Activision Blizzard came under fire earlier this year when they laid off around 800 staff despite registering very impressive financial results for the last year, and now they've attracted attention again after a report from The Washington Post detailed how they paid employees $1 USD a day to use an app that tracks pregnancies.
Ovia is the app in question, logging data like mood and bodily functions, as well as medical data for the baby, and Activision Blizzard paid to gain access to this data, seeing how many workers using Ovia had faced pregnancies with high risks, the top questions they looked for, and how soon they planned on getting back to work, among other data.
"Maybe I'm naive, but I thought of it as positive reinforcement: They're trying to help me take care of myself," employee Diana Diller said, with the report adding that Activision Paid her $1 a day in gift cards to use the app, which Diller calls "diaper and formula money."
Employers can pay app developer Ovia Health to get workers a special version that relays health data back anonymously to an internal employer website accessible by human resources.
Vice president of global benefits for Activision Blizzard Milt Ezzard explains that the acceptance of Ovia comes as a result of a shifting workplace culture where volunteering to share sensitive data and information has become more common, hence why they've been offering more tracking like mental health, Fitbits, and sleep in recent years.
"Each time we introduced something, there was a bit of an outcry: 'You're prying into our lives,'" Ezzard said. "But we slowly increased the sensitivity of stuff, and eventually people understood it's all voluntary, there's no gun to your head, and we're going to reward you if you choose to do it."
"People's sensitivity has gone from, 'Hey, Activision Blizzard is Big Brother,' to, 'Hey, Activision Blizzard really is bringing me tools that can help me out.' "
Not everyone agrees though, and speaking of the practice of tracking pregnancies as a whole, psychiatrist Deborah C. Peel says:
"The fact that women's pregnancies are being tracked that closely by employers is very disturbing. There's so much discrimination against mothers and families in the workplace, and they can't trust their employer to have their best interests at heart."
"I want them to have a healthy baby because it's great for our business experience," Ezzard adds later on in the report. "Rather than having a baby who's in the neonatal ICU, where she's not able to focus much on work."
Ezzard also claims that the offer of pregnancy programs like this helps the company stand out in the industry and keeps skilled female workers coming back. Almost 20 women who had been diagnosed as infertile had become pregnant since the company started using Ovia, he continued, adding that there are strict controls on who can view the data, with medical claims processed at a third-party data centre. He even adds that the company has saved around $1,200 USD per employee in annual medical costs as a result of this and other services.
How do you feel about this practice?