没人比它更懂你

没人比它更懂你

这款软件会时刻都跟随着你——倾听你的声音，记录你的心跳，甚至睡觉的时候他都“坐”在你身边继续工作，了解你的小小改变，反映出容易被自己忽略的真实。本想缓解职场压力的这款软件，却让一些人人觉得更加焦虑。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

premise预先提出；作为…的前提['premɪs]

subtle微妙的；精细的

depression沮丧；抑郁症[dɪ'preʃ(ə)n]

tailored定做的；裁缝做的['teɪləd]

hazard危险，冒险['hæzəd]

Smartphone app on track to monitor staff stress and mental health（797words）

By Sarah O’Connor

It goes with you everywhere. It listens to your voice. It sits next to you when you sleep. Your smartphone might know you better than you know yourself.

This is the premise behind a start-up that promises to help employees and employers spot and deal with stress in the workplace. Soma Analytics,the creation of an engineer,a mathematician and a computer scientist,uses the sensors in people’s smartphones to identify behavioural changes that signal they are in danger of burning out. It might be subtle shifts in the tone of their voice,how long it takes them to read and absorb some text,or how much they toss and turn in bed at night.

Now the company,founded four years ago,has been given €1.8m by the EU to fund a large-scale randomised controlled trial of the technology.

Soma is one of many companies trying to tap the growing market for corporate“wellness”initiatives. Many focus on employees’physical health. BP gives Fitbits to employees in North America and offers them rewards if they meet activity targets. Soma focuses on stress.

Soma’s founders Johann Huber,Peter Schneider and Christopher Lorenz（all 29) say they had the idea when a friend was diagnosed with depression. Beforehand,they had felt“there was something going on”,what with their friend’s mood swings and bags under his eyes.“But what was puzzling us was that he didn’t feel it,”Mr Huber says.“Because they were small and gradual changes over a longer period of time.”

Soma’s app aims to let employees know when they are slowly becoming stressed. It gives them tailored tips to help them sleep better and relax. On average,users report a 14 per cent reduction in perceived stress. The company plans to use the EU money,awarded in August,to fund a bigger and more rigorous piece of research into the effectiveness of the technology.

Stress and anxiety are clearly workplace problems. A charity,Business in the Community,has just surveyed 20,000 UK workers and found that — in one recent month alone — 24 per cent of all employees had experienced symptoms of poor mental health where work was a contributing factor. Stress topped the list of workplace hazards in the UK Trades Union Congress biennial survey of trade union health and safety representatives this year. About 70 per cent of reps said stress was a problem,up from 67 per cent two years ago and a higher proportion than in any previous survey.

Still,“wellness”companies have their critics,with some claims that they do more harm than good. Researchers André Spicer and Carl Cederström investigated effects of corporate wellness programmes and found they often caused anxiety by eating into employees’free time. Others say such schemes let employers off the hook. You can give employees tools to deal with stress and burnout but should employers not put staff under so much pressure in the first place?“Too many workers are still becoming ill through work,and simply introducing‘wellbeing programmes’is not a substitute for stopping workers becoming ill,”says Frances O’Grady,TUC general secretary.

Mr Huber says Soma can help employers by telling them when they are putting staff under too much pressure. Soma supplies employers with anonymised data on stress levels in their workforces,which they can break down by department or geographic area but not by person. He insists the point is not to give bosses intimate employee details.“They don’t really want to know how you sleep,”says Mr Huber,data he describes as of no value to employers.“It’s more of value to say‘what can I do for department A so they’re less stressed and have fewer sick days?’”

Drazen Nikolic,a partner at EY who leads the consultancy’s work on analytics,says this is the attraction for a company like his.“I don’t know how familiar you are with the consulting world but people tend to be crazy,they are running themselves until they drop dead.”He says part of the problem from a manager’s point of view is how often teams work virtually,across offices and time zones.“You seldom see the people that are working with you,”he notes.“If you would be sitting in the same office,you see the red eyes,you can say‘hey calm down Johnny,take a break.’”EY trialled Soma last year with 100 employees over eight weeks. The app received very good feedback,Mr Nikolic says.

Mr Huber hopes Soma can help create the right atmosphere. He has noticed that when employees use the app,it prompts a lot of conversation as colleagues compare notes. It creates a“culture of speaking”about the often tough subject of mental health,he says:“it gives them a language they can use.”