Welcome

Although public and private organizations are legally responsible to protect the safety, health, and well-being of their employees, there is evidence of an increasing number of occupational and work-related health issues. Facilitated by the broad availability of low-priced sensing devices in the last couple of years, organizations have the possibility to track and accumulate a huge amount of biological, physical, and behavioral data of their workforce, which in turn could be purposefully used for enhancing their well-being at work. However, with the introduction of this emerging technology, frequently referred to as “physiolytics”, organizations face several complex challenges, such as how to reduce employees’ resistant attitudes or how to encourage them to use it on a day-to-day basis over a longer period of time. Inevitably an ethical debate about the moral and immoral uses of physiolytics will emerge as well. By investigating the affordances and tensions associated with the introduction of this technology in organizational settings, we will address the challenges mentioned above in this research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.