AS technology gets much better and the price gets far cheaper, don’t be surprised if wearable tech becomes widely used in the workplace, writes Neil McLoram at wealth management firm, Brewin Dolphin in Newcastle.

The next time you’re in a business meeting, take a few seconds to glance at the wrists of people in the room. It’s likely that a healthy percentage of attendees will be wearing some form of ‘smart’ device.

The adoption rate of wearable gadgets like smart watches has risen at a phenomenal speed over the last few years. Although the vast majority of people using wearable tech today are doing it for their own health or mental wellbeing, there’s a tremendous opportunity for businesses to use these gadgets for the betterment of their workforce.

The idea of giving employees a wearable device has existed for some time. Around five years ago, the research and development department at a leading Formula One team even explored the idea of creating a ‘smart shirt’ for business executives, allowing central office to monitor their health while they travel the world for client meetings. The shirt never saw the light of day, but thanks to the creation of wearable tracking devices retailing for under a hundred pounds, the ability to remotely monitor employee wellbeing is now within the grasp of many employers.

A few companies are already utilising existing smart devices. BP has given employees in North America Fitbit fitness trackers and mining company Rio Tinto has given truck drivers in Australia SmartCap baseball hats to gauge alertness. However, these are isolated examples. The lack of take up could be due to lingering concerns of ‘big brother’ tactics.

Despite such concerns, it’s clear that there are a number of wearable gadgets on the market that would benefit workers. The Apple Watch features a ‘stand up reminder’ to warn wearers if they’ve been sedentary for too long and there are a number of posture-tracking devices available, such as Lumo Lift, which can be set to vibrate mode if workers start to slump at their desk.

While health and wellness monitoring is currently the most interesting wearable application to consumers, there is a wider range of areas of applications that consumers are keen on, including the smart home, security and access control, mobile payments, patient information and travel and tourism. This suggests wearables can be much more than just a wellbeing tool.

The natural end game for wearable tech would be a system that allows HR departments to monitor how much sleep members of staff are getting, how active they’ve been and what their blood pressure levels are like. Using algorithms to look for patterns in an individual’s data they could then track when someone is about to become physically or mentally ill and potentially head this problem off at the pass by offering them medical assistance.

At the moment it’s clear that this approach is a step too far for many employees, but as awareness and take-up of wearable devices continues to grow, it appears increasingly likely that this sort of scenario will eventually come to pass.

Neil McLoram works in Business Development at wealth management firm, Brewin Dolphin in Newcastle. For more information, please visit brewin.co.uk/Newcastle or follow us on Twitter @BrewinNewcastle