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Fitbit Wants To Help Corporations Track Employee Health
jfruh writes: Fitbit is pitching its iconic fitness trackers to businesses as a tool to save money on health care costs. Many companies have wellness programs to encourage workers to exercise more, and Fitbit will help employers quantify (and monitor) employee progress. “We think virtually every company will incorporate fitness trackers into their corporate wellness programs,” Fitbit CFO Bill Zerella said
Lord help us all!
Maybe they can come monitor my food when I'm at home or out about town, too?
And maybe they can monitor when I wake and sleep.
And maybe monitor what kind of air I breath in my part of town.
And maybe they can just get a direct pipe into all my medical records? I mean, since apparently we give no fucks anymore, right?
I have a better idea: You hire me to do a fucking job and I'll do the fucking job and we'll leave our involvement with each other right fucking there.
This is fat shaming, plain and simple.
Granted people should try and maintain a healthy lifestyle for their own benefit, but to have that basically enforced by your employer adds a whole new level of stress on top of everything else you have to do.
I've already worked at companies where people were sacked because they were a drain on the corporate insurance and I'm already penalized by my current company (with higher insurance rates) because I refuse to submit my vitals and blood work every year for a "health insurance discount". My personal, private health information is just that.
Old news, my company started it last year. It is an optional program, but you are necouraged as you get a free fitbit, and money if you hit certain goals.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Last company I worked at I logged more sick time than any other employee and yet I had still put in enough OT to have to carry over vacation to the next year
They had HR do a "one on one" with me, feigning concern, if they really gave a shit I wouldn't be working OT at all
I got outta that place
While not quite a sales pitch, it sure kinda feels that way...
I'm aware of at least one major group health insurance company that provides "discounts"(There's no "penalty" for non-participation!) for insureds that prove that they have accomplished certain fitness goals on a monthly basis. This is tracked and uploaded directly to the insurance company via Fitbit. It's pretty fucking awful.
I'm also seeing signs of malware that seems to be brought in by the Fitbit software, now installed on just about every employee workstation.
but where is the diet and eating habits programs?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's not like the general public hasn't clued in already to the massive privacy sell-out that's been going on for the past 5-10 years. This kind of thing is nuts.
Given a few more snowjobs like this one from the bros in the valley and we may finally move away from 'optional' Ts & Cs that demand your first-born and get legislated privacy standards.
I work for the University of Washington (so I'm a state employee), and starting with 2015 our health plan has included a "wellness incentive" which, if met, drops $125 off an employee's annual deductible. For this current year, it was a simple matter of making a couple attestations ("I don't smoke", "I exercise at least 3 days a week"). For 2016, though, it's gotten a bit more intrusive - one of the ways you can earn points towards the incentive is to record daily step counts and exceed 35000 steps per week, which you could either do manually or by giving the website access to your FitBit data (it also supported several other trackers). Other ways to earn points included "Try Tai Chi", "Fill out an Advance Directive", "See a Mentor", "No Stress Mondays", and so on.
Given the move Washington State has made towards both intrusiveness and nanny-state-dom, and given that by state law pretty much all our job-related data is public record, I would not be surprised if at some point people who gave permission to access their fitness trackers to find that someone in the monitoring chain started checking when activity is occurring. This could be a problem for someone if, like me, they often don't get a conventional lunch hour due to job duties. I'm often eating after 1pm (or even after 2pm) simply because it works better with tasks I'm doing - so when I go for my lunchtime walk, it's not usually between 12 and 1. Fortunately I'm not naive enough to give them access to my Garmin Viviosmart data, but a less paranoid person could end up with a nasty surprise come annual evaluation time.
#DeleteChrome
Fitbit Wants To Help Corporations Track Employee Health
Fuck that and fuck you.
Suuuck iiit!!!
