If a new study is any indication, then our sedentary nature is getting the best of us at work. Standing up, and moving around, is good for us.
Over the years, companies have added wellness programs to encourage more healthful, less-sedentary lifestyle habits. Getting employees to participate in wellness programs has been somewhat of a challenge, however, because many employees do not want employers having access to their health information. Now the EEOC is proposing updated wellness guidelines for employers.
At the same time, private enterprise is busy encouraging us to buy "wearable fitness trackers" -- a.k.a., those Fitbit watch thingies that tell us exactly how little physical activity we've had so far today. Microsoft has its own wearable fitness tracker, and, of course, there's the new Apple Watch.
The average fitness buff is able to track his or her physical movement with up-to-the-minute precision, and it's leading to addictive behaviors both on, and off, the clock. Consider this recent CIO Magazine opinion piece, in which the author reveals his obsession with racking up points on his personal, wrist fitness "leaderboard."
He isn't the only one obsessed with counting every calorie and monitoring every footstep these days: Fitbit's regulatory filing reveals that the company added 2.8 million active, paying users in the first three months of 2015 alone.
Employers, perhaps spotting an emerging wellness opportunity or simply providing a new workplace perk, are beginning to hand out wearable fitness trackers to employees. It's estimated a mere 1% of employers are giving wearable fitness trackers to employees right now, but research firm Tractica predicts a 17% increase over the next five years in the number of employers handing out workout-enabled wrist wear at work.
If Tractica's prediction pans out, then roughly 1 in 5 employers could be tracking employee wellness via wearable fitness tracker by 2020.
This nascent trend racks up more than few employee privacy concerns, as well as more than a few looming instances of workplace peer pressure. Namely, many employees could feel pressured to up their game, fitness-wise, by constantly racking up bigger, better, and more digital fitness results to keep up with their work peers. In the future, physical fitness could be considered just another workplace metric to meet, on top of sales quotas, billable hours, and so on.
The rise of the wearable workplace fitness tracker also raises another question: Could the pursuit of leaderboard-synced fitness lead to more employee workout injuries? And what about employees who don't want to wear -- literally -- their fitness level on their sleeve? Where, exactly, will the wrist-enabled "wellness" trend take us?
We'll start by seeing how the EEOC rules on company wellness programs. Until then, this workplace blogger will stick happily with her old-fashion pedometer.
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