There is concern about invasion of privacy in effort to drive profit
WASHINGTON – In a continuing effort to maximize profits, companies are increasingly turning to “people analytics,” the practice of reducing their employees to big data through the potentially questionable collection of personal information.
Some argue that people analytics is a logical byproduct of the big data revolution.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier in their recent book, “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think,” opined, “We are in the midst of a great infrastructure project that in some ways rivals those of the past, from Roman aqueducts to the Enlightenment’s Encyclopédie. The project is datafication. Like those other infrastructural advances, it will bring about fundamental changes to society.”
Companies are finding ways to leverage the data their employees generate on a daily basis. One method is mandating that all employees wear fitness bracelets to monitor health metrics, which allows a company’s human resource department to adjust the employee’s health insurance accordingly and even incentivizes employees to lose weight.
According to a report by the Colorado-based wearable company Tractica, by 2020 corporations will grow from 1% of the wearable’s market to 17%.
Tractica’s Aditya Kaul and Clint Wheelcock, told Forbes: “This is part of a larger trend of people analytics within companies, where big data and machine learning is being used to enhance human resource functions, such as hiring and retention, sales and employee satisfaction.”
Among the companies currently using people analytics are Google and USAA.
Another favorite option to maximize productivity is using GPS tracking apps to monitor employee locations. This practice has touched off a lawsuit in California, where a former sales rep for wire transfer service Intermex is suing her former employer after she was allegedly terminated for deleting one such tracking app called Xora.
According to the lawsuit, Xora didn’t just track her during work hours but also on weekends and after hours. She said her former supervisor “bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments.”
Despite concerns, people analytics looks to be a common facet of 21st century corporate culture.
As Don Peck, deputy editor of The Atlantic magazine, noted: “Ever since we’ve had companies, we’ve had managers trying to figure out which people are best suited to working for them. The techniques have varied considerably. Near the turn of the 20th century, one manufacturer in Philadelphia made hiring decisions by having its foremen stand in front of the factory and toss apples into the surrounding scrum of job-seekers. Those quick enough to catch the apples and strong enough to keep them were put to work.”
Big data will most certainly be widely used in various aspects of corporate strategy but there are concerns.
Candid Wueest, Symantec’s principal threat researcher, noted “An employer could buy devices like these and place them at strategic points such as the door to the smoking room or to the cafeteria. Then they’d be able to monitor who is spending how long on coffee breaks or how often people are going [to] smoke.”
