 As I was listening to your presentation, I was thinking that there is a particular figure that is emerging in this corporate wellness programmes. That is the figure of the ideal employee. What kind of ideal employee is we are dealing with. A lot of it is about this ideology of engagement, participation, being active, being a team player and being connected as you mentioned before. But when you look at the reality of it, actually it is really hard to get people to engage, to live up to that ideal figure of the connected active team player employee. To what extent these schemes are voluntary and cast in a way that is really about choice rather than about control? And how much of it is really imposed? Because if companies are investing in the schemes but then employees are not really responding in the way they anticipated. So, do you see maybe the future of the schemes becoming more of an imposition, an imperative rather than a choice like slipping from the internalised norms towards back again the authoritarian kind of impulse of control? And this is a question for the three of you. I think for me the ideal employee is something along those lines, as you said, the kind of connected active team player, this kind of thing. But there is also this notion in management that comes from psychology I think of flow, the notion of flow. And I have got a definition of it somewhere, but it is something along the lines of being in this absolute state of total engagement and kind of self-forgetfulness. Sort of like being in the zone as a sports player. And I think that is again kind of the ideal that gets talked about and these are seen as ways of enabling that. But I think they do remain on the level of ideals and no one really expects them to be implemented but it is kind of like a utopian thing, it is always kind of in the distance. But all those things are kind of connected with that. And for me in terms of this, I will just mention about seeing in terms of what Bernard Steeve talks about as programming, as a kind of programming through psychopolitics. All of these kinds of systems are engaged on that level of psychopolitics of kind of reprogramming or programming our consciousness in various ways to think in terms of that. So those ideals might not be achievable in reality, but they are kind of there to compare ourselves against. All of the, in terms of being voluntary, all of the organizations, it was about 10 organizations I spoke to, it was all voluntary in there. And I have not heard about it being imposed in the UK. I think it is either imposed or almost imposed, maybe in some cases in the United States I think, BP and some others. Yeah, exactly, for insurance reasons. So I think whether it is going to be imposed on it is probably going to be contextual depending on those particular situations. I couldn't, in the cases I was looking at, I couldn't see it being imposed. The reasons I outlined that it wasn't really, they weren't really that interested. In the cases I was looking at, which is really interesting in contrast with what Phoebe and Lukash were talking about is that they weren't really even interested in the data. I thought, oh this would be great, they're going to be really data hungry and seeing what they can do. They weren't really interested. It was almost a marketing exercise, an internal marketing exercise. The employer brand kind of idea. They didn't actually do anything with the data. The only way that they used the data, they tended to get some data back from these companies like Virgin and GCC and then presented it to their board or their management to say, oh look this is how great it is, you should fund it for next year. But they admitted that it was just, they didn't really get what it meant, they didn't really be interested. It was just a way of justifying spending on the project. Sorry, so when you say marketing strategy, is it a marketing for the employer or for the self-tracking industries? Sorry, yeah just really briefly. The employer to the employees. Oh actually that's, I mean what's really interesting, we didn't actually explain how the company set out to carry this project. One thing is to say it's a multinational corporation and they do, basically they work with clients to find really big spaces, to sell Coca-Cola for example, IBM work with this company to find the right kinds of spaces to set up wherever they've decided to kind of set up shop. But another feature and the smaller medium enterprise that we worked, that was integrated into the bigger company was also worked in human resource activities and workplace design initiatives themselves. So it's quite interesting kind of paradox there in the sense that this company, as they joined the bigger company, which I won't name, but you can easily find it because we've actually put the project, we've put up a report for the company on their website. So they've not told us to be anonymous but we thought we would just leave it out of the paper. But anyway, they decided that in joining the bigger company they would use this quantified workplace experiment as a way of saying, this is what we have to offer you. We are on the cutting edge, we have these new interesting workplace designs to offer you the bigger real estate company. So what they said in running the project is that they were developing a product which is very interesting. So when we came in as the independent social scientist and behavioural psychologist, as we made it very clear, ok, so what we'd like to do is the observational methodology, that we're looking at what you're working on, we're going to report on it as it were, everything was agreed, absolutely fine. And I think that that adds another