穿戴設備應用不當可成爲辦公室監視器

He only had himself to blame, Mike Weston thought ruefully as he strapped a Fitbit to his wrist one cold February morning. His company was about to start tracking him 24 hours a day, gathering data on everything from his sleep quality and heart rate to his location and web browsing habits.

在今年2月的一個寒冷的早上，邁克•韋斯頓(Mike Weston)把一個Fitbit手環套在手腕上，沮喪地想這隻能怪自己。他將受到自己公司全天候的追蹤，並被採集從睡眠質量和心率到所處位置和上網習慣等各種數據。

“I was really quite grumpy about it, I didn’t want to put myself on display like that,” he says. But as chief executive of Profusion, a data science consultancy, he had been urging his team of number crunchers to plan more ambitious internal projects — and this was the one they had come up with.

韋斯頓說道：“我真的感到非常不爽，我不想這麼展示自己。”但作爲數據科學諮詢公司Profusion的首席執行官，他一直在敦促自己的數據分析團隊策劃一些更具雄心的內部項目，於是他們就提出了這個項目。

For 10 days, Profusion’s data scientists used Fitbits and other apps to track 171 personal metrics for 31 staff who volunteered (including the somewhat reluctant Mr Weston). Combing through the data, the analysts found they could group the staff into clusters, based on shared patterns of behaviour. They labelled one group “Busy and Coping”; another “Irritated and Unsettled”.

在十天時間裏，Profusion的數據科學家們使用Fitbit和其他應用來追蹤31名員工志願者（包括有些不情願的韋斯頓）的171項個人指標。分析師們通過整理這些數據發現，可以按照一些共同的行爲模式對這些員工分組。他們把一組員工稱爲“忙於應對型”，將另一組稱爲“煩躁不安型”。

Technology has made it possible for employers to monitor employees more closely than ever, from GPS trackers for delivery drivers to software that tracks which websites office workers visit. Companies such as Profusion think wearable gadgets could open a new frontier in workplace analytics, albeit one that would further blur the lines between our work and private lives.

從跟蹤送貨司機的GPS定位儀到追蹤辦公室員工瀏覽網站習慣的軟件，技術讓僱主能夠比以往更嚴密地監控員工。Profusion等公司認爲，可穿戴設備可能爲辦公場所分析開闢了新的前沿陣地，雖然它將會進一步模糊工作和私人生活之間的界限。

“I think there’s an inevitability that it will gain ground, and there’s a backlash risk that will follow if the data get abused,” says Mr Weston.

韋斯頓表示：“我認爲，可穿戴設備普及開來是勢所必然的，而如果數據被濫用，就有引起強烈反彈的風險。”

For employers, the simplest way to use wearable gadgets (and so far the most common) is to give them to staff and try to nudge them into healthier lifestyles — a financially worthwhile goal if the company is on the hook for their health insurance. BP, for example, gives Fitbits to workers in North America and offers them rewards if they meet activity targets. Indeed, one of Fitbit’s five strategic goals is to “further penetrate the corporate wellness market”, according to its IPO prospectus. Wearables could also be straightforward tools.

對僱主來說，使用可穿戴設備最簡便（也是迄今最常見）的方法是，把它們發給員工，設法讓他們選擇更健康的生活方式——如果公司負責員工醫療保險的話，這個目標從財務上來說是有價值的。例如，英國石油公司(BP)向北美員工發放Fitbit可穿戴設備，如果他們完成了活動目標，還會給予他們獎勵。實際上，按照Fitbit的IPO招股說明書所示，該公司的5個戰略目標之一是“進一步滲透企業福利市場”。可穿戴設備也可能是直接的工具。

But the bigger prize is to use the data from such devices to make the workforce safer or more productive. Some warehouse workers already wear wristbands or headsets that measure their productivity and location in real-time.

但更大的作用是利用此類設備獲得的數據來讓工作場所變得更安全或者提高生產效率。一些貨倉工人已經戴上腕帶或耳機來衡量他們的工作效率和進行實時定位。

Kronos, the “workforce management” company whose customers include Apple, Starbucks and Ikea, makes annual revenues of more than $1bn by selling scheduling and real-time data tools that minimise salary bills and maximise productivity. Brenda Morris, who runs Kronos’s UK business, says the company sees applications for wearables in blue and white collar work.

