Assessing stress at the workplace: an explorative study on measuring emotion using unobtrusive sensor techniques

Abstract

Stress in the workplace is a substantial problem for many employees and can, in the worst case, result in burnout. Therefore a method for measuring stress in an unobtrusive and office situation applicable manner is explored in the current study. Participants worked on their thesis in an office environment at TNO for 10 days during work hours. Heart rate, facial expression and computer usage were being gathered as parameters and related to a ground truth of subjective emotion experience sampling. Visualization of the dataset and results of correlation analysis leave promising outcomes and many possibilities for further analysis, such as classification analysis. It is important to take an individual approach in these analyses, since it concerns datasets with considerable individual differences in behavior. Privacy, sharing of data and employee needs are to bear in mind when further developing a work stress measuring system.