Health monitoring
[ch 4: page 39]In America a growing number of employers encourage employees to wear health monitoring trackers as part of corporate wellness programmes. Activity-tracking devices made by companies such as Fitbit and Jawbone include pedometers which track steps walked, and monitor heartrates, calories burned and sleep levels. Such schemes are more commonplace in the USA, given the reliance there on workplace health insurance. In 2018, Fitbit launched Fitbit Care, claiming “to help improve wellness, disease management and prevention”, specifically designed for employers to give to their staff.
However, health monitoring can have more insidious implications, for example, drug and alcohol level tests influencing employers’ decisions on individual suitability to be recruited, retained or promoted to certain employment roles, even if the person’s ability to do his or her job is unaffected.
The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the GDPR classify health information as “special category data” (previously called “sensitive” personal data). Processing of this kind of data is tightly regulated. See Chapter 9, page 61 for a list of the conditions an employer must satisfy to be allowed to monitor this data.
For more information about the GDPR, see LRD’s guide to the GDPR for union reps.
LRD, The General Data Protection Regulation - a practical guide for trade unionists (https://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=BK&iss=1915)