Wearable technology is delivering real value in the workplace right now. Field technicians are pulling up repair manuals without setting down a tool. Drowsy drivers are being flagged before something bad happens. These are not experiments or pilot programs. The efficiency and safety gains are real, and HR professionals need to pay attention. Technology seems to be advancing faster than organizations can keep up with.
Wearable Tech Issues
Smart glasses are no longer a warehouse-only tool. Ray-Ban Meta glasses look like ordinary eyewear. Employees may already own them. Others may request them as a disability accommodation. Some are assigned to employees for legitimate operational purposes, and you probably cannot tell what they are by looking at them.
A fixed security camera is disclosed and recognized as a physical security tool in the workplace. A recording device someone can slip on without any clear indicator, like a pair of glasses, is much more concerning. It is much more difficult to track what might be recorded and how it might be used. These are the questions employers must consider today.
Imagine this scenario: A manager has a routine performance conversation with an employee. Nothing unusual, except the employee is wearing smart glasses and records the conversation. The manager does not notice because they look like regular glasses.
A few days later, the union files a grievance on the employee’s behalf. Much to the company’s surprise, the union representative isn’t working from notes or memory. They have a transcript of the performance discussion, including the moment the manager went slightly off script and said something that sounded fine in the room but sounds different out of context. Nobody saw it coming, but now you must deal with it in real time.
These devices can capture audio, video, and biometric data, and each falls under different legal rules.
When designing a policy around using wearable tech to record conversations, you could be dealing with a wide array of laws and jurisdictions, depending on your company’s size and geographic scope.
California law makes it a crime to record a confidential conversation without everyone’s consent. Other states require only one party’s consent. If you operate in multiple states, your employees are already working under different rules depending on where they are and may not even be aware of the restrictions. That’s where a compliant policy can provide guardrails for the employers and employees.
Policy Considerations
A blanket no-recording rule could pose a problem under the National Labor Relations Act, and smart glasses didn’t create it. The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) current Stericycle standard presumes rules with a reasonable tendency to chill activity protected by the NLRB are unlawful unless narrowly tailored to legitimate business interests. An outright ban on tech use could expose you to an unfair labor practice charge.
The NLRB General Counsel Memo 25-07 asserts that surreptitious recordings of collective bargaining sessions should be treated as a violation of the duty to bargain in good faith. If your labor relations team is not treating bargaining sessions and grievance meetings as no-recording zones, that needs to change. Smart glasses and other smart wearables should be on the pre-meeting checklist right alongside phones and laptops.
Accommodation Possibilities
Here is one that tends to catch employers off guard.
An employee comes in with a prescription for smart glasses, maybe for light sensitivity or a vision issue, and asks to wear them at work.
The instinct is often to say no because of the recording concerns, and that instinct is understandable. But saying no without an individualized accommodation analysis could create an Americans with Disabilities Act issue.
Neurotech Is on the Horizon
Neurotechnology is already entering U.S. workplaces in the form of fatigue-tracking headbands, focus-monitoring earbuds, and brain-computer interfaces that translate neural signals into digital commands.
Neural data enables classifications that employers could use in employment decisions, raising privacy, discrimination, and autonomy questions that make smart glasses look manageable by comparison. States are moving to regulate it, and most employers have not started thinking about it yet, despite neurotechnology’s rapid growth.
Organizations that think neurotechnology through before something goes wrong will tend to come out ahead.
Such new technology isn’t waiting for your handbook to catch up. HR professionals who ask the hard questions now will have a lot fewer hard answers to give later.
Michael VanDervort is a labor relations and communications strategist at LRI Consulting Services Inc. in Broken Arrow, Okla.
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