Today, many organizations partner with vendors to address employee health and engagement. For example, with the goal of improving employee wellbeing for partnering organizations, Virgin Pulse provides employees with wearable devices and applications to track their sleep, stress, activity level, and other personal data. Companies like Virgin Pulse tout their commitment to data privacy, security, and compliance, thereby implying that employee data will not be shared in an unauthorized manner.
The surprising thing with data recognizability is understanding how seemingly anonymous data, such as a query into a search engine, can give enough unique information to track that person down. For example, an IP address is a unique online identifier that may be tracked when a form is filled out or an online survey is taken. Although not 100% accurate, IP addresses can be used to identify a person or pinpoint their location, especially over a period of time as individuals travel to the same places (e.g., from their homes to work and back).
If an organization decided to provide employees with wearable devices instead of working through a third-party vendor like Virgin Pulse, this could pose an ethical dilemma under certain circumstances. Namely, without proper data privacy and compliance restrictions in place, the data could be used in ways that would compromise individuals’ privacy and other personal rights. Although perhaps not illegal, HR professionals may run dangerously close to committing discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) if they use these data to make employment decisions. Poor or irregular sleep, for example, does not necessarily constitute a disability according to the ADA, but it could be an indicator of various physical diseases or psychiatric disorders, which are protected as disabilities under the ADA. Further, even if deemed legal, using employee health data in this manner could be construed as unethical, particularly if the data are used in a way that deviates from their intended use.

Questions 

1. How does the use of a third-party vendor like Virgin Pulse make it more ethical to have employees wear monitoring devices than it would be if the employer did so directly?
2. Do you think the use of monitoring devices should be optional for employees? How would you ensure that employees who opted out of using the device would not be penalized for nonparticipation?