Seriously, people will simply bail and use Obamacare instead. Why would you put up with this/
As with his plan you will to have this whale working your 60 hour week with no OT hopeing to hold on it your job while there are X3 more HB1 out there.
also the first time you start to get sick you will get black listed. So the only plan the will cover you then will be the jail / prison plan.
I have a Fitbit (got it for free, I wouldn't actually pay for a high-tech step counter).
I also work out on a treadmill every morning before work. It counts my steps very accurately (it can even tell if I "cheat", and stop counting).
The Fitbit gives completely fictional numbers vs the treadmill. I mean, on most days, it would come to within 75% correct, but on one particular day, the Fitbit literally said I did 3x as many steps as I really did. I stopped even bothering to wear it after that.
Privacy rights aside (I vehemently oppose giving our corporate masters access to anything even vaguely resembling medical data), where do we stand when I may literally pay more for my insurance than the guy at the next desk for no other reason than Fitbit's crappy quality control?
/ Side note - The sleep tracking sucks even harder than the step counting. I took it off one night after activating sleep mode. It said I had something like 17 interruptions to my sleep. Uh-huh.
The day this happens is the day I pay my coworker to wear my bracelet. or give it to my seven year old. or leave it on the dryer during spin cycle.
It's awful for several reasons, here are a few of my personal favorites:
Intrusion into the personal lives of the employees.
The strong arm techniques ^h^h^h I mean incentives.
The single minded metric focus; people constantly worrying about the number of steps today, rather than doing their job.
The fraud. Fitbit on ankle swing or tap your foot and you've got 10,000 steps without getting out of your chair. (I don't really care about this, but it plays into the previous item)
The "discounted" rate isn't any better than the non-discounted rate from last year. In fact, rates overall are up!
IT support issues abound.
Because HIPPA
See, FitBit was waaayyyyy overvalued and a LOT of prople paid waaaasyyyy too fucking much for the stock. See, every thinks that FitBit's past growth will gone forever when their are signs thst it is slowing down.
So, how does one create demand out of thin air?
Why use businesses fear of eve inxreasing healtcare costs, of course!
But FitBit is just a gimmick - yet another consumer electronic gadget for the masses to buy, play with, and shove in a drawer after a month - it offers no valuable data other than what I can get with my $20 Timex watch and noticing that I'm grogging the morning and maybe I shouldn't have played that video game until Midnight.
“We think virtually every company will incorporate fitness trackers into their corporate wellness programs,” Fitbit CFO Bill Zerella said
Yeah, well I think virtually everyone is going to buy my new, improved Pet Rock.
Seriously, I wouldn't work for a company that required or even suggested that I wear their FitBit Corporate Monitoring Device.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Or maybe my dog would be a better choice. Or his tail. Or the ceiling fan...
... We think virtually every company will incorporate fitness trackers ...
I think that might be stretching it, a bit. I can think of one specific case where not a single Fitbit will enter select buildings: certain government contractors (and government employees, of course) are forbidden from bringing certain types of electronic devices into their office building, as wireless communications pose a theoretical security risk. Unfortunately for those people, the FitBit (and nearly every other health accessory) has Bluetooth.
The day my employer says "wellness incentive" and "Tracker" is the day I fucking leave. you pay me. I do a job. we agreed upon specific options and benefits for said work and that, assholes, is where your involvement in my life ends. If you want more, I want more.. you say no, I say fuck off i'm outta here.
it's a scheme to work employees to an inch of their life before sending them home so that the company does not have to be liable for working employees to death.
My previous employer went with the virgin health system pedometer. Several of us got tired of missing steps and other garbage data those things would give. I ended up chucking mine up in a drill press at my house and giving it a spin for an hour or so. I hit my daily limit for steps very quickly after that. :-) We had to use those stupid pedometers or we would not get a "deductible benefit." We lost our gym reimbursement in favor of these things. I am glad I got laid off from that company, it was going down hill fast.
captcha: distaste
We have successfully turned ourselves into exhibits in a zoo.
And that word is "metronome".
