If your office presents you with a new fitness tracker or a smartwatch, you've probably got bad news incoming.
It might just be an expensive festival bonus, or it might be the device your boss is using to track your habits and routines everyday, even the weekends.
According to a new piece by the Washington Post, some bosses are giving fitness trackers to employees, and then personally sifting through the data provided. One employee interviewed mentioned how the office gave him a smart band, encouraging him to lead a more active lifestyle. Then, when he increased his step count some time later, he got a surprise call from his boss of 25 years, congratulating him on the achievement.
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It seems the offices in question are using this data to evaluate employees. Some reportedly even get cash incentives or reduced medical premiums if they agree to use the fitness bands.
"Sustained behavior change is really the focus," Adam Pellegrini, senior vice president of Fitbit Health Solutions, told the Post. "Through the system, we can actually see who is not hitting their goals, who is not adhering to that action plan."
That seems well and good, but there's a much darker side to this whole affair. For one thing, employees are trading their personal data for workplace incentives. It's just like Facebook's intrusions all over again. Not to mention, if your fitness tracker is inaccurate, there goes your bonus.
And for another, there are absolutely no checks in place to stop bosses from exploiting their employees' data for other purposes.
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"The more that employers know about their employees' lives, especially outside the workplace, off-duty hours, the more potential control or effects they have on their lives in the first place," Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Post. "It's quite possible there will be effects on whether you are retained, promoted, demoted - who is first to be laid off."