Why is it important to monitor the core temperature of your employees? Many employers are unwilling to devote resources to keeping an eye on heat stress because they figure that this is a personal problem that employees should handle on their own. If this is your thinking you may find yourself in legal trouble sooner or later.
Imagine that one of your employees reports to work as usual only today temperatures are hotter than usual. Since they work with hazardous chemicals they have to wear heavy protective gear and within a few hours they start to experience some strange symptoms. They assume that it could be something they ate and keep working without taking a break for fresh air. Eventually they pass out and by the time you get help they have already slipped into a coma caused by a spike in core body temperature. Do you think you will be able to walk away from the ensuing lawsuit? You may get the best lawyers in the world but so long as doctors pronounce that the coma was caused by excessive body temperatures you will be held liable for not keeping an eye on something as simple as that.
Heat stress related problems are quite common in the workplace. In many cases employees only cool off and rehydrate and they are healthy once again, but comas, death and serious illness are not unheard of. Getting your employees to monitor their own temperatures may not be such a good idea as in many cases it is hard to know when one is getting overheated – one of the symptoms is confusion.
You can solve the problem by fitting all employees with a core temperature monitor that sends data to a central console where you can see at a glance which employees are in danger of getting heat stroke. You can buy such monitors from Equivital – get in touch with them through http://www.equivital.com/.
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