My company distributed Fitbits to every employee. Was kind of worthless for me as my two main forms of exercise are cycling and weight lifting- neither were really tracked by the fitbit. I lost it after a few weeks. Fortunately, there was no actual monitoring of our use.
Garmin has already started down this path, although they have a lot of room for growth.
Currently my company uses the vivofits as wellness programs where participation is optional. But so much participation is expected out of the employee to minimize health care costs. An employee can fudge what they do, take a bunch of tests and save about $100 a month on their health insurance. Otherwise they don't have to do much at all and pay the extra. Now there are ways to get out of the extra work, such as if your blood work shows your numbers are good, then great. You pretty much don't have to do anything.
There are aspects that I don't like about this, but being in the Midwest and having to pay for Billy Bob and his second helping of gravy covered fries, three 20oz Mountain Dews, and three cheeseburgers during a 20 minute lunch break; I find taking care of myself and a little encouragement isn't a bad thing.
My company is self-insured, so any tubby decides to clog his arteries and require a septuple bypass, some how that seems to affect the profit sharing.
I guess that all depends on what you want to get out of life, but since I started this wellness kick this last year, I think I would rather spend the time and effort slimming down and improve my quality of life a bit rather than require my own personal morning noon and night pillbox for every day.
Place something witty here
Fit Bit fooling...
All you need is a device designed to mimic "steps" that you put your FitBit on. Have it emulate walking, jogging or even sprinting. Then the employee wares this FitBit most of the day, except for the 2 hours when the "exercise" session takes place. I don't imagine that this device will be too expensive either, making the whole "I'm healthy so give me the bonus money" fiction worth the investment.
Who's with me?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I predict the guy at Home Depot working the paint mixer will be a top performer.
t
We have UH and the smokless option..no one here is getting random drug tests to prove they are tabacco free.
Either I am the only one or you are all not reading the parent.
So, when half your customer base ditches your band after 6 months, then it's time to hawk it to employers, for our 'wellness'?
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/wearables-have-a-dirty-little-secret-most-people-lose-interest
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Someone gave me a Jawbone (competitor to Fitbit) as a gift. I refuse to use it, because it an functionally opaque piece of garbage that requires that I sign up for an online service. This nearly always means that someone plans to sell my data.
These punk-ass little toys would not survive my principal physical activity, which requires seawater immersion tolerance to at least 3 meters, and occasional water impacts at upwards of 40km/hr. The other is yoga, and I am not wearing any encumbrances during that.
I also detest wearing anything on my wrists or arms. I wear a wristwatch only during travel, or if I have an appointment, or occasionally if I need to gauge time to renew sunblock. Two of my wristwatches, ripped away by impacts, are now somewhere on the bottom of San Francisco Bay or inside some bottom-feeder.
Speaking of bottom-feeders, I have something for you, Mr. Tech CEO. The only "tracking" that I support is the tying people who propose it, onto active railroad tracks.
I purchased the FitBit Aria scales and they stopped working within a couple of weeks.
There is no known fix other than returning them and getting a new set that will break within a few weeks.
This is well documented, and there are many people with the same issue, here are some examples:
https://www.facebook.com/fitbit/posts/525390547485134
FitBit seems to be doing nothing to fix the problem.
We're headed that way. Commerce and government will become indistinguishable from each other.
We have a (laughably ineffective) separation of Church and State.
We desperately need to even more fiercely deploy and enforce a separation of Commerce and State. No more lobbying by religious groups. No more lobbying by commerce -- or proxies of, at least not on the positively obscene way it is being done today
And by State I also include the federales.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Old news, my company started it last year. It is an optional program, but you are necouraged as you get a free fitbit, and money if you hit certain goals.
Sorry, I just don't have any trust left for companies that say in their privacy policy (from FitBit's website) 3.We will never sell your data, and will only share personally identifiable data when you direct us to (or under the circumstances outlined in our Privacy Policy). Once the data reaches a certain level where it can be monetized, these "privacy guidelines" ALWAYS quietly get changed, or disappear off the "official" web site completely. I have seen this too many times in the past couple of years, the last big one being the Radio Shack bankruptcy. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/despite-privacy-policy-radioshack-customer-data-up-for-sale-in-auction/).