interesting dimension to the employment relationship that we didn't, I didn't mention particularly here, but it's about opting in and opting out. There's recent research in the legal literature that talks about stigmatisation and whether or not people will become involved. Over time, because they feel they're left out if they don't. So there's a new pressure that begins to emerge. So it's already been documented and of course in psychological literature as well. But I think what's interesting for us is the way that the employee as a supposed well, so there's something called the wellness syndrome that Cedars Drummond Spicer have written about, very interesting stuff coming off City University's business school. And what it refers to is that the healthiest employee is seen as the ideal one. Questions around discrimination, again bringing back to legal questions, discrimination, equality of opportunity. And there is very little that's been done so far in terms of what your rights are so far in that context. So the healthiest worker is supposedly the ideal worker. And then the next thing I'll finish on is to talk about the intimacy that we referred to a little bit, that's also linked to this mythology of work that Fleming's writes about to do with the self. Obviously Nicholas Rose, a couple of the papers that were circulated for today. And I think what we are talking about is the next stage of that. And I really think about the facilitation of the technology and how itself. I think that's what we're kind of interested in is how that whole entire, and that's where neoliberalism can be understood. So what do we mean by neoliberalism? There's a whole literature you can read on that. But the way that we refer, I refer to it and in this paper is more to do with the new abilities to the new invasion of every level of the individual as a worker. And meanwhile we have this whole question of self-management. Because we can actually collaborative work, that's also quite ideal. So actually one more thing in terms of agility. Okay, so the Sheffield work psychology group, and this is linked to some stuff that we mentioned already today too, is that the projects that were carried out to see to what extent the new agility model is helping productivity, they're findings demonstrated actually, that it was because people are working together, it's that collaboration, it's because again of the relationship with your colleagues, that's what improves productivity, which is fascinating. So the experiments and the studies that are being run right now that we're asking a lot of bigger questions around, is this going to turn into something that's required? What does this mean? Will you have this control relationship that reminds us of what they were fantasizing in Taylor or in the factory and mental and manual labour is again sort of separated. But yeah, that's... Great, thank you. I would like to pick up on the notion of self-management, which came up in both presentation, and also what you've just said Phoebe about this idea of invasion. Because it seems to me that the actualisation of self-management, as you said, requires an increasing integration of work and life, and thereby a sense of blurring of boundaries between the sphere of privacy and intimacy and the sphere of labour. So I wonder in your empirical work and your interviews and surveys with the employees, are they in any sense aware of that invasion of that blurring of those lines between their personal life and their work life? And if so, how do they handle that? How do you react to it? Yeah, I didn't talk about it. I've done some interviews and focus groups with workers. I've not properly analysed them yet. But there was some awareness of that. In the various people I spoke to, there was a few people who had started out using it and then started to feel quite negative about it for that kind of reason. They were in a minority. Most people, maybe it's kind of a self-selecting group of people who actually volunteered for this, they were quite enthusiastic about it. They were actually quite positive about that blurring in the sense that they thought it was good, that it was something they could be doing, walking the dog in the morning, but also that it legitimised conducting exercise in work time as well, to an extent, and doing slightly more creative things like having walking meetings and this kind of stuff. But this was only in certain cases when there was management buy-in on it, and when it was very much pushed by management. To link to something that Phoebe was mentioning before, I think that the ideal worker in the healthy person, a healthy subject, aligning it, and I think we can see this because of where I think there's an increasing management culture which is both around health, where probably everyone's managers here is probably running a triathlon or a marathon, or something like this, marathons or cycling is the new golf. It's this kind of healthy subject which is kind of being pushed, but in one case someone was extremely critical of their manager who had said, this is a really great project, you should be doing this, and I know everyone's busy but you should make time for this. They've said, well maybe you should give me some more time. It's because they're always stressed and overworked, and so there was a bit of a pushback about it like that, I found, but actually mostly people were just quite kind of positive about it. Perot, Perot, okay, hello. One of the first things I was said to it is that the main problem was that the project was so badly set up in a way that really, I don't think that they had a major problem with this in a sense, until Phoebe began to say more because Phoebe