Keywords

4.1 Introduction

The safety of installations and people is traditionally the result of increased attention paid by firms and their managers to the visibility of activities, their actual sequences and the intentions of workers. The increased transparency ideally allows a reduction of uncertainties and potential errors in the execution of activities and improved anticipation, programming and control of the realisation of processes. Transparency also allows faster and cheaper remedial actions while optimising business execution schedules by reducing downtime, incompatibilities and sources of error.

The challenge for firms, or rather the utopia of some of them, to ensure the safety of their facilities and their staff while optimising their productivity has always been to detect, capture and analyse more and more data on actual activities, movements and locations of workers. Even more, to capture and analyse more and more data on the sequencing of activities to ensure the safety of workers or to anticipate any risk of industrial incidents, as well as to rationalise the movement of individuals and goods, maintenance and execution programmes to increase productivity.

With this in mind, individualised digital tools embedded on workers—smart phones and PDAs, smart glasses and soon wearable sensors—have flourished over the past decade because they simultaneously allow companies to capture live data on the actual activities carried out, sequences, execution times or errors in order to optimise the programming of activities and reduce faults while optimising shifts or the timing of tasks (Kogan, [12] on road transport). The improvement of organisational performance by on-board digital tools is also based on the sending in real time of technical and precise information to professionals, easier access to precise documentation or dialogue with remote experts advising workers. The geolocation function on these tools can also help to locate and rescue them in the event of a perilous situation. At the same time, employees can claim to be equipped with these digital tools in order to effectively carry out their professional missions due to several trips between establishments or spaces within the same factory. Embedded and individualised digital tools allow them to receive remotely and continuously information in order to carry out their activities reliably or to send it back to the organisation and their managers in order to inform them about the carrying out of activities or their location.

Managers and employees are then faced with the contradiction of having to use technologies that can provide information and expert assistance to carry out efficient and reliable activities, while strengthening hierarchical control over time, travel or compliance with procedures and encouraging rationalisation of work. However, behind this classic theme of the confrontation between professional autonomy and organisational rationalisation, wearable digital tools explore new areas of control by entering the private lives of workers. Indeed, sensors integrated into watches, vests or smart glasses can, for example, assess the locations, movements, timing of movements or the state of stress of the worker by measuring their heart rate or pupil dilation. The wearable digital objects then enter the bodily intimacy of workers and their private lives, and limit and control the space-times necessary for rest, reflection, creativity and therefore performance and safety, as we will show below.

Considered as fundamental and an individual freedom, privacy is nevertheless protected in the professional sphereFootnote 1 by several laws and regulations which arbitrate a priori the tensions between the organisations and the professionals using these tools. However, this programmatic vision is undermined by reality: people in organisations are not always familiar with these laws, have difficulties interpreting their meaning in specific situations or do not always have an interest in mobilising them.

These points raise a number of questions which must be empirically analysed. Is it possible that these technologies are increasing workers’ efficiency without sacrificing their autonomy to a rationalised and disempowering organisation? How do workers using these technologies protect and manage their privacy at work and their personal data?

4.2 Individualised Digital Tools and Privacy at Work

Individualised and wearable technologies renew the classic issue of professional autonomy constrained by organisational rationalisation, which is based on visibility of activities, movements, locations or the real intentions of employees. These technologies potentially immerse themselves in the intimacy and privacy of employees and then unveil them before ultimately turning against the objectives of enhanced safety and performance.

To understand this, it is necessary to clarify some terms. We use the term intimacy in this chapter to refer to the inner space of the individual. Secret, it withdraws from the gaze and control of others. Private life is an area where exchanges between intimacy and the public take place and in which confidential information passes to a small circle of individuals who respect secrecy and discretion [8]. Privacy is the potentiality of controlling intimacy and private life. It is understood as an immutable right of each individual “to be left alone” [24]. It can be conceived as a selective control of access to oneself [2] in order to minimise their vulnerability during interaction with others [14]. It represents the degree to which a person has access to others and their information. It is protected when others have limited access to a person's thoughts, bodies and possessions [19].

