ILPC 2026

Employers and clients capture and use big data for what is called ‘people analytics’, reputation profiling, electronic performance management, platform/gig work interface management and indeed, surveillance. I ask: given all of these areas for capture, why not capture emotional and affective labour to assess its value, not to pay for it, but to determine workers' likelihood of collapse? Wellness programmes have now begun to include information about workers’ daily steps, stairs climbed and sleep, and will soon be used to understand our states of ‘well-being, mental health and financial wellness’ (Kohll 2016). These are typical areas where unseen labour is captured in professional workplaces which are only somewhat less impacted by precarity (Moore, 2017). Digitalization of what I call 'unseen labour', however, is different from the measure of work by older forms of technologies such as seen in scientific management, where there was some attention paid to fatigue (but not joy or distress). Unseen labour produces an ‘immaterial’ form of value creation (Lazzarato 2014) through providing data that intends to reflect labour that was not consider possible for measure in the past. Measurement of productivity at work is now not limited to material outputs, but invades into subjectivities, affect and emotion (see Weeks,1998).

Kohll, A. (2016) ‘8 Things you Need to Know about Employee Wellness Programs’ Forbes 21/04/16 Online: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alankohll/2016/04/21/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-employee-wellness-programs/#1ec78c4d610c (accessed 20/02/17).