In the office or factory setting, people will be moving, meeting, or just hanging out by the water cooler.  Work, where people spend more waking time in their lives than any other place, is a social hub.  So how will employers deal with the physical distancing and mask wearing required in today’s new work site? 

China is a leader in electronic monitoring.  China uses technology from video to drones to enforce outside distancing and mask wearing.  If someone is spotted not wearing a mask, for example, they are identified through loudspeakers and told to put on the mask. 

The United States is not China and the freedoms the U.S. population enjoys are difficult to infringe, whether the requirements are for the betterment of the people or not.  The recent confrontations in Lansing demonstrate that point explicitly.  However, there are localities in U.S. using Chinese-made drones to monitor people in an effort to enforce social distancing.  “The drones make it easier for police to see into certain areas where access by patrol cars is more difficult,” MSNBC reported. “That includes tight spaces between buildings, behind schools, and in backyards. Failure to comply could lead to a summons or a thousand dollar fine.”

So, given the American psyche, how will employers enforce the safety measures they prescribe for their employees?

Interestingly enough, people-counting cameras have become a niche tool in recent years to help companies better use their office space, and in some cases trim real-estate costs. Employers now are repurposing them to help them comply with government guidelines on social distancing because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

What are these cameras?  Traditional occupancy sensors and motion detectors, made by larger firms including Honeywell International Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc., use infrared technology. A newer field of cameras include a variety of startups using computer vision, a form of artificial intelligence, to count how many people are in a room and measure how far apart they are. The technology can identify moving bodies or objects but not faces, and the low-resolution images are not made available to employers, who instead see data turned into numbers and charts.

VergeSense Inc. is one provider of these computer vision cameras.  In one case, a single camera mounted over four leather chairs in an employee area showed they were only being used 5% of the time, prompting the company to eliminate the space from designs for a new office.

Now they are repurposed to ensure physical spacing is maintained in the office.  Using computer vision is a relatively inexpensive method to control spacing.  Facility managers or real-estate executives can get notifications on their phone about overcrowding in a building. Each device costs a few hundred dollars, while the analytics software costs under $100 a year to run.

Employers are being required to use cameras in other countries, such as India and China, to ensure physical distancing.

Yet an issue is arising as to privacy.  For the most part, employee privacy rights are limited in the business setting.   But even if the pandemic issues go away,  “[t]he biggest risk is mission creep, even if the initial implementation is health and safety in the workplace,” said Albert Gidari, director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Down the line, vendors could repurpose their technology to monitor some other behavior. “It’s not a stretch to see this as a productivity-measurement tool.” Mr. Gidari said employers should be transparent with workers and consider removing the technology post pandemic.  “There’s an open question in my mind about how these systems can be justified,” he said.

Additional ASE Resources
ASE has several resources available to help you develop new policies and update your current employee handbook.

Sample PPE Policy - ASE has developed a sample PPE policy available here.  A toolkit will soon be launched with many more sample polices that will be useful for the return to work.

Virtual Course: Handbook Development - ASE’s next class on employee handbook development will be presented virtually and is scheduled for August 6th.  Register here.

Handbook Review and Development - For more information on ASE's Handbook Review and Development services, contact Michael Burns.

Sources:  Daily Wire 4/19/20, Wall Street Journal 5/15/20