In the workplace, privacy-related analyses mainly focus on the use of digital tools and the collection of their data. They particularly question the potential for monitoring and restricting the autonomy and the private life of employees [16] by devices that make social phenomena more visible, individuals more calculable, exploitable and governable [7]. For example, the geolocation functionality of mobile phones can discipline and regulate the practices of technicians by forcing them to report each intervention or by measuring the time spent on each site or during journeys, before data are transmitted to managers in order to compare individual performances [13]. Construction workers are reluctant to wear smart vests that locate them in the event of an incident, for fear that they will generate data to monitor their downtime [6]. Physiological data from sensors can potentially be used to infer driving behaviours and performance [10].Footnote 2

Other authors stress the potential for articulation between professional and private life offered by digital tools. On one hand, they allow employees to regulate their private affairs or carry out their relational and social activities during their working day [21]. On the other hand, they manage crises and tensions at work or break loneliness at work by enabling calls to friends and spouses [4].

However, it would be unfortunate to limit analyses of privacy at work to the impact of technological objects, digital traces collected and potential for control. Palm [17] thus defines privacy at work as local and informational. Local privacy includes the possibilities for the employee to retire to isolated areas of work and to use some of them in order to protect themselves from intrusions and observations. Indeed, the public gaze could stifle the expression of intimate feelings and the possibility of “governing” oneself by acting without the approval of others, developing one’s own standards or rearranging one’s thoughts in order to prepare our “public performances”. Informational privacy is the individual's ability not to publicly reveal personal data and to retain some of them in order not to interfere with relationships with colleagues, employers, consumers or clients. Information privacy includes limits on data explaining when, where and how employees carry out their activities, which give the employer a detailed picture of their productivity. Ultimately, as Palm [17, 18] specifies, controlling their privacy allows workers to restrict others’ access to themselves, build their professional role or prepare for their public performance. Thanks to this, an individual can understand themselves and develop autonomous acts, form their own standards and act in accordance with them while entering into a relationship with others considered as an equal. They can also form and develop their own goal, express their identity and their value, ensure peace and personal reflection, in particular to develop safe or more effective acts.

4.2.1 An Empirical Analysis

To illustrate these ideas and answer the proposed questions, we will refer to an empirical study carried out on an industrial production site. Its technical design, which is unique in France, includes specific equipment on which maintenance technicians, sometimes with little experience on the site, must intervene, which sometimes leads them to experience difficulties either in locating the equipment on which to intervene or in carrying out certain operations. Technicians can sometimes work alone, accompanied by work documentation that is not always up to date or even available. The industrial performance as well as the safety of the activities is based on a combination of high individual autonomy in the activities to organise them, to seek information, to train by companionship… and solidarity between colleagues to transfer quickly the precise information on materials and activities. In order to reinforce this solidarity, the technicians develop a private life at work which includes rituals of coffee breaks and outdoor outings (aperitifs, sports activities, etc.) allowing the expression of feelings of comfort, support and mutual aid, which facilitate cooperation during work activities. The technicians know each other intimately and trust each other. This facilitates mutual assistance and the rapid transmission of technical information to carry out activities with performance and safety.

However, the organisation is proposing reforms that shake up local and information privacy. Managers have created a single open plan workspace for all technicians near their own offices, eliminating the possibility for technicians to fully control the relevant information on activities, i.e., the tricks of the trade to carry out the tasks. Indeed, managers can easily go to the open space and attend technicians’ preparatory activities and meetings. Space reform is also a power issue for managers. Technicians have reacted to protect their informational privacy on personal work data by taking refuge in “interstitial spaces” [9]—like corridors and entrance halls—where they can exchange this knowledge or take refuge in secluded “intimate spaces”—such as offices and meeting rooms—where they can think about their activities and the way to do them. During the same period, the organisation and the managers are testing digital technologies which will allow workers to enter into dialogue with colleagues to help them carry out activities, or to locate them in order to help them in the event of an incident.

The sociotechnical context of this industrial site and the desire of professionals to control their privacy at work have a strong impact on the trajectory of these technologies. Maintenance technicians are completely in favor of being equipped with digital technologies that allow them to enter into dialogue and cooperation with colleagues from their site but are not favorable to increased collaboration with external experts. The latter do not know the technical specificities of the site, and the absence of informal relationships and the associated interpersonal trust with these unknown experts would not allow the technicians to expose their doubts on their activities or their professional shortcomings. They insist on the use of technologies with their colleagues to strengthen the bonds of cooperation and solidarity necessary for the performance and security of the organisation. Moreover, they clearly express that these technologies should not be continuously active, but just a temporary help.

Finally, the maintenance technicians of this factory are resistant to other technologies that could locate them or even trace their movements. They wish to protect their autonomy of movement on site, not for the pleasure of strolling around the site, but to reinforce the performance and the safety of the installations by going to check an equipment, to make a tour of the facility, help a colleague… In this situation, professional autonomy and movement allow the control of the installation and the acquisition of knowledge to strengthen security.

