When Convenience Gets Under Your Skin

Whether it is Amazon planning on stores without cash registers, or being able to buy drinks in a club without your wallet, to tracking the movement of just about any goods you can think of, RFID (Radio-frequency identification) is part of lives. But, what if your CEO or CTO came to you and said, “What if our employees had an RFID chip implanted in them?”

As with a lot of tech, the argument in favor of it is about convenience. Employees could access buildings, rooms, computers, vending machines, etc just by walking past an RFID reader. No more reaching for or losing key cards.

So, a company in Wisconsin is trying it out. The non-squeamish volunteers will get the chip (about the size of a grain of rice) put into their hand between the thumb and forefinger.

I will avoid making ominous comparisons to 1984. But, I am curious as to what are the real productivity or engagement benefits of doing this. How much time is being wasted fumbling for security cards? Does this help prevent any security breaches? I am just not seeing the ROI, so I doubt that many companies will adopt this.

I am not anti-technology or else this blog would show up on a piece of paper. Nor do I expect that every tech idea to be a good or bad one. However, business decisions that affect employees should be made on something beyond, “This would be cool!” Someone at the companies adopting this technology did just that (probably after an amazing sales pitch). Does it establish them as having a forward thinking tech-enable culture? Sure. Does it also show them as favoring style over substance? I think again, the answer is, “Yes.”

We can help companies establish a culture of good decision making by facilitating data-driven discussions. Questions like, “What are our goals?” and “How do we determine if this innovation is successful?” is a good way to separate a fad from effective organizational initiatives.

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