Author: JT

As helpful as wearables can be, they are generating a headache for business IT departments.

A leading law firm has released a statement that has provided a considerable amount of insight regarding a new view of wearable technology, which has to do with the privacy headaches that are being generated for employers.

Smartwatches and augmented reality glasses are now stepping into the workplace, with benefits and drawbacks.

As helpful as these wearable technology devices can be, they also have an intrusive side that can be utilized by workers in order to take secret videos or photographs. These are starting to cause many employers to feel a considerable amount of concern, according to a lawyer from Morrison and Foerster, Susan McLean.

There are a range of different types of privacy implications resulting from the use of wearable technology in the workplace.

According to McLean, “There are huge privacy and ethical implications around wearable technology.” She went on to express that this struggle regarding the use of wearables by employees will only continue to become greater as time goes on. As Google Glass, smartwatches, and other wearable mobile devices start to be owned and used for a growing number of purposes at home and at work, the problems with privacy and security will rise, particularly throughout the first several years of their evolution.

As this mobile technology continues to become more mainstream, it will be up to employers to come up with the necessary policies to decide exactly how workers will be able to use these devices, and then to know how to enforce these regulations. McLean provided the example that if Google Glass were used in a workplace to record videos of a meeting that includes other workers, it could be interpreted as bullying.

Another example is that an employee who is facing disciplinary action would be able to use augmented reality glasses to secretly record a meeting so that this video could be used later on in legal proceedings. Due to these types of risk, McLean cautioned that “Companies have to be very clear on how and why employees use wearable technology.”

Advertisers in the United Kingdom have clearly embraced the channel and the trend is only improving.

While mobile marketing is doing quite well in a number of different markets, in the United Kingdom, adoption has been considerable and has reached the point that eMarketer has concluded that it is “the new normal” in that country.

At a time in which a huge focus is placed on social media advertising, it is over smartphones that many people are reached.

In the U.K., there is a boom that is being experienced in mobile marketing, particularly over social media, that is expected to continue racing forward until it slows to a near plateau in 2018. eMarketer released a report entitled “UK Social Networking Trends: mobile Is Becoming the New Normal”. Its conclusions were that the entire forecast period of the report – which ends in 2018 – will see a steady growth in social media use over smartphones. It stated that this year will see 75.3 percent, but that this figure will rise to 90.2 percent in that final year.

As consumers start paying more attention to smartphones, advertisers are looking to mobile marketing.

Overall advertising and social media marketing are becoming a mainstream focus in the U.K. Brands and businesses are seeking to connect with consumers over the channel that they prefer the most, and in many cases, this means smartphones. The true opportunity is in the fact that most consumers have those devices with them and turned on, most of the time. This allows for a new and critical level of real time engagement that has never been possible before.

That new data aligns well with a study that was released in February 2014 by a social media firm called Immediate Future. It looked into the way marketers in the United Kingdom felt about social engagement offers in real-time. Though the most frequently cited benefit identified among the participants was general audience engagement, 35 percent also felt that it helped to increase customer loyalty and retention, while a quarter said that they experienced better return on investment as a result of social mobile marketing.