A Multibillion-Dollar Opportunity: Virus-Proofing the New Office

“This terribly manual process of contact tracing: essentially it’s a phone tree, and that’s where the technology was when people started thinking about it; we’ve since moved it into the modern age,” said Rob Mesirow, a partner in connected solutions at PwC.

In May, PwC introduced a smartphone app for employers that uses Bluetooth signals, Wi-Fi, GPS and other data to track where employees go around the office, who they come into contact with and for how long. The idea is to enable human resources or corporate security managers to quickly access the data in the event of a workplace outbreak and notify employees who may have been exposed.

Microshare, a software company in Philadelphia that uses sensors to monitor environmental factors — like indoor air quality and occupancy — for offices and manufacturing plants, is marketing a different kind of contact-tracing system. It is adapting Bluetooth technology that it originally developed to track the locations of wheelchairs and beds in hospitals for tracking employees.

Employees will wear wristbands or carry credit card-size badges that collect signals about their whereabouts and proximity to one another; that data is sent to devices that transmit it to the cloud. Microshare said employers could also use its system to identify spots where infected workers may have recently gathered, enabling companies to shut down specific areas, rather than an entire building, for deep cleaning.

The badges may appeal to secure facilities or factories where employees are not allowed to bring their personal phones, as well as to people who would rather not have their employers track them on their smartphones.

“Asking you to put something on my phone, that’s a really slippery slope,” said Ron Rock, the chief executive of Microshare. But even employee-tracking wristbands and badges raise questions about increased prying by employers, he said. “You start to come up against: Is somebody going to the bathroom too often? Is somebody going to the cafeteria too often? Is somebody smoking too much? Is somebody in parts of the building where they don’t belong?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/business/virus-office-workplace-return.html