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Potential benefits of Google Glass in the workplace

What if your company required every employee to wear Google Glass? Some of the potential applications could include quality and safety checks, security, and note-taking.
Written by Howard Lo, Contributor

So Google Glass is finally in the hands of the public and we're pounded daily with commentary about how it's the death of privacy, looks lame, and is rife with potential exploits.

All possibly true.

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What if your company required every employee to wear Google Glass?

There has not been much discussion of what Google Glass may bring to the workplace. What if the company you worked for required everyone to wear Google Glass? The immediate reaction for many is: "I would quit, that is an outrage!" 

Let's put outrage aside and think about what some of the purposes might be:

Quality Check - Say you're a tired, overworked factory worker in China making the iPhone 7g3D. At some point your arms are going to waiver, your hands won't place the screw in the right place, and that little iPhone destined for California will be defective. If the factory line worker is wearing Google Glass (with video enabled and recording nonstop) the management will know when employee exhaustion limits are being reached, which units are defective, and what other factors are affecting the employee's job on the line.

Efficiency Check – Similar to the scenario above; as management peers through the virtual vision of their employees' Google Glass, they might notice that it is taking 10 hand movements to perform a task when it only requires three hand movements to get it done. Time for employee training to cut down on excess movements! (Apply it to other less physical operations too).

Safety Check – humor aside, this could be a critical application for Google Glass in the workplace. Places like construction sites (and restaurants) require stringent safety regulations as well as hygiene regulations. These are no-compromise scenarios where utilizing Google Glass helps ensure safety as well as can be used for audit purposes.

Security Check – Imagine if each policeman wore Google Glass. If they were in potential security situations the recordings would be great for analysts to watch and it's also a backup measure if they're accused of abuse or wrongdoing.

Ultimate Note-Taking – Zone out during your meetings. Google Glass records the audio and video of what people are drawing on the whiteboard. Later on have audio-to-text kick in and voila, instant notes mapped to a timeline of the visuals of the meeting.

Overall Monitoring – Perhaps the most useful and terrifying of all. Nonstop monitoring of what employees are up to at work. Everyone becomes a camera. Imagine a scenario where your IT department manages the Google Glasses that you are wearing.

How soon do you think we will see Google Glass showing up in the workplace? What workplace scenarios does it enable?

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