Women are encouraged to provide Activision Blizzard with their health data. The executives can allegedly save money with this sensitive data. As a reward for tracking their data with an app, employees receive shopping vouchers.
How does Blizzard know the details? An article has appeared in the Washington Post that deals with women’s health data. Through apps, these women can provide very intimate information and make it available to their employer.
Activision Blizzard is one of those companies and even offers its employees bonuses for sharing this data.
What data is collected? The apps collect different types of information. The most prominent app, Ovia, asks for quite a few health details and wants to know:
- What phase of the period a woman is in
- How she feels today
- When the last time was she had sex
- How much she weighs
- When she goes to bed and for how long
- How often she tries to get pregnant
- How the pregnancy has gone
- When the woman returned to work after the pregnancy
Not all of this data is shared with the employer; some is only visible to the respective user. The apps also provide tips on how to best deal with certain issues and give general and specific health advice.
How are employees rewarded for the data? Those who provide their health data to the employer are compensated. At Blizzard, employees receive about $1 per day in the form of vouchers for using data from Ovia.
What does Blizzard say about it? Milt Ezzard, Blizzard’s “Vice President of Global Benefits,” said in an interview with the Washington Post that employees’ perceptions have changed over the years. He says:
“Every time we introduced something new, there was a little outcry: ‘You are spying on our private lives!’ We gradually increased sensitivity, and in the end, people understood that it is all voluntary, that no one is holding a gun to your head, and we reward you if you choose to do it [to share the data].”
For Blizzard, this is clearly a win. They have been able to save an average of $1,200 per employee per year through this health monitoring.
What are the concerns? Privacy advocates fear that the data could be used to pressure or discriminate against pregnant women or women in general. Even if the data is anonymized and aggregated, a lot can still be inferred from it. Employers could try to influence women not to pursue a pregnancy if the financial risk for the employer is too high.
Furthermore, there is naturally concern that employers will continue to intrude into private lives.
Many companies in the USA want the data: It should be noted that Activision Blizzard is not the only company that uses such data. In the USA, personal data is generally seen more leniently than in Europe or Germany. Whether one considers it a good thing if the employer knows everything about one’s health is something everyone must decide for themselves.
What do you think about employers collecting such intimate health data? Is it a good thing that helps alleviate employee burdens and also saves money? Or is it too much of a coercive measure?
At the beginning of the year, Blizzard made headlines with layoffs:
