Theyre Here: Wearables in the Workplace
The digital tools that have become mainstream in the wellness world are gaining traction in the work world, too. The Financial Times took a look recently at wearables in the workplace—devices that track employees’ whereabouts, for example, or their productivity or stress level. What the newspaper found: the potential is impressive, implementation complex.
Some jobs or workplace behaviors have long been monitored: GPS tracking for delivery drivers or software that tracks employees’ web site use. Several companies use devices such as Fitbits to healthy lifestyles.
The wearable trend offers far more information than the number of steps an employee takes. Advocates suggest by monitoring workers’ stress levels or being flagged when they’re fatigued, employers can foster safer and more productive work environments.
Chris Brauer, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, experiments with wearables in workplaces and predicts a future in which managers have dashboards that display real-time employee biometrics, such as sleep quality, that are leading indicators for performance.
“It becomes a predictive tool and possibly also a prescriptive one,” he said.
Between now and then, much work must be done to evaluate the legality of the technology, debate the ethics of it, consider the security risks, and decide exactly what employers will do with information they gather. S