Employees prone to loitering too long at the water cooler beware: Japanese company KDDI Corporation has invented a phone that allows employers to monitor their workers’ every move.
The phone, when strapped to the wrist, records highly detailed information about the movements and whereabouts of the employee. It is advanced enough to tell the difference between scrubbing, sweeping, walking and emptying bins, along with many other activities.
KDDI thinks that the information recorded by the phone will allow companies to increase efficiency among their workers. Hiroyuki Yokoyama, head of web data research at KKDI’s research labs in Tokyo said, “Because this technology will make central monitoring possible with workers at several different locations, businesses especially are very interested in using such technology to improve the efficiency of their workers.”
While privacy concerns do not seem to be as important an issue in Japan as in the U.S., Mr. Yokoyama did address the subject.
“But this is not about curtailing employees’ rights to privacy. We’d rather like to think our creation more of a caring, mothering system rather than a Big Brother approach to watching over citizens,” he said.
Despite criticism from Japanese privacy experts, it’s likely that the phone will come to market. Japanese employers have been using GPS-driven monitoring tools since the technology first appeared on phones in 2002.
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