Anti-virus tech offered to offices monitor employee health

Companies including Truework and Gensler are offering technology to help offices reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic. Truework’s software allows employers to track their workers’ health and Gensler’s workplace planning app creates socially distanced office layouts while businesses that sell thermal cameras are rebranding goods as anti-virus products. The US market for contact-tracing technology for employers could reach $4bn a year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). However, preventative measures and newly imposed rules are untested, cautioned Laura Becker from IDC.

Employees will wear wristbands or carry credit card-size badges that collect signals about their whereabouts and proximity to one another; that data is sent to devices that transmit it to the cloud. Microshare said employers could also use its system to identify spots where infected workers may have recently gathered, enabling companies to shut down specific areas, rather than an entire building, for deep cleaning.

The badges may appeal to secure facilities or factories where employees are not allowed to bring their personal phones, as well as to people who would rather not have their employers track them on their smartphones.

“Asking you to put something on my phone, that’s a really slippery slope,” said Ron Rock, the chief executive of Microshare. But even employee-tracking wristbands and badges raise questions about increased prying by employers, he said. “You start to come up against: Is somebody going to the bathroom too often? Is somebody going to the cafeteria too often? Is somebody smoking too much? Is somebody in parts of the building where they don’t belong?”