I would put it on my cat and let him earn the exercise points for me, but I move more going to the mailbox than the cat does all day.
And get one one those mini wiener dogs with the tiny little legs, imagine how many steps they'll add in a day!
The Man wants to track more than your health: Woman wears during sex
Here, have a fitbit!
Fitbit does *not* track employee health. It tracks employee behavior, specifically what it perceives to be employee physical exercise. It's quite a stretch to imply one equals the other.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Funny how Corporations have managed to do away with pensions, reduces pay amount, rarely pays for vacation days, sure as fuck doesn't want to pay for pregnancy leaves, and been raping it's employees to line it's shareholders & CEO's pockets and people just accept it. Now they want to keep track of your health, so they can pay less healthcare cost, which they hardly pay much of at all, unless you are of course a Congress critter.
Think how worse it will be when the TPP crap goes thru and instead of Corporations being considered Persons, they will be even above Governments? Soon we will have to pay Corporations to be allowed to work there, if they could figure a way to trick us into that.
Be seeing you...
I'll monitor my own fucking health, thankyouverymuch.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
No.
Doesn't matter what is the name of the company at the start, and what is the subject of the tracking (if it is not a DIRECT function of their job), this is a bad idea (or has the potential to be abused and become a bad idea).
The comment box wouldn't let me leave just one word.
So this is it: Gattaca.
Also, I'm glad I'm retired. Shove it Big Fruit!
I do exercise, a lot. I fitbit wants to *help* my employer monitor my fitness, then my employer can pay my gym fees and give me time off *every_fucking_day* to work out.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I am contractant in a society where many staff people are doing a lot of sport. I do not much exercise and I am almost never on leave because of sickness (2 days in 20 years). There are many accidents in sports. Many sportiv people have to go to the doctor or to the kine often during the work time. There are most probably health benefits of doing exercise, but it is far from obvious that this gives any financial return for the employer. And when employees leave on retirement, they will most probably cost longer.
I do not know why employers seeking sportiv employees is a so widely accepted mantra. I have never seen a serious study that proves there are any benefits.
WP's are largely a means by which 'health consultants' make money off corporations.
And now FitBit is simply trying to get in on that action.
Now there's a difference between actually caring about your employee's health, and just trying to save money.
But let's be realistic: most companies are trying to save money by doing this.
Multiple independent research studies (have shown that Wellness Programs don't work, and don't save companies any money, nor make them any additional revenue, and actually harm health instead of improving it. Which rather contradicts the (rather self-serving) studies coming out of the wellness industry itself. (And some companies are simply using them to penalize their poorer and/or unhealthier (two conditions that tend to go hand in hand in a vicious cycle) workers.)
Overall what their finding is that there is very little return on investment, basically about breaking even.
The broader wellness programs, with the most preventive measures/incentives (ie the most overbearing) do the least, and actually decrease worker health.
At the same time more narrow, targeted programs, such as specific disease treatment programs (such as asthma, diabetes, etc) do the most, mostly likely because these are conditions people already have, and having a program at work that supports them and helps them manage their conditions does alleviate some burden, compared to the more traditional approach where the company doesn't care and leaves you to worry about it on your own, and/or raises your insurance costs or even dismisses you over it.
http://theincidentaleconomist....
http://www.nationaljournal.com...
https://hbr.org/2010/12/whats-...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Problem is, as soon as you quantify workplace wellness programs, they are exposed as shams. I can't imagine any of the vendors being particularly happy about this prospect. Oh sure, publicly they will praise it, but in private...
And with the advertising dollars from the hunger games for the healthy poor.
We now can give a small, a sliver of the earnings as pay to the participating poor.
(The few, less than 1% who survive.)