Sensing technologies deployed in the workplace can unobtrusively collect detailed data about individual activities and group interactions that are otherwise difficult to capture. A hopeful application of these technologies is that they can help businesses and workers optimize productivity and wellbeing. However, given the workplace's inherent and structural power dynamics, the prevalent approach of accepting tacit compliance to monitor work activities rather than seeking workers' meaningful consent raises privacy and ethical concerns. This paper unpacks the challenges workers face when consenting to workplace wellbeing technologies. Using a hypothetical case to prompt reflection among six multi-stakeholder focus groups involving 15 participants, we explored participants' expectations and capacity to consent to these technologies. We sketched possible interventions that could better support meaningful consent to workplace wellbeing technologies by drawing on critical computing and feminist scholarship -- which reframes consent from a purely individual choice to a structural condition experienced at the individual level that needs to be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific (FRIES). The focus groups revealed how workers are vulnerable to "meaningless" consent -- as they may be subject to power dynamics that minimize their ability to withhold consent and may thus experience an erosion of autonomy, also undermining the value of data gathered in the name of "wellbeing." To meaningfully consent, participants wanted changes to the technology and to the policies and practices surrounding the technology. Our mapping of what prevents workers from meaningfully consenting to workplace wellbeing technologies (challenges) and what they require to do so (interventions) illustrates how the lack of meaningful consent is a structural problem requiring socio-technical solutions.

翻译：部署在工作场所的传感技术可以非侵入性地收集个体活动和群体互动的详细数据，这些数据通常难以通过其他方式获取。这些技术的一项有前景的应用是帮助企业和员工优化生产力和福祉。然而，鉴于工作场所固有的结构性权力动态，当前普遍采用接受默示服从以监控工作活动、而非寻求工人有意义的同意的做法，引发了隐私和伦理问题。本文深入探讨了工人在同意使用职场福祉技术时面临的挑战。通过一个假设案例引发反思，我们组织了涉及15名参与者的六个多方利益相关者焦点小组，探讨了参与者对这些技术的期望以及同意能力。我们借鉴批判性计算和女性主义学术——将同意从纯粹的个体选择重新定义为在个体层面经历的结构性条件，需满足自由给予、可撤销、知情、热情和具体（FRIES）——勾勒出可能支持职场福祉技术中获得有意义的同意的干预措施。焦点小组揭示了工人如何容易陷入“无意义”的同意——他们可能受制于权力动态，从而削弱其拒绝同意的能力，进而经历自主权的侵蚀，这也破坏了以“福祉”名义收集的数据的价值。为了达成有意义的同意，参与者希望改变技术本身以及围绕技术的政策和实践。我们对阻止工人对职场福祉技术给予有意义的同意的因素（挑战）以及他们所需的条件（干预措施）进行了映射，这表明缺乏有意义的同意是一个需要社会技术解决方案的结构性问题。