Productivity at the Cost of Privacy: HR Weighs in on IoT

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices.” - Kouroupetroglou, 2014 IoT applications capture data from the object aggregating that information across a data network, and act on that information in order to improve business efficiency. So far as a society we’ve been able to gather data - from the simple to the complex. On the simple side, we are able to track movements, GPS, and interaction time with technology. On the complex side we are able to look at genetic makeup & monitor biological functions like heart rate and sleep time. What do we do with this data? Of course we attempt to model it and find patterns in the data, but we can also sell it to the highest bidder. The animating force behind IoT is “That which you measure, you can grow.” In a perfect world, employees consent is first taken into account before their privacy rights are infringed upon.