Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER FEBRUARY 2018 18 NEWS "It made perfect sense be- cause… they had to check with their documentation and their technical manuals in their ve- hicles," said Pedersen. "Having heads-up, hands-free informa- tion in front of them was a useful and important application." Using AR (augmented reality) for training might be the best use for the technology, she said. "If you are training someone using their hands or a manual job or labour, you are able to see from a first-person viewpoint, and training or coaching in that regard is much more functional and you are able to explain what you are doing." For education and distance learning, "AR would make for an interesting way to teach," according to Pedersen, who has witnessed it as a teaching tool at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. "I think people are a lot more used to the idea of wearing an eye display than they were in 2013. e idea is becoming much more normalized," she said. "People's desire to have seam- less interaction with information is one of the main reasons people will adopt this." When putting together ma- chinery with a specific set of in- structions, "you have to be very careful about how you connect the machinery; you can use graphical overlay to chart how you are com- pleting a task," said Pedersen. "When procedures have to be followed in a very linear fashion, it's very useful," she said. Potential privacy concerns But what about privacy concerns, with the potential for workers to record every interaction with others? "With Enterprise, every com- pany is going to have to think very seriously about protecting workers' privacy with policies and technology controls about how the content will be used and stored," said Pedersen. "Right now, what we're seeing is a lot of companies are really in the pilot stage of implementation and they are trying to figure out what privacy issues are emerg- ing," said Debra Mackinnon, a PhD candidate in the sociology department at Queen's Univer- sity in Kingston, Ont. "In terms of how the Cana- dian privacy landscape works, we don't know that there has been a privacy complaint made to the privacy commissioner or another group that has landed on their desk, but we may start to see things emerge." Mackinnon and Steven Rich- ardson, also a PhD candidate in the sociology department at Queen's, co-wrote the research study Left to eir Own Devices? Privacy Implications of Wearable Technology in Canadian Work- places for the 2016-17 Contri- butions Program of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). And when attending various wearables conferences in Can- ada and the United States, "un- derstandably, the issue of privacy is brought up every single time," said Richardson. "But the narrative has started to shift, where it's not so much about privacy per se, in a practical sense involving lawyers and privacy ex- perts; they are trying to talk about it as a social issue." Most of the wearable products available don't last long enough to record everything anyway due to low levels of battery power, ac- cording to Richardson. "The battery can't last for a whole shift, when recording au- dio-visual all the time," he said. "If the main concern is the camera part of it, practically speaking, the technology isn't really there yet." And wearables are not "living up to the tidal waves of hype that they were expecting, a la smart- phones," according to Richardson. Still, with a new tool comes a new set of concerns about privacy, said Mackinnon. "The importance of install- ing a compliance officer with any emerging technology that is brought into a workplace and dealing with issues of con- sent limiting use, disclosure, retention, all these need to be brought in with policies and the technology." In Canada, employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy, said Richardson. "Let's say Google Glass was given to you by your employer, 'Here: Use it while you are assem- bling something,' and then you put it on for your shift." "e question is: 'Would the employee have a reasonable ex- pectation of privacy of any per- sonal information that could be on that device during the course of their shift?'" And once an employer decides to implement a wearables pro- gram such as GGEE, it should conduct a "privacy impact assess- ment" with an experienced con- sultant, according to Richardson — especially small employers that cannot afford dedicated law- yers on staff. But once wearable eyeglass products become more ubiq- uitous, usage might rise, said Pedersen. People want to use their cell- phones for contacts and a lot of other things but "anything a com- pany can do to speed the process is something that will probably work in the market." "We could be even more ad- dicted to our computers devices if we make it easier all the time," she said. Start your free trial subscription * THE CANADIAN PAYROLL MANUAL ONLINE (CLASSIC)/ LE MANUEL DE PAIE CANADIEN EN LIGNE (CLASSIQUE) OR THE CANADIAN PAYROLL MANUAL ONLINE (ELITE) See how our newly enhanced Canadian payroll references meet all your payroll needs New in 2018 New enhancements to the Thomson Reuters online payroll products FREE ACCESS FOR 30 DAYS * © 2017 Thomson Reuters Canada Limited 00246WX-88906-NK Call 1-800-387-5164 and ask to start today. Save 20% on any format of The Canadian Payroll Manual Print (Classic), The Canadian Payroll Manual Online (Classic)/Le Manuel de paie canadien en ligne (classique) and The Canadian Payroll Manual Online (Elite) (formerly Carswell Payroll Source), with your CPA member discount. * Quote promo code 66477 for your free trial or member discount. *Offer available to new subscribers only of The Canadian Payroll Manual Print (Classic), The Canadian Payroll Manual Online (Classic)/Le Manuel de paie canadien en ligne (classique) and The Canadian Payroll Manual Online (Elite) (formerly Carswell Payroll Source). Discount cannot be combined with any other offer from Thomson Reuters. GOOGLE GLASS < pg. 6 Technology raises workplace privacy concerns "Every company is going to have to think seriously about protecting workers' privacy with policies and technology controls about how content will be used." CORRECTION Patrick Culhane is president and CEO of the Canadian Payroll Association (CPA) in Toronto, and Steven Van Alstine is vice-president of education at CPA. Incorrect information appeared in the January issue.

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