Scholars emphasise that the major pitfalls for the acceptance and use of wearable digital technologies are the lack of association and consideration of user expectations from the design stage, as well as the potential for reinforcement controls and rationalisation of work. These pitfalls are overcome in organisations where strong ethical rules combined with cooperative relations between actors make it possible to involve “spokespersons” from the design phase and to “translate” users’ expectations in order to integrate them into technical systems [1]. In this sense, the integration of local teams from the design of the project and throughout the use of technologies is essential. Their integration makes it possible to facilitate the collection and implementation of their expectations and their uses during the design and use phases of technologies. Moreover, an appropriate discourse addressed to users in the development phase of wearable digital technologies is a key component in the acceptability of these tools. This consists of emphasising the legitimate purpose of technology and its role as a decision aid and not as a means of controlling activity.

These lessons can be found in the empirical case mentioned. Helped by ergonomists and sociologists, the representatives of the technical professions discuss the issues they face in situation, before imagining specific uses and purposes for new applications implemented on a new smartphone-like device. The technology is all the more accepted as it does not duplicate other uses in the installation. It is not perceived at the time of our study as a potential instrument for rationalising and controlling work that would limit privacy and intimacy at work. The technicians only imagine using it occasionally to receive information in order to become more competent and autonomous in their activities, without the devices generating data concerning their work performance. It is different with the second technology, smart shoes, which are less well perceived because they duplicate the “deadman” safety technology that they already use, and for which technicians do not imagine specific uses that would help resolve their professional challenges. Worn all the time, they also raise fears of control technology that would undermine their privacy at work. Overcoming user reluctance also results from the ability of organisations and their teams to respond to users’ questions about unwanted uses of technologies. This capacity is established thanks to the existence of places favouring contradictory debates between the different categories of actors to ultimately organise “joint regulations” [22].

4.3 Conclusion

Wearable digital tools can provide information and expert assistance to carry out efficient and reliable activities, while strengthening managers’ control over time, travel or compliance with procedures and encouraging a rationalisation of work. Behind this classic theme of the confrontation between professional autonomy and organisational rationalisation, these digital tools explore new territories of control by entering the private lives of workers. Privacy at work is not reducible to the digital data harvested by technologies, but concerns broader control of oneself, of one's information or of one's private activities, which can be weakened by the reform of the spatial organisation of work, managerial presence or the recording of precise data by digital tools, limiting the possibilities for workers to relax, to decompress, to experiment with new activities, to organise the sequence of activities themselves or to develop new knowledge, contributing to the performance and safety of installations.

Issues of privacy at work cannot be reduced to digital data from technology, but include workers’ ability to control use of their personal information or data on their work activities. In the context of the empirical case we described, the spatial organisation of work and managerial presence participate in the control of privacy, which forces the worker to fit together different symbolic spaces. Those devoted to private life allow the development of socialisation rituals. Interstitial spaces allow the exchange of specific professional knowledge. The intimate spaces allow the professional to reflect on the evolution of their activities. The control of privacy and private life at work by the worker contributes to the reinforcement of the performance and the safety of production giving the worker the possibility to experiment new activities, to organise them or develop new knowledge.

In addition, we wanted to show that if the association of user spokespersons is an essential condition for the success of the design and dissemination of digital technologies, the technical and organisational context also has an essential impact on the trajectory of these technologies. The constraints of the activities, the psychological tension of carrying out complex activities alone explain the importance of a private life at work which reinforces solidarity between technicians of the same team. In this context, technologies reinforcing the exchange between peers are well accepted, contrary to those which individualise and reinforce interactions with external experts.

The production of digital personal data on work, resulting from the use of technologies, nevertheless increases the difficulties of protecting the privacy of workers since they can be memorised, potentially aggregated or searchable. Even if these risks are limited by European and national regulations (GDPR, labor code), experience shows that the rules are not always an absolute guarantee because they may be poorly known, understood or interpreted. Workers and organisations therefore have an interest in adopting new approaches to guarantee the protection of workers’ digital data. First, this kind of risk can be limited in companies with a strong social tradition of negotiation and where negotiation relations with worker representatives are institutionalised, strengthening managers to comply with the ethical obligations and regulatory protection of “privacy at work”. Secondly, this kind of risk can be limited when employees are able to develop relationships of trust with the managers to be sure that some data will not be used contrary to their interests. However, not everyone is able to develop these kinds of relationships, and sometimes the organisational conditions are not favorable.