As awareness on the importance of mental health increases, some employers are turning to technology to help monitor the health and moods of their employees, Wall Street Journal reports.
In an effort to retain and energize staffers, more companies are announcing they are making employee happiness a priority. Recognizing an opportunity in the market, software developers have created applications that work to monitor, analyze and improve workers’ moods. Some companies have implemented software that trawls through email and Slack messages for terms that may be associated with depression, while other companies are asking workers to track their moods on apps.
A Blue Cross Blue Shield app for employers that subscribe to the company’s insurance programs lets employees drag a slider from a smiling face on the left to a frowning face on the right to record their mood. Employees can graph their emotional fluctuations over time, says Angela Jenkins, a Blue Cross Blue Shield coordinator who helps companies set up wellness programs, although employers don’t see that individual data.
“It just feels really good to put that smiley face on there,” she says, adding that even if the employee had a bad day, recording the emotion can be cathartic or prompt you to analyze the reason for your unhappiness.
Some of these steps by employers to track their employees’ moods, however, have raised new questions about whether employee privacy is at risk. Read the full story.
