IoT Enhances Workplace Safety as Employees Return to Offices

With more staff gradually resuming on‑site work amid the ongoing COVID‑19 pandemic, businesses are prioritizing employee safety. Internet of Things (IoT) and networking solutions are becoming essential tools for monitoring workplace conditions and guiding return‑to‑office strategies.

Below are three real‑world examples of how organizations are leveraging IoT to protect their workforce.

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Monitoring Air Quality

Innovatus Capital Partners, an independent adviser and portfolio‑management firm, wants to assure its leaders and employees that the office environment is as clean as possible when they return.

The firm installed a smart air‑quality monitoring system in its Illinois and Tennessee offices, integrating Veea’s edge‑computing platform with Wynd Technologies’ portable air‑purifier sensors.

“Workers re‑entering the office after COVID‑19 need assurance that they are in the cleanest environment possible,” says Bradley Seiden, Managing Director at Innovatus. “That means you have to be able to measure the environment—specifically the air quality.”

Sensors placed throughout common areas capture metrics such as mold, CO₂, temperature, humidity, and airborne particles that could indicate coronavirus or flu strains. Data travels over Wi‑Fi to the Veea Edge Platform, where Wynd’s software processes it and feeds visual dashboards displayed on facility screens.

Additional analysis can be performed in the cloud via Veea’s integrated 4G LTE capability. Seiden notes that the system was designed to be extensible, cost‑effective, and easily integrated into existing building‑management systems without disruption.

Veea’s Smart Edge Nodes are router‑sized devices that combine Linux‑based processing with Wi‑Fi mesh and support ZigBee, Bluetooth, and LoRaWAN connectivity. They support both Wi‑Fi and Ethernet connections, ensuring seamless integration into existing building networks. These nodes create a distributed edge network that connects to Wynd sensors via Wi‑Fi, and can also utilize proprietary mesh and 4G LTE for full independence from in‑building wired infrastructure.

The Wynd Halo Smart Air Quality Monitors are software‑defined, allowing firmware updates to add new detection capabilities—such as distinguishing smoke from furniture versus cooking—after deployment.

Innovatus plans to roll out the system to additional properties across other states.

Tracing Contacts and Controlling Occupancy

After closing in spring 2020, Bay State College began planning a safe return to its Boston and Taunton campuses. The college required a minimally invasive, deployable, and cost‑effective solution that could be operational in less than five months.

Senior officials opted for a layered technology approach, prioritizing contact tracing as a key control measure. The IT team at Ambow Education USA deployed a digital contact‑tracing system using Cisco Meraki Wi‑Fi and HID Global’s BEEK Bluetooth low‑energy beacons.

All faculty, staff, students, and visitors received a lanyard and badge holder containing a HID beacon, which emitted periodic pings. Each Meraki access point includes a Bluetooth antenna that listens for these pings, triangulates the beacon’s position using data from multiple APs, and stores the results in a secure SQL database.

Using Microsoft Power BI, the college can query the database to identify individuals who shared the same space for 10 minutes or more with a potentially infected person. Data is encrypted, limited to senior IT staff, and automatically purged after 14 days.

The system enables rapid, automated contact tracing, reduces manual effort, and provides real‑time occupancy counts to ensure compliance with state and local limits. “We can tell occupancy at any particular time,” Myers says, “and provide digital evidence of compliance.”

Deploying the solution required extensive testing and teamwork, but it has become a critical tool for managing campus safety during the pandemic.

Ensuring Proper Social Distancing

In early 2021, Nutrien Ltd. expanded its use of proximity‑monitoring and contact‑tracing technology from Triax Technologies to safeguard its workforce.

Nutrien, a global provider of farming products, was deemed essential at the pandemic’s outset. To maintain a minimum six‑foot distance among more than 8,000 employees worldwide, the company adopted Triax’s Proximity Trace system, with an additional 6,500 users slated for expansion this year.

Lightweight tags attach to clothing or hard hats and emit an audible alert and flashing red light when someone comes within six feet. They log interaction data to strategically placed gateways, which then upload information to a Triax cloud portal via LTE.

“Access to the portal is integrated into our Microsoft Active Directory, and there is no connectivity to our internal network during the process,” explains Gary Peterson, Director of IT for Nitrogen & Phosphate. “The tags are not used for location tracking; they provide contact data for reporting purposes.”

Because the system does not rely on GPS, Bluetooth, or Wi‑Fi, it sidesteps privacy concerns. It has reduced close contacts, positive cases, and quarantines, while improving the efficiency and accuracy of contact tracing.

Peterson highlights that Proximity Trace aligns with Nutrien’s safety culture, meets cybersecurity requirements, and is scalable for future expansion across additional sites.