In some circles the word elicits a sense of dread -

Innovation.

At the root of most forms of innovation is change. While I believe that innovation is inherently good, change is not. To me, innovation gone bad is ‘change-for-the-sake-of-change’, and it can be an incredibly wasteful process. True innovation is ‘change-for-the-better’ or ‘change-because-it-is-right’. Inevitably change is very difficult; as humans we’ve evolved to avoid it for survival, so it should be no surprise that companies and entire industries – groups of people pushing in a particular direction for years at a time – find it so difficult to innovate, even when the potential gains are huge. I’m sure someone did eventually lose their job for buying the equivalent of IBM though.

In our work at Eave, every day we see the battle between ‘it’s how we’ve always done it’ and ‘how could we do it better?’ – the battle lines are varied and bloody: stakeholder misalignment, differing risk appetites, short-termism, competing KPIs, competing priorities, education, the list goes on. For innovation to succeed, users, buyers, incumbent suppliers, regulators and managers all have critical roles to play, and it is through building trust and perseverance on all sides that positive change is made possible.

One benefit of innovation is that since the early 1900s, deaths at work have fallen from around 5000 per year to around 300 per year in the 2000s and 200 per year in the 2010s (HSE RIDHIST), equivalent to approximately 1 death per 100,000 workers in 2000 decreasing to 1 death per 200,000 workers today. Sadly, following many years of improvement, since 2010 the change in the number of worker deaths year-on-year has increased four times. Where falls from height has historically been the number one killer, innovations in fall-arrest equipment have helped hugely. Today, the biggest killer of workers in the UK is being struck by a moving vehicle or object.

In life and at work we use our eyes and ears to communicate and to stay safe. The standard approach to protect our eyes when they are at risk at work is to wear see-through protective glasses - obviously. The modern approach to protect our ears at work is to block them with pieces plastic that they can’t hear-through – completely illogical. If anyone is still wondering why people are getting killed at work by being struck by a moving object or why the occupational deafness is the most common occupational diseases then please stop, look and listen. Do you think it makes sense to take away your employees hearing at work?

Despite the pressure on both sides of the innovation see-saw, given enough time, true innovation will always come through.

The Department for Transport recently awarded Eave just over ￡250,000 to deliver our solution and services to improve the hearing of rail workers as part of HS2 Phase 1. Since July we have been working closely across the various organisations involved in delivering increased rail capacity for the UK, and we are proud to have been able to deliver a step change in how hearing is managed and protected at work. As a result, our team is growing and we are looking to recruit people who understand not only what true innovation is, but also how to deliver it.

Occupational Deafness is still today one of the most common preventable occupational diseases that severely affects a person’s quality of life and it is in our mission to eliminate it. An amazing side effect of this is that we can prevent deaths at work too because employers no longer need to dish out ineffective passive hearing protection, or as I like to refer to them: blind-folds for your ears. We have four roles currently open in our engineering team: Hardware Engineer (entry-level), Full-Stack Software Engineer (mid-level), Embedded Software Engineer (mid-level) Engineering Director (senior). If you know anyone who you think might be interested in working at Eave - the Software Solution Provider of the Year (thank you New Civil Engineer!) please do send them our way.