Hitachi Creates Wearable Sensor To Measure Employee Happiness

Happier employees tends to lead to better output and more efficiency, but how do you know if your employees are happy or if they secretly resent you? After all some employees might value their jobs too much to dare to speak out and voice their grievances. Over in Japan though, Hitachi High Technologies has come up with a wearable sensor that employees can wear to let bosses know how happy their employees are.

The wearable device will be packed with a variety of sensors that can detect and record when an employee is sitting, standing, typing at their desk, and can also record who they are talking to, and for how long, amongst other features. One of the sensors, an accelerometer, will be used to determine an employee’s happiness.

According to Hitachi, apparently there is some kind of correlation between a person’s physical movements and their sense of happiness, which we guess sort of makes sense as someone who is happy will have more spring in their step, versus someone who is bored or down and who might just shuffle around the office, although will the sensor be able to pick up on that?

The data collected will then be sent back to the base unit which will then calculate the happiness of the group as a whole. The idea is to help employers find ways to increase the happiness of their employees to help boost productivity. It is expected to go on sale in Japan this April where each tag will be priced at 100,000 Yen a year.

[Image credit – AFP]

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: hitachi, Wearable Tech