Would you wear a Fitbit for work? Employers giving them out to staff, but some worry about data privacy
Employers see the benefit of healthy staff, not least in saving on health care costs, and employees bond over shared fitness goals, but how optional are wellness programmes and who sees fitness trackers’ data?
Fitness trackers – those sleek devices often strapped to wrists – are starting to become almost as common as employee badges at some companies. But how much do they help workers? How much do they help the companies that offer the wearables to their employees?
Companies say they offer them to make work more fun, improve workers’ health, boost employee productivity or save money on health insurance costs. Some employees and advocacy groups, however, worry that fitness trackers might invade an employee’s privacy and that some wellness programmes may not be truly optional. It also remains unclear whether workplace trackers consistently improve employee health or save employers money on health care costs.
In 2016, 31 per cent of 540 companies in the United States with 1,000 or more employees surveyed in the US by brokerage and consultancy Willis Towers Watson offered wearable activity trackers to workers. Another 23 per cent said they were considering doing so in the next two years.
“You can’t dismiss it and say it’s a flash in the pan,” says LuAnn Heinen, vice-president of the National Business Group on Health. Employees like the personalised feedback and bonding with co-workers over fitness goals, she says.
This summer more than 1,000 employees at TransUnion, a Chicago-based data and analytics company, donned Fitbits in an optional competition to see which employees, floors and offices could log the most steps. TransUnion helped pay for the Fitbits, and about 30 per cent of the 1,300 employees in the company’s Chicago office took part.