Humanyze- Employee Monitoring Wearable Technology

by Startacus Admin

There are 3 huge trends which are dominating the world of enterprise and technology at the moment ‘fintech’, ‘big data’ and ‘the internet of things’- the latter being perhaps the most talked-about emerging technologies that has been seen for many years.   

 

Amongst all of the excitement surrounding this burgeoning field of internet connected devices, a great many questions and concerns have reared their cynical heads; at the helm of these issues is the rather philosophical inquiry ‘is all this technology making life better or worse for us?’.   

 

Central in any discussion of this contested issue, is the position of such technologies in the workplace, and whether they will serve as a liberating and empowering influence on our work lives, or as restrictive and oppressive forces.    

 

The other day we came across a product that is sure to spark significant controversy; a ‘smart badge’ which uses all sorts of sensors, bells, and whistles to monitor employee productivity.  

 

The rather ironically named Humanyze, brings wearable technology into the workplace in the form of a little square box worn around the neck that collects data on 40 different variables related to behaviour and performance.   Some of the things recorded by the little device include; how much a worker is moving around, the tone of their voice and whether or not they leaned in when conversing with their co-workers.  

 

The device then wirelessly transfers this information into ‘the cloud’ where it awaits analysis by a specially designed system which allows employers to understand how some individual behaviours have an impact on productivity.

 

Many of you will be staring open mouthed and horror struck at your screen right about now, and we must confess ourselves somewhat torn by the idea.  On the one hand, how marvellous to think of technology helping to improve workplace colleague relations, on the other, how horrifying to envisage such a wanton invasion of privacy!   

 

However there are a number of factors which should help to allay the concerns of techno-sceptics.  Most significantly all of the data collected by Humanyze is strictly private meaning that individual’s specific information will never be made known to anyone, and all participation in the data gathering project, is on a voluntary basis only.  

But even with these safeguards in place, Humanyze will no doubt be the catalyst for some heated ethical debates.  We’d love to hear your thoughts on technology’s role in the workplace.  Let us know by commenting below, or by tweeting us @iamstartacus.

• #humanyze
• #wearable technology
• #internet of things
• #employee monitoring

Published on: 24th June 2015