Your employer may be using sensors to track your location at work
Sensors are being installed in some offices that can track worker locations and interactions.
The aim may be to save energy, turning on lights and HVAC systems when needed, BloombergBusinessweek reports. Or the intent may be to track conference room usage, or identify empty desks at companies without fixed workstations, according to a Guardian story published last September.
At the Boston Consulting Group, 100 volunteer employees are wearing badges with microphones and sensors that track verbal and physical interactions, according to Bloomberg. The intent is to figure out how office design affects employee communication.
Another badge created and being tested by Enlightened is designed to track and find workers through an app. The hope is that a worker can be located more efficiently than by sending emails and messages and hoping for a reply.
Bloomberg asked about legality of such monitoring in an interview with Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute. “Employers can do any kind of monitoring they want in the workplace that doesn’t involve the bathroom,” he said.
Hat tip to @lawrencehurley.