was conducting all the interviews, but from just a perspective of setting up experiments, it was almost like giving people a weight scales and asking them, could you please now lose weight and not providing any sort of, any support or any kind of technical, so in this sense really it was coming really short. Phoebe, you want to say more about the responses? Only that the dissemination from the project that we've been funded to do is to design in fact a agreeable work design model that can be potentially useful for other companies who are interested in this kind of, and we've learned quite a lot so far. So just that one thing is that employees respond in different ways, and one thing that you've really got to be careful to do is set it up in a way that that dialogue is there. The Institute for Quantified Self in Groningen at Hansa University has also been doing a lot of work on looking at coaching, and the final thing that I'll say as well is that, okay, so one of the employees working at the company in Rotterdam, herself is an Olympic judo master, and she obviously is going to set a standard if you like. So in all the interviews, she was the only one who said to me, well, I need to slow down my steps. I need to stop moving around so much, which is fascinating. Most employees were really onside, really excited. Yes, I'd like to be involved with this, but they weren't clear on what the link was to work. So that was one thing. So I think that's something that's being developed right now. Thank you. Maybe one last point before we pass it to the audience is to do with this meaning-making machine that is this wellness programme, which seems to me quite paradoxical because at the end of the day, what they are dealing with or producing or using as method is actually numbers and algorithms and data. So how do you see this transition from something that is purely algorithmic and identified to something that can actually provide meaning and imbue employees with meaning for their work and encourage them to relate to their job in a different, more meaningful way? Yes, I think there is a certain meaning in numbers, even in the kind of dataism that Jill mentioned, that data is mean objectivity or transparency or something like that. The employees I spoke to did talk about it and it objectifies it so that it seems to change their relationship to their exercise activities if they weren't used to doing that. So I think there is on that level, but I think it's working on different levels. So the existence of the project or the programmes generates a certain meaning, that kind of employer brand kind of idea, but also I kind of like to think about these devices as forming a sort of socio-technical assemblage which helps to manage flows of meaning in a certain way. It makes you kind of encourage you to engage in certain kinds of ways and I think what's interesting to explore or to like to do further is what kinds of subjects are kind of assumed in this process. For me, I think the perceived objectivity is important, but it's also that connection with others and it's how it kind of flows from one person or within networks really when people are kind of pushing them out there and around those kind of hashtags that I was looking at. In what ways are they controlling the meaning in that network? It might be on a very minute basis, it might just be, I walk closer steps today, you should do it too, but it's kind of pushing that around a kind of a network and it doesn't necessarily engage us very much on the subjective, discursive level, it's just kind of there, it's just a little nudge. The power of it is supposedly in that kind of nudge approach, it's kind of below the level of meaning almost or kind of conscious meaning. Yeah, affective exactly. I couldn't agree more with Chris's evaluation and to add to it, I think we are in such an early stage, especially for this kind of work environments, white collar or the environment that we're working in when evaluation of something such as productivity or a work outcome is so much more complex than, for example, in a more kind of algorithmic factory-based context where you can in more, let's say, a bit more easy way measure the outcomes. So in this sense, we are really just scratching the surface with the tracking technology because we all have different cognitive style, all have different personality, the way, the beliefs, the way we work, the way we engage with particular tasks and as I showed there, the meaning of productivity is very different for all of us. So those things have to be somehow operational, standardised before we have even moved to thinking about the way how we can actually track, keep track of it and based on this tracking make a judgment that will be then embedded into a sort of workflow and well, when we get to this stage then the discussion will shift into this kind of more authoritarian and dangerous topics but I guess that hopefully we'll have some things, some sort of safeguards set up by that time. Now to open it up to the audience for you to ask questions. My colleague here will kindly pass the microphone. Hi, thanks for fascinating talks. So I was wondering a bit more about the role of the people who make the devices because our university had one of these wellness programmes but there, I don't know, not varying. They wanted us to pay 40 euros for the gadget and I didn't sign up because come on. It's interesting though, I mean it was the administer of staff that actually did get involved, the professors were like and I now know our research admin person has an average of 35,000 steps a day which is interesting. So you do learn something about other sides of people, right, than you would