Choosing a HAVS monitoring solution isn’t just about tracking your workers’ risk from exposure to vibration. Choosing the right solution for your team is about finding the best way to actually reduce this risk, so that you can drive better health and safety outcomes for your workforce.

This article helps health and safety professionals, including safety managers and duty holders, understand what to look for in a HAVS monitoring system. Inside, you’ll learn what to expect from a good HAVS risk management solution, questions to ask during your selection process (and the must-have features you need to look for), and a practical checklist that you can use when evaluating your options. By the end of this article, you should feel confident about choosing a HAVS monitoring solution that actively helps you protect your workforce.

What to expect from your HAVS monitoring solution

As with any impactful technology or platform, your HAVS monitoring solution should be easy to adopt and frictionless to implement. In dynamic or dangerous environments, it should make working safer and more efficient without distracting the people who are using it, and without slowing anything down. But in order to be truly effective, your HAVS monitoring solution should do more than monitor your workers’ exposure to risk from vibration. Because the point of monitoring your workers’ exposure isn’t just to know that information, it’s to understand that information, and be able to use it in ways that drive better outcomes for your workforce, and your organisation.

That’s why it’s critical to choose an approach to HAVS monitoring and management that provides accurate data, and actionable insights. To make an impact, it should actively eliminate guesswork from your workplace, and give you a reliable starting point from which you can begin to refine your controls and improve your ways of working. For this to happen, your solution must provide you with detailed enough information to help you identify exactly where attention is needed, and it must make that information easy to understand and access.

To choose a solution that makes this kind of action possible, you’ll need to ask the right questions. In the next section of this article, we’ll walk you through exactly what you need to find out to determine if a HAVS monitoring solution is the right one for you.

Questions to ask when selecting a HAVS monitoring solution (and the must-have features you need to look for)

Not all HAVS monitoring solutions are the same, so it’s important to ask the right questions when you’re investigating your options. Below, we’ve identified the key topics you need to explore to ensure that the solution you choose is right for your team.

Does the solution automatically manage your data?

In order to be useful, your data must be relevant and accessible. Look for a HAVS monitoring solution that automatically collects, stores, analyses, and distributes data. And make sure that your data is securely stored: cloud-powered solutions that meet the highest standards of security are the most trustworthy option.

Does the solution identify which tools or processes pose the greatest risk to workers?

Your HAVS monitoring solution should tell you exactly where you need to look in order to take meaningful action. You should be able to easily access and understand precise insights that identify exactly which tools or processes require attention. Your HAVS monitoring solution should replace outdated, paper based methods for tracking tool rotation and worker activity, and identify problem areas seamlessly, without distracting workers and without requiring them to manually record tool usage or tasks.

Does the solution offer insights that you can use to immediately take action?

Your HAVS monitoring solution should analyse the data it collects and provide meaningful insights that you can use to refine your controls and improve ways of working. Look for solutions that present this information in attractive dashboards, and which automatically distribute insights to duty holders and safety managers for even faster action.

Does the solution integrate with other business processes or systems?

Monitoring HAVS effectively means driving better health and safety outcomes for workers, but the data you collect about your workplace can also be used to improve efficiency and performance on an organisational level. When evaluating HAVS monitoring solutions, it’s important to check and see which options enable this kind of connectedness.

Does the solution provide accurate data?

An effective HAVS monitoring solution must provide reliable, accurate data that you can use to inform an impactful HAVS action plan. Any guesswork, estimates, or averages in this area will undermine your efforts to better protect your workers. Your HAVS solution should provide accurate measurements of time and vibration, and an accurate calculation of daily exposure for individual workers. Look for solutions that have been independently verified as producing data that informs a suitable and sufficient assessment of HAV exposure.

Your HAVS Monitoring Solution Checklist

To make it easier for you to evaluate HAVS monitoring solutions, we’ve created this checklist. Use it as a quick reference guide to ensure that you’re getting the most from the solution you choose.

Does the solution offer:

Choosing the right HAVS monitoring solution is an important step towards better protecting the health and safety of your workers. With the right tools and technology in place, you’ll gain a better understanding of your risk environment and have the information you need to actively build a safer workplace.

To learn more about R-Link, the leading HAVS monitoring system in the UK, just reach out to our team, or visit this web page.

Reactec’s workplace wearable technology has been independently reviewed by the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM), which found that data gathered by the Reactec system provides a useful source of information to inform a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for HAV. You can watch a video detailing the results of that study here.