The Efficacy of Employee Fitness Trackers: Where is This Leading?

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

In a Pittsburg Post-Gazette article “Wearable Devices Help Employees Stay on Track”  on May 3, 2016, the author described the employer trend of utilizing wearable technology in the workplace to monitor employee health and wellness activities. “Because physical activity delivers a number of health benefits — including lower risks of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure — health plans are now taking advantage of wearable technology to improve employee wellness programs.”

“For example, UnitedHealthcare recently launched UnitedHealthcare Motion, a wellness program that provides employees with a wearable device (at no additional charge) that tracks their activity and shows them statistics about the frequency, intensity and total steps taken each day. Employees can earn daily money bonuses for hitting specific activity goals. The money is deposited directly into their health reimbursement account.”

“Employers also benefit through savings in insurance premiums based on participants’ combined results.”

But with all the perceived benefits wearable devices offer, the author cautioned employers, “Companies that want to incorporate wearable fitness trackers into their wellness programs should make certain the health plan will keep private data secure.”

Back in the March 24, 2014 CIO article, “Pros and Cons of Employee Fitness Trackers for Employee Wellness” the blog states warned of issues related to privacy that should be monitored. “Many fitness trackers’ privacy policies are vague and ever-changing, with platitudes that begin with ‘We respect your privacy’ and end with ‘We may share your information with third-parties.'” “Today, privacy risks are relatively low for employees because the primary data collected, such as activity, steps and calories, is nondescript,” says McCaffrey.

“For example, Fitbit and BodyMedia (which is owned by Jawbone) both offer employer wellness programs with privacy agreements meant to prevent employers from accessing information employees haven’t agreed to share. Instead of seeing specific results from individual employees, company wellness plan administrators receive reports from Fitbit and BodyMedia in aggregate form.”

McCaffrey continues, “Technology is advancing rapidly, with the introduction of biometric wearables and integrative platforms.” “To prepare for this change, wellness programs must re-evaluate the legal implications in regards to HIPPA. They must restructure incentive plans, simplify rollout procedures and prioritize employee engagement strategies.”

“As corporate healthcare costs continue to rise, observers say businesses will likely start to ask for more employee participation in wellness programs.”

“Employers are increasingly calling the shots on how employees receive their benefits — and workers may be penalized or rewarded depending upon how they take care of themselves,” writes John F. Wasik in The Fiscal Times. “That means they may be subject to regular monitoring and told to enroll in healthcare management programs.”

In a January 6, 2015 BBC article entitled, “Office Fitness Trackers: Fun Perk or Creepy Leash,”  “Data from smartphones and fitness trackers can already be very revealing, showed researchers from Fordham University’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining Lab while developing a free Android activity app called Actitracker, released in 2013.” “’What they discovered is simply by looking at the data they can find out with pretty good accuracy what your gender is, whether you’re tall or short, whether you’re heavy or you’re light, but what’s really intriguing is you can be 100% identified by simply your gait,’ CIA Chief Technical Officer Gus Hunt explained at a conference in March 2013. Hunt has since retired from the CIA.”

On February 10, 2014 a Seattle Times article entitled “Fitness Gadgets Raise Privacy Concerns Under New Health Insurance Rules”, the author wrote “Outrage over NSA spying on Americans is nothing compared to how people may react to the upcoming collision with wearable computing, medical privacy and new insurance rules. You don’t need leaked documents to see it coming, though it took me awhile to connect the dots after seeing the bewildering array of new health and fitness-tracking gadgets shown at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show.”

“As different phases of the law have taken effect and companies have better understood how to implement it, there basically have been three levels of wellness engagement. The first encourages employees to join a wellness program with exercise and nutrition activities and undergo biometric screenings that check weight, body mass, cholesterol and other health indicators. Level 2 trades the carrot for the stick. Employees (and insured family members) who don’t submit to the screening and participate in wellness programs face steep penalties; they may have to pay up to 30 percent more for their share of health-insurance costs. The law calls this a “reward” for participation. Flip it around and it’s a penalty for not authorizing your employer to manage and monitor how you live outside of work. Better health overall is in everyone’s best interest. But you can’t help but be cynical when it becomes tied to benefit levels, especially in an era of vanishing pensions, flat paychecks and longer work days. Level 3 in the march toward wellness adopts “outcomes” based programs that can require employees to meet specific fitness goals or pay higher insurance costs.”

“At this point, when body tracking and measurements are used to adjust benefits, it gets harder to maintain the pretense of privacy. Even if individual records are masked, the data will provide enough insight to assess employees’ potential health costs as well as job performance, enabling a new form of discrimination.” Innovative technology companies are already looking beyond the use of fitness trackers and the use of wearables to gather other information about employee performance. Some companies are looking into devices to detect voice and volume to determine if you are communication with a client or coworker. Some are monitoring how often your wearable is tracked to the bathrooms and break rooms.”

Although there was no rush to biometric implants as hoped, employers found people were, for the time being, enthusiastic about wearable technology, perhaps because of the perceived safety and privacy, and sense of control in being able to remove it. Wearing it seemed to be an option. What if it no longer is an option, and the wearable collects more private information that – like all the other private information floating out there and aggregated for the highest bidder – doesn’t remain private very long or used as it was originally intended?

George Orwell really could not fathom the extent that technology could intrude on personal privacy and the threat to personal freedoms it presented. Although shocking for its time and is still, hopefully, read today in classrooms today, perhaps his book “1984” (written in 1949) was intended to get us to discuss these issues in advance of the technology arriving. To not just embrace the wonder of new technology, but to weigh it against the potential for abuse if mishandled, mismanaged or misapplied.

More to come, I am fairly sure. In the meantime, check out more practical and legally defensible approaches of worker development and performance management at the Proactive Technologies, Inc. website.