Kronos是一家“工作場所管理”公司，它的客戶包括蘋果(Apple)、星巴克(Starbucks)和宜家(Ikea)，銷售可以最小化薪資成本和最大化生產效率的排班和實時數據工具，年收入超過10億美元。Kronos英國業務主管布倫達•莫里斯(Brenda Morris)表示，該公司看到在藍領和白領職員身上應用可穿戴設備很有效。

“If you’re monitoring where people are, what their stress levels are, what their fatigue levels are . . .[that’s] really important when operating machinery . . . Or [in an office] you can see that person’s getting stressed because they’ve been working on that legal contract for too many hours and they don’t have enough support.”

“如果你在監控人們所處位置、他們的壓力水平，以及他們的疲勞程度……在操作機器時，（這）真的非常重要……或者（在辦公室），你可以看到某個人因長時間研究法律合同，而且沒有獲得足夠支持而變得焦慮不堪”。

Chris Brauer, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, who runs experiments with workplace wearables, predicts a future in which managers have dashboards showing real-time employee biometrics such as sleep quality that are leading indicators for performance. “It becomes a predictive tool and possibly also a prescriptive one.”

倫敦大學金史密斯學院(Goldsmiths, University of London)高級講師克里斯•布勞爾(Chris Brauer)負責有關工作場所可穿戴設備的試驗，他預計未來經理們將會用儀表盤顯示員工睡眠質量等實時生物指標，這些是預示業績表現的先行指標。“它會成爲一種預測性工具，可能也會成爲一種規定性的工具”。

But that vision is a long way off — and there are a number of practical, legal and ethical hurdles in the way.

但這一設想距離實現還有很長的路要走，面臨着許多實踐、法律和道德方面的障礙。

First, no one seems to have worked out yet how to analyse or draw useful conclusions from wearables data. Profusion plans to do more trials in larger companies, overlaying the personal metrics with workplace performance data. But so far, the experience of Rob Symes, co-founder of a London start-up called The Outside View, is typical. He tracked all his employees with wearables last year, only to realise: “Right, I’ve got all this data, what the hell does it mean?”

首先，似乎還沒有人研究出，如何對可穿戴設備產生的數據進行分析，或者如何從中得出有用的結論。Profusion計劃在較大型公司開展更多試驗，將個人指標和整體工作場所業績表現數據疊加起來。但到目前爲止，通常會看到的情況是倫敦初創公司The Outside View的聯合創始人羅布•賽姆斯(Rob Symes)的經歷。去年他利用可穿戴設備追蹤了所有員工，最後意識到：“好吧，我掌握了所有數據，但這些數據到底意味着什麼？”

Meanwhile, wearable devices crossing over corporate “digital perimeters” every day are an obvious target for hackers, says Dave Palmer, who spent 13 years at GCHQ and MI5 before joining cyber security company Darktrace as head of technology. “You might think that’s a bit alarmist — what are the chances of my watch or heartrate monitor getting hacked — but this idea of the ‘internet of things’ is racing farther ahead in terms of functionality than in terms of security.”

另一方面，每天穿越企業“數據邊界”的可穿戴設備明顯會成爲黑客的目標，在英國政府通信總部(GCHQ)和軍情五處(MI5)工作13年後加入網絡安全公司Darktrace擔任技術主管的戴夫•帕爾馬(Dave Palmer)表示。“你可能會認爲這有點危言聳聽——我的手錶或者心率監測器被黑客入侵的機率能有多大呢——但‘物聯網’這個概念在功能性方面已經走在了安全性的前面。”

The gadgets are also easy to game. Adam Miller’s employer gives him cash rewards if his Fitbit shows he has taken a certain number of steps a day. But it registers “steps” when jolted, so if he has not met his daily target, “I might watch TV and wave my arm around . . . or my kids will grab it and start shaking it to see what the numbers get to.”

這些小玩意也很容易糊弄。對於亞當•米勒(Adam Miller)來說，如果Fitbit顯示他一天走到了一定的步數，他的僱主就會給予他現金獎勵。但Fitbit是在搖晃的情況下記錄“步數”的。因此如果米勒沒有完成每日的目標，“我可能一邊看電視一邊揮舞我的手臂……或者我的孩子們會抓着它搖晃，看上面的數字會到多少。”

For Dane Atkinson, chief executive of tech company Sumall, this highlights a serious problem with workplace metrics. “It has a law of physics — as soon as people know it’s being observed it changes the outcome.” His solution as a young CEO was to come up with a secret metric his employees did not know about: he tracked the volume and length of their work emails, which he found a surprisingly good indicator of who was in “professional distress”.

