optimum capacity.
There are wrist gadgets that can help you stay motivated ranging from fitness trackers, headbands, heart monitors, blood pressure monitors, etc. It is easy to stay motivated with these types of gadgets because you can clearly see the working capacity of various parts of your body. Seeing the values change every day can help you apply conscious efforts to maintain your motivation levels or push harder.
Reduced Hospital Bills
Whether healthcare is cheap or expensive in your location, avoiding a breakdown of your health is still the wisest thing to do. Money cannot prevent you from facing the kind of psychological trauma that come with some illness. As an employer, you will not be happy not just because of the money that will be spent on your employee’s health, but also because he/she will be unavailable for work during this period. You may even start feeling irritated if it goes on for a few days. You really need to do all you can to prevent your employees from falling ill in order to avoid hospital bills and other inconveniences that come with it. With tech equipment, you and your employees can stay in good health for longer periods of time while the savings from hospital bills can be used for more important things.
Tech Equipment that can Help you stay Healthy at Work
Now that you are enlightened on the importance of your health at work, you are probably wondering what kind of tech gadgets you need to purchase. There are so many of them out there and you could easily get enough information using Google search but I will be pointing out the ones that are likely to be more beneficial to you.
Sleep Monitor
Don’t be surprised that the sleep monitor comes out as the first on our list. The truth is that the quality and quality of your sleep the previous night has a lot to do with your overall health the next day of work. The average sleeping hours for humans is somewhere between 7 to 9 hours but many employees are unable to reach this value.
Pebble Time is a small gadget that doesn’t only measure the hours of your sleep, but is also built to track your overall health. It automatically tracks the time you go to bed and displays the depth of your sleep. There are a lot more useful functions on the Pebble Time smartwatch.
Fitness Tracker
Fitness trackers are well-known and widely used in the fitness industry. If you are one of those who think it is only meant for sportsmen and people who are trying to lose weight, you are wrong. Fitness trackers are designed to carry out a variety of functions including step count, pulse rate measurement, heart rate measurement, etc. Using fitness trackers while at work exposes you to vital information and with it, you can stay fit and energetic for longer hours.
There are a good amount of fitness trackers out there but Fitbit seems to beat them all. The Fitbit Ionic and Versa are two of the high-end Fitbit fitness trackers that come with a lot of functions. They are capable of tracking your fitness levels, sleep depth, they store and play music, works with Bluetooth headphones, has GPS feature, receives call, and has a long-lasting battery life.
Stress Monitor
By now, you already know how much of a setback stress can be to your efficiency level at work. Being able to monitor your stress level will help you know when you should take a few minutes’ break. With a reliable stress monitor, you can avoid falling prey to the kind of illnesses that are caused by stress.
Pip is a tiny tech gadget which is designed to keep you updated with your stress levels while carrying out your activities at home or work. It has a biosensor which interacts with the skin pores on the tip of your fingers. You basically need to put the device in between your thumb and index fingers. It then connects with the app on your smartphone to convey vital information about your stress levels and how you can manage it.
Blood Pressure Monitor
High blood pressure is popularly referred to as a “Silent Killer” and this is because it hardly gives noticeable signs. Some people have stable blood pressure patterns which could increase a little with stress, while some have irregular blood pressure patterns which requires continuous monitoring. Even if you know what your blood pressure regularly falls at, as long as you engage in physically or mentally strenuous activities at work, it is a good idea to use a blood pressure monitor regularly.
The Withings blood pressure monitor is one of the first automatic blood pressure devices in the market. It connects wirelessly to its app on your smartphone to record your blood pressure and heart rate. The information is then saved and you can view the graph over a certain period of time. The device is not one that you can wear at work, however, a reminder can help you remember to check your blood pressure every mornings or evenings.
Tech Furniture and Equipment
There are a lot of ways by which you can make your work environment efficient. We have talked about a few gadgets that are used to monitor health, but it doesn’t just end there. You can also achieve a healthier working environment by changing some of the equipment and furniture in your office to the latest and techy ones out there.
Autonomous deals with a good range of techy furniture that can considerably improve your health at work. If you work in an office where you are required to sit for lengthy hours of time, you will need a reclining chair to help relieve you of body aches. The autonomous ergonomic chair is capable of adjusting to various sitting postures thereby relieving you of aches and helping you work for longer hours.
They also have the adjustable standing desk which does more than the job of a regular desk. If you are already feeling fatigue from your normal sitting position, you may decide to switch to a standing position and adjust the desk’s height appropriately. Being able to adjust your body posture while working will ultimately help you stay healthy and productive.
Conclusion
Your health is as important, or even more important than your job as it’s only when you are alive that you can work. You need to start making conscious efforts to improve your overall health at work. We have discussed on the benefits of using health monitoring gadgets at work both from the employee and employer’s point of view. If you’ve got enough money, feel free to purchase all the gadgets we have highlighted in this post. There is no better investment than that which is made on health or knowledge. If you cannot afford all the gadgets on the list, feel free to choose the ones that are likely to be most beneficial to you at work. Hopefully, you can start attaching more importance to your health at work starting from today.