have otherwise but in this case it very much seemed like this is an initiative, this is like the university can now tick something off on their health and safety reports and it's really coming from outside. It's sort of not really integral to the workplace very much and I wonder if that was your experience too. It would be fascinating to hear from more interviews with people who weren't participants too. Okay, so it differed in different workplaces and a couple of the participant organisations of mine were universities and also my university did it and it was very similar. It was mostly the administrative stuff and that's because I think kind of lectured professors aren't really around very much but also then it was those kind of lower grade stuff that kind of cleaners and porters and cafe workers which weren't engaged and I was one person quite familiar and he said they walk around all day so they probably don't need these kind of interventions which of course if we look at social demographics they're more likely to be unhealthy in various different ways but they might walk around a lot which is interesting I think. I think partly why I framed it in terms of activity is because a lot of the whole emphasis of this has been on tackling sedentarism, the kind of people sitting too much and that is actually only the case for certain kind of groups of workers and these programmes are certainly like the big corporate ones like the Virgin One the GCC one I mentioned, they are just bought in and kind of implemented. They say that they come and kind of integrate to your workplace but they don't really because it's the same for everyone really and I think that is because I think that is about managing it's about managing that relationship and they kind of see it in the same way as providing maybe subsidised gym membership or whatever else they do as part of their wellness programmes and as you say we have this thing in the UK you can get an award for being an investor in people which a lot of these did and this was part of it but in other context it was kind of maybe not so integrated with the work practises but in one they'd also got lots of awards for environmental initiatives it was part of their green strategy because it encouraged people to walk rather than drive to work and in one case it actually paid for the devices for people out of a grant like a green grant they won but they didn't tell the staff that that's how it was funded and it wasn't presented to the staff at all as an environmental thing it was just as an individual thing of you can be fitter and healthier and I thought I found that kind of strange I thought actually that maybe would engage people but they didn't seem to think so so that's how they sold it let's hope I got the money for it but they actually pushed it to the staff in a different way This was a really interesting joke it made me think and in the context of our company so I've tried to break it down into the types of participants and a lot of the consultants got involved but then again that's I think that really brings in the tensions to do with cognitive work again because it's one of the shifts of Neo-Taylorism is that it's seen as quite difficult and actually Drucker calls knowledge work something that's not immediately able to be valued and quantified in the same type of way so once we get to that level there are some kinds of questions but despite that it's again what is the question that we're asking so I think the consultants were talking to me and saying you know I'm an outsider so I could kind of hear what their feelings were about about how the project was both set up by the company and also what they thought that they kind of possible results would be there was some skepticism there were other questions to do with why are we doing this and also why don't we have a coach but going into the kind of questions around having a coach I wonder whether that kind of brings about questions on what the quantified self is because the way I understand it and the way that I think well you know Chris Dancy the most quantified man in the world he's got a great quote and he talks about if that data is knowable the person who knows it better be you and he's quite an innovator and from the beginning of the kind of the movement has I think been really super kind of what's the word for it insightful because he's saying okay this is fine but you have to recognize that this is about yourself and your own awareness massive it's big data and people forget that there's a whole politics around accessibility to that level that data is so rich and okay it has existed to some extent and I mean that's what Taylor wanted right he and Gilbreth both wanted that data now we have the possibilities here and I'm not a determinist I'm not saying oh it's because we now have this technology but it is about our relationship with technology again and all the post humanist questions oh does this mean and then of course nobody's asked it yet but you're probably all thinking it are the robots going to take our jobs and if so does that mean we have to work better with these machines and is that actually what we're doing by becoming healthier blah okay I think that was all I was going to say really but I think people are sometimes and the employees that we worked with for whatever reason didn't quite click that this is a personal journey and that if you are using it at work which most people only did so there you go so is that is the fact that you're using this and I think the questions around am I working better with my colleagues we also got that in the first range of interviews yes it is changing relationships with my colleagues why is that we have on the dashboard so we can see what our colleagues how many steps they're taking we can kind of pull together we can all climb Mount Everest together these kinds of questions but what is the bigger question I guess is what people kept asking me Any other questions from the audience we've got Paola there I have a curiosity did you experience any case of cheaters or people who have been cheating in your case study my father-in-law did no he accidentally put it in the washing machine that's what it was and then he said but no that's a phenomenon that is happening where you give it to your brother and that's well known now and of course it kind of messes up the data I don't think anybody confessed quote unquote to doing it didn't get anyone didn't get anyone confess to doing it but I asked about that was that a problem was trust an issue and the people who were involved in implementing the programmes they said possibly people do they did sometimes some sessions for just checking to see if people were doing ridiculous amounts of steps that seemed out of track but they said that actually that wasn't really the issue anyway they didn't really and that actually it was always about yourself anyway you're only cheating yourself and actually with those points it's about measuring yourself against yourself and it doesn't mean anything there's little prizes but it's nothing really significant and again obviously that's in the UK but in other contexts with workplace health insurance that could be different I've not studied that at all so I couldn't really say it just wasn't really seen as being a big problem there was a couple of people mentioned there were some people who were seen to have suspiciously high it was a bit pissed off but we also had quite a long period from which we captured this data a year long so even if there were any cheaters in some points they couldn't maintain it for the entire period of years I guess in a data perspective now we didn't really see it in the data as well perhaps one last quick questions because I guess our quantified stomach is rumbling at the moment thank you so I'm just curious picking up on what you just said there about the US context where there's a much more direct financial incentive for the employer to increase employee wellness in order to reduce healthcare expenditure costs so that's a very clear cut association between employee behavior and employer benefit but I'm wondering outside the US context how explicit in the minds of both the employer and the employee is this relationship or perceived relationship among physical activity, physical movement the thing that is being measured as an operationalization of intellectual work of activity, engagement all of those sort of cognitive affective terms and the relationship between sort of the moral good to be a good person is to be healthy is to be engaged is to have meaning in work or to do meaningful work and so that sort of triangle among cognitive affective moral imperative and sort of physical activity the thing that is actually being quantified how explicitly or are they not I think it's a very good question and I think it's a part of a bigger question about how in general are we aware of the context in which the data that's generated can tell stories about us and we again all of us who are sitting here continuously right now are generating digital traces of our behavior whether it's pushing your laptop key or registering your location in smartphone even the simple point your location in the smartphone already tells a story about you you are in here in Denmark in this university campus that profiles your sociodemographically in particular way and again we only scratching the surface right now right now for example I'm looking at publicly available Strava data so data produced by one of the most popular apps used by cyclists I'm looking at about million data points million trips generated around Bristol around about 20,000 people across three years and it's mind blowing how much information I'm able to get about this particular individuals both sociodemographically by even going deeper and testing a simple hypothesis about for example classifying them by speed and trying to infer I'm using epidemiology approaches to this I'm using some machine learning there are techniques that been used for a long time in those other disciplines that we can now bring here and the potential is in a way scary and we really don't realise fully the scope of this I guess that's that's a kind of a bigger question there embedded in your question in a sense a really interesting point as well and I think in the context I looked at it was mostly about the emotional the kind of the value rather than actually seeing any direct relation it's more that there was an assumption of a connection between productivity and hardline kind of productivity and healthy people but I think it was much more of a moralistic discourse and sometimes in some reports like GCC and Virgin Pulse they produce reports and they like to say that you can see this percentage increasing productivity and in this kind of thing and you can calculate the return on investment in this way and you get kind of government reports that say you know a healthier workforce can increase productivity this percentage this kind of thing I assume these numbers are largely fabricated but I don't know how you could kind of quantify it and certainly not quantifying creative work in that kind of way but yeah I think that that connection is important but it's actually really it's a moralistic one OK well on that note I would like to invite you all to lunch downstairs and to thank again our panellists for fantastic presentations