科技公司Sumall的首席執行官戴恩•阿特金森(Dane Atkinson)認爲，這凸顯了工作場所指標存在的一個嚴重問題。“這其中存在物理法則——一旦人們知道一個指標在被觀測，結果就會改變。”作爲一名年輕的首席執行官，阿特金森的解決方案是提出一個他的員工不知道的祕密指標：追蹤員工工作郵件的數量和長度，他發現在顯示誰處於“職業困難期”方面，這種指標效果好得驚人。

“I was struggling with empathy . . . the data really helped me catch up,” he says. “In watching those patterns I could start a conversation and say, hey, what’s going on, and there was almost always a huge unload.”

“我之前難以對員工感同身受……數據的確幫助我彌補了這一點，”他說，“看到那些情況後，我就可以與員工交談，並且對員工說，嗨，怎麼了，幾乎總是會聽到大量傾訴的話語。”

He thinks it is reasonable for an employer to monitor work emails, “but there’s a moral line that’s not been navigated by public conversation yet”.

他認爲僱主監視工作郵件是合理的，“但這其中有一條道德的界線，公共輿論還沒有找到這條線的位置。”

The legal line has not been navigated yet, either. Lawyers say companies would have to gain the explicit informed consent of employees before gathering personal data from wearables — and further consent to correlate it with other data, such as performance metrics.

法律的界線也還沒有確定。律師們表示，企業通過可穿戴設備收集個人數據前，應該在員工知情的情況下取得員工的明確同意——在將這些數據與工作表現指標等其他數據進行關聯前，還要進一步取得員工的同意。

Even then, there is a risk employees would feel implicit pressure to agree, says Daniel Cooper, head of the data privacy team at the law firm Covington.

科文頓•柏靈律師事務所(Covington and Burling)數據隱私小組主管丹尼爾•庫珀(Daniel Cooper)表示，即使如此，還存在員工因感到隱性壓力而勉強同意的可能性。

“Historically European regulators in the data protection area have been very sceptical you can ever get a valid employee consent — they feel that for existing employees, [the relationship] is almost inherently coercive.”

“歐洲在數據保護領域的監管機構歷來對此抱着非常懷疑的態度，認爲你根本得不到切實的員工同意——他們覺得對於現有員工來說，（僱傭關係）幾乎有一種固有的強制性。”

How many workers would say yes, uncoerced, and under what conditions? PwC asked 2,000 people recently: 40 per cent said they would wear a workplace wearable, rising to just over half if they knew it would be used to improve their wellbeing at work.

在不強制的情況下，有多少員工會同意，又需要什麼條件呢？普華永道(PwC)最近詢問了2000人：有40%的人表示他們會佩戴工作場所可穿戴設備。如果他們知道這將用於改善他們的工作狀況，這個比例會提高到略高於一半。

Employers and employees might share the same goals (less stress in the workplace, say) but then again, they might not. Many of those who said “no way” did not trust their employer not to use the data against them. A promise to anonymise the data and only analyse them in aggregated form would help win people over, PwC found.

僱主和員工或許有一些相同的目標（比如降低工作壓力），但他們也可能意見相左。許多回答“不行”的人不相信僱主不會用這些數據來針對他們。普華永道發現，匿名收集數據，只從整體上分析數據的承諾有助於爭取人們的支持。

For Mike Weston of Profusion, the reaction of his staff to their wearables experiment was as interesting as the data it produced. Some found it enlightening and useful, while others found it “quite disturbing.” One ended up “the most stressed I’ve ever seen her”.

對於Profusion公司的邁克•韋斯頓來說，員工對可穿戴設備試驗的反應和試驗產生的數據一樣有趣。一些人覺得可穿戴設備很有用，富有啓發性，另一些人則認爲這些設備“相當令人煩惱”。其中有一個人到最後變成一副“我認識她以來最焦慮的樣子”。

As for him? “I still don’t know if I love it, but I haven’t taken it off.”

他本人怎麼看？“我還不知道自己是否喜歡可穿戴設備，不過我沒把它脫下來。”