Wearables point to distinctive communication for productivity

With wearables and sensors,
we know now that people with
more face-to-face interaction
had lots of experts to turn to
when they had questions,
and they completed tasks more quickly.

Especially when it’s more than flashy eyewear taking cool videos, and when it measures more than steps taken or stairs climbed, wearable technology has landed squarely in the workplace. And it has everything to do with communication.

I had the truly exciting chance to talk with Ben Waber of Sociometrics Solutions about a year ago, and since then, I’ve seen his name and his work pop up in business publications all over, recently in Bloomberg Businessweek and the Financial Times.

ID for productivity (more than security entry)

This sociometric story starts with your badge or ID card that hangs around your neck at work, not a digitally connected watch or titanium face frame. A sociometric badge can, as an example, record how you move through your workday, how much time you spend in a meeting, who is talking, and how that affects decisions, using microphones and transceivers. The badge also measures your energy, specifically how you lean it to a dialogue, with an accelerometer noting posture and movement. Collectively, the data point to productivity—or not.

“All the things we think are soft can now be measured,” according to Waber. People’s interactions are quantified with 0s and 1s, the data of personal dynamics, though not exact words that specific people use. Sociometrics Solutions doesn’t record content of conversations but the type and length of interactions. That, with energy metrics, tells a useful behavior story.

By looking at what seemed to be soft skills now backed up by data, Waber has been particularly fascinated by the value of promoting people who help others do their tasks more quickly and who provide people with answers, as opposed to promoting the highest-producers themselves out of producer jobs. “These are the people who help others be more productive. Never before could we quantify this.”

Useful behavior counted in interactions (not surveys)

Sociometrics also quantifies peoples’ networks—how many people you actually talk with during a day’s work. At a major financial company’s call center, Sociometrics Solutions determined that the people with highest efficiency had the most cohesive networks. Simply put, people with more face-to-face interaction had lots of experts to turn to when they had questions, and they completed tasks more quickly.

Eighty percent of the time those call center employees were talking was when lunchtimes overlapped. So what did the financial firm do to take advantage of this insight? It synched more break times as well, essentially a no-cost improvement for more productivity. “A 10 percent increase in crossover interaction and exploration raises the return a bit more than 10 percent. Even a shared, central coffee area where people bump into each other works,” Waber said. 

Conversely, cutting into break time can cut productivity. Reigning in travel budgets for meetings is a short term, line-item fix that could affect long-term employee engagement as people’s networking takes a hit. “Work is getting so complex, that dependency on others is more important," Waber said.

That seems to be stating the obvious, but it raises the urgency for employee communication professionals to enable interactions instead of generating more posts or paper.

So while I walk around with a Fitbit and wear Google Glass, Waber’s wisdom reminds me that lagging or cutting-edge technology is not the problem or the solution for communicators. How employees interact and collaborate, or don’t, is what we need to measure and act on.

Yes, we can ask the right survey questions to measure engagement, but that doesn’t completely define what to do to improve collaboration, maintain culture across offices, or manage change. There’s a reason to pay attention to the sensors popping up on people at work.