Dive Brief:

• Employees at Three Square Market in River Falls, Wisc., will soon be implanted with microchips that will enable them to do things like make purchases, unlock doors or share business cards, according to the New York Post.
• Three Square Market said over 50 workers volunteered to receive a microchip implant. "We foresee the use of RFID technology to drive everything from making purchases in our office break room market, opening doors, use of copy machines, logging into our office computers, unlocking phones, sharing business cards, storing medical/health information, and used as payment at other RFID terminals," according to a statement by CEO Todd Westby.
• The company picks up the cost of the $300 chip. The data stored on the chip is encrypted and secure, according to Westby. Three Square Market is partnering with BioHax International on the project.

Dive Insight:

First, it makes sense that Three Square Market, a micro market technology company, would be a pioneer in chip implants. What better way to promote your business?

International companies are using and experimenting with employee-implanted microchips, but this may be the first such case in the U.S. Like up and coming technologies such as AI and machine learning, microchips may be yet another step in the "automation of everything" craze.

And while microchips may indeed help improve productivity and automate tedious processes, there will no doubt be concerns about privacy and security. The company says the chips are not GPS enabled.

But using an implanted microchip to help automate things via a human employee could, for some, be better than being replaced by a machine. Almost half of knowledge work activity can be automated, according to a recent McKinsey study.