To most people, the drone (otherwise known as unmanned aerial system UAS) is a military-only sophisticated technology, or a tool for hobbyists who are interested in capturing images, sporting events, and so on.
However, for most business owners in different industries, it means something entirely different. Not only is it a great innovation that has multiple commercial benefits, but it’s also drastically changing the face of work, the way we live, and how business transactions are conducted.
Take for instance, with drones farmers can now sit down at home while they collect soil data and monitor crops. Similarly, it’s also used by insurance companies whenever they want to monitor damaged assets. Retail stores are utilising it for delivery services, and the list is endless.
No matter how you look at it, this innovation is changing the face of work, boosting productivity, and reducing stress in our workplaces. In this post, I’ll show you how the drones have come to stay in our workplaces, and what you can benefit from it too.
1. Reducing risks on our roads:
When going to work, we all ply the roads. Unknown to us, whenever there is any construction work going on especially on busy roads, traffic always skyrockets due to the fact that workers on site have to carry out their jobs manually.
With the introduction of drones to survey, the traffic condition on these roads has drastically reduced. Not only that, the inspection takes less time and safer too as human presence is rarely needed.
This helps us get to our places of work faster, and we’re now safer too on the roads.
2. Removing hazards on our jobs:
Some jobs are known to be dangerous. For instance, say you are a civil or electrical engineer who travels a lot to infrastructural sites to manage. Most times, it requires you to climb on unstable areas and tall buildings to check critical infrastructure like power lines or extensive dams.
With the drones, you don’t have to do this anymore, as it has changed the way these professionals carry out their jobs. This has improved their safety and efficiency, making their jobs less physical and more mentally stimulating.
3. Making hard-earned skills more important at work:
In every company, there are skilled workers with years of experience, who have a great understanding of how businesses work. With the advent of technology, most of these skilled workers are left behind due to some limitations in the requisite knowledge to operate in a new environment.
However, drones have made these veterans in the industry more enthusiastic about what they do. Since they could find it easy to operate, and useful for their task without much physical demands. This makes them more important and their roles more prominent.
4. Ensuring that digital skills are prioritised at work:
Drones have made workers focus more on improving relevant digital skills. With it, manual tools which they use daily will become obsolete and they will have a more digital impact.
This makes it easy for professionals to accomplish more tasks in record time, and create more opportunities in the workplace.
Take for instance, when inspecting a building in the past. The value of carrying out this task witness a lot of drawbacks such as the liability of sending a worker to a roof, the size of inspection sites, and so on. With drones, these are no more, as most of these drawbacks have been digitised.
5. Making data easily accessible:
Majority of commercial building owners don’t know the status of their edifices. The same is also applicable to their financiers. This is because, it’s pretty difficult to access data, as they are not readily available after inspection.
With the use of drones, the challenges of data collection have greatly reduced, hence making it easy for contractors to inspect more buildings, and analyse data faster.
This trend is happening in a lot of industries such as construction, telecoms, mining, and insurance.
6. Enhancing Productivity in our economy:
According to the PWC, drones have solved the challenge of productivity that is facing the economy of the United Kingdom. This is as it projects that the level of cost savings in the UK’s technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sectors with this innovation will be £4.8bn by 2030.
Drones have also contributed greatly to the economies of many industries giving it a new facelift. In the United States, it is a powerful source of commercial growth as the value of drone activity has risen from $40 million in 2012 to about $1 billion in 2017 according to one report.
Wrapping it up:
The impact of drones in changing the way we work cannot be overemphasised. As time goes on, more industries will be impacted by this technology, and the society will be better off for it.
Just as Elaine Whyte, the UK Drones leader aptly captures it in his words: “I envisage that the advantages of drone technology will be well established within the decade – not only for business purposes but also for helping to protect our society. While drones are often viewed as more of a toy currently, by combining this emerging technology with the right business understanding and human insight there is a huge opportunity to help solve some of business and society’s most important problems.”