Picture: ISTOCK
Picture: ISTOCK

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A LACK of trust was the biggest barrier to South Africans being willing to share with their employers data gathered by wearable technology, even though there could be benefits, said financial advisory firm PwC on Tuesday.

Policies should be set to clearly identify what data would be shared with employers, and what the information would be used for, the firm said.

More than 2,000 South Africans completed an online survey that marked them as more open to sharing this kind of data with their employers than their UK peers, but only if doing so benefited them, PwC people and organisation leader Barry Vorster said.

Wearable technology is defined as clothing and accessories incorporating computer and advances electronic technologies.

"Employers should also be careful about what categories of data they collect as this will also impact on buy-in," PwC said in a statement.

Seventy-two percent of South African respondents said they would share with their employer data from wearable technology provided by their employer, and this rose to 87% when it was suggested that the data would be used to the employee’s benefit, such as introducing flexible working hours. For the UK these figures were 44% and 56% respectively.

Providing employees with wearable technology could be a "novel and powerful" way for organisations to gain better understanding of their workforce and tailor working patterns and office life to their individual needs, PwC said in its report, Wearables in the Workplace.

However, 20% of respondents said they did not trust their employer to not use the information against them in some way, and another 20% said they did not trust their employer to use the data to their benefit.

"The way in which (an employer) analyses (the data) and creates insight and foresight will also determine success," said PwC associate director Nanie Rothman.

Most of the information the employees would be willing to share was unchanging background data such as marital status and the number of children in the family. Respondents were less keen to share with employers information such as current location (48%), recent location history (43%) and websites visited (39%).

There was greater enthusiasm for sharing marital status (78%), number of children (74%), frequency of exercise (64%), average blood pressure (63%) and average heart rate (63%).