AI and workplace stress: possibilities and limitations

Workplace stress can affect people’s physical and mental health as well as how organisations function. This article explores some proposed technologies and their limitations.

Prolonged stress can affect health, wellbeing and work. Prevention also requires changes to work organisation and conditions, rather than focusing only on individual responses. Priorities include:

• Prevent the appearance of stress
• When stress occurs, address its causes and reduce its effects on health and work.

 

Causes

• Poor work organization
• Poor work-life balance
• Insufficient promotion
• Excess demands and pressures
• Bad communication

Effects of stress

• You are anxious or irritable
• You are not able to relax or concentrate
• You feel tired, depressed and restless
• Difficulty sleeping, thinking logically, and making decisions
• You enjoy your work less and less

The 2019 Cigna survey cited in this article reported that 71% of respondents in Spain experienced stress. That is a finding from that survey, not a diagnosis of the whole population. Recognising and communicating distress can be difficult, and facial signals alone cannot establish what someone is feeling.

Cigna explored a stress-visualisation experience to start a conversation about the issue. Meanwhile, Binah.ai proposed using AI to estimate certain physiological signals from video.

The “150+ years of experience” advertised by Binah.ai refers to its team’s combined experience in data, analytics and other technologies, not to the company’s age.

According to the provider’s proposal, video analysis can estimate signals such as heart rate or breathing rate. These estimates depend on capture conditions and validation of each feature; they do not amount to reading emotions or diagnosing stress or burnout. Any workplace application must account for consent, privacy and how the data is used.

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Written by

Gema Laso Araguás