In Your Face - Smart Glasses at Work

Why smart glasses will challenge trust, privacy, and presence in the workplace

TL;DR:

Smart glasses are coming back. But whether they stay will depend less on the tech, and more on how HR, IT, and Legal leaders respond.

We’ve gotten used to technology in our pockets, on our wrists, and in our ears. But now it’s heading for our faces, and with it comes a harder conversation about trust, presence, and consent.

The last wave of smart glasses didn’t fail for lack of innovation. They failed because people didn’t trust them. The social dynamics weren’t ready. Presence felt fractured. Privacy felt exposed.

Today’s models are more refined. They blend in. Powered by AI, they can help you translate in real time, summarize conversations, or give just-in-time guidance. But that surface polish doesn’t remove the underlying tension. If anything, it deepens it.

For HR, IT, and Legal leaders, this isn’t hypothetical. You’ll need to decide if these are enterprise-ready tools or consumer distractions that don’t belong in the workplace. Either way, policies will have to evolve.

Smart glasses aren’t just devices. They’re social interfaces.

And in the workplace, that makes them governance issues, not just tech accessories.

It’s Not About the Hardware

People can adapt to new tools. We did it with smartphones, watches, and earbuds. But smart glasses sit at the intersection of attention, identity, and perception. They change how we show up.

• Are you making eye contact or checking your calendar?

• Is that a memory or a recording?

• Are you present, or are you reviewing content for your next meeting?

We’ve lost the old visual cues that told us when we were being observed. That shift didn’t start with glasses. It started when smartphones began listening and watching through apps we didn’t fully understand. Smart glasses just make it more visible.

In professional settings, that ambiguity raises the stakes, especially in roles built on confidentiality, care, or trust-based relationships.

Norms Will Fragment Before They Settle

