Creating ‘automatic subjects’: Corporate wellness and self-tracking

Till, Christopher

doi:10.1177/1363459319829957

Cited by 27 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 66 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…According to Gordon Hull and Frank Pasquale (2018), employee wellness programs predate digital self-tracking platforms, emerging instead from the fitness boom of the 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism. Within corporate settings, sponsored initiatives meant to support "healthy living" among the workforce incentivize participation with discounts on health insurance premiums or the threat of penalties (Till 2017(Till , 2019. Increasingly combined with apps and wearable devices to foster "personal responsibility" through behavior change (e.g., smoking secession, exercise challenges, or weight management plans), these programs promote individual participation in fitness activities in order to satisfy a corporate interest in reducing healthcare spending, increasing worker productivity, and decreasing absenteeism (Gregg 2018).…”

Section: Self-tracking Workplace Wellness and Algorithmic Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking

Fox

Spektor

2021

Catalyst

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Technologies and self-help protocols associated with menstrual tracking have gained popularity over the past decade, with wellness consultants such as Alisa Vitti at the helm. Through careful monitoring and lifestyle changes, such techniques promise to unleash an inherent hormonal advantage that can extend one’s personal and professional pursuits. Though seemingly new, these approaches to menstrual monitoring have an historical lineage born of corporate management. Now being sold as feminist, they draw on a belief in menstrual deficit, or an understanding of menstruation along productivist lines focused on curbing workplace absenteeism and enhancing personal optimization. In bringing together cases from over the last century, this paper seeks to establish a through line of economization and imagine instead how workplace tracking might be leveraged toward worker mobilization and bargaining for collective gains.

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Section: Self-tracking Workplace Wellness and Algorithmic Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking

Fox

Spektor

2021

Catalyst

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“…Corporate wellness programs are now deploying self-tracking technologies-referred to as corporate wellness self-tracking (CWST) [90]. Workers are invited to measure and manage their own health, to improve their wellbeing, while also enhancing productivity, engagement, and performance.…”

Section: The Quantified Self At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Requirements for New Tools for Use by Pilots and the Aviation Industry to Manage Risks Pertaining to Work-Related Stress (WRS) and Wellbeing, and the Ensuing Impact on Performance and Safety

et al. 2020

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Work is part of our wellbeing and a key driver of a person’s health. Pilots need to be fit for duty and aware of risks that compromise their health/wellbeing. Recent studies suggest that work-related stress (WRS) impacts on pilot health and wellbeing, performance, and flight safety. This paper reports on the advancement of new tools for pilots and airlines to support the management of WRS and wellbeing. This follows from five phases of stakeholder evaluation research and analysis. Existing pre-flight checklists should be extended to enable the crew to evaluate their health and wellbeing. New checklists might be developed for use by pilots while off duty supporting an assessment of (1) their biopsychosocial health status and (2) how they are coping. This involves the advancement of phone apps with different wellness functions. Pending pilot consent, data captured in these tools might be shared in a de-identified format with the pilot’s airline. Existing airline safety management systems (SMS) and flight rostering/planning systems might be augmented to make use of this data from an operational and risk/safety management perspective. Fatigue risk management systems (and by implication airline rostering/flight planning systems) need to be extended to consider the relationship between fatigue risk and the other dimensions of a pilot’s wellbeing. Further, pending permission, pilot data might be shared with airline employee assistance program (EAP) personnel and aeromedical examiners. In addition, new training formats should be devised to support pilot coping skills. The proposed tools can support the management of WRS and wellbeing. In turn, this will support performance and safety. The pilot specific tools will enable the practice of healthy behaviors, which in turn strengthens a pilot’s resistance to stress. Healthy work relates to the creation of positive wellbeing within workplaces and workforces and has significant societal implications. Pilots face many occupational hazards that are part of their jobs. Pilots, the aviation industry, and society should recognize and support the many activities that contribute to positive wellbeing for pilots. Social justice is a basic premise for quality of employment and quality of life.

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“…Some theorists have explored the phenomenon of self-tracking from a Marxist standpoint (e.g. Pitts, Jean & Clarke, 2019) looking, for instance, at the ways in which the calculative rationale of self-tracking plays out at the workplace (Till, 2016(Till, , 2019Moore, Piwek & Roper, 2018;Charitsis, 2019) and feeds into the increasing precarity of the working conditions worldwide. Moore and Robinson (2016) invoke the example of Amazon and Tesco warehouses which, they argue, 'monitor every minute zero-hour contracted workers spend on the performance console using arm-mounted terminals'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal metrics: Users’ experiences and perceptions of self-tracking practices and data

Ajana

2020

Social Science Information

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Self-tracking is becoming a prominent and ubiquitous feature in contemporary practices of health and wellness management. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a rapid development in digital tracking devices, apps and platforms, together with the emergence of health movements such as the Quantified Self. As the world is becoming increasingly ruled by metrics and data, we are becoming ever more reliant on technologies of tracking and measurement to manage and evaluate various spheres of our lives including work, leisure, performance, and health. In this article, I begin by briefly outlining some of the key theoretical approaches that have been informing the scholarly debates on the rise of self-tracking. I then move on to discuss at length the findings of an international survey study I conducted with users of self-tracking technologies to discuss the ways in which they perceive and experience these practices, and the various rationales behind their adoption of self-tracking in the first place. The article also addresses participants’ attitudes towards issues of privacy and data sharing and protection. These attitudes seem to be dominated by a lack of concern regarding the use and sharing of self-tracking data with third parties. Some of the overarching sentiments vis-à-vis these issues can be roughly categorized according to feelings of ‘trust’ towards companies and how they handle data, a sense of ‘resignation’ in the face of what is perceived as an all-encompassing and ubiquitous data use, feelings of ‘self-insignificance’ which translates into the belief that one’s data is of no value to others, and the familiar expression of ‘the innocent have nothing to hide’. Overall, this article highlights the benefits and risks of self-tracking practices as experienced and articulated by the participants, while providing a critical reflection on the rise of personal metrics and the culture of measurement and quantification.

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Creating ‘automatic subjects’: Corporate wellness and self-tracking

Cited by 27 publications

References 66 publications

Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking

Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking

The Requirements for New Tools for Use by Pilots and the Aviation Industry to Manage Risks Pertaining to Work-Related Stress (WRS) and Wellbeing, and the Ensuing Impact on Performance and Safety

Personal metrics: Users’ experiences and perceptions of self-tracking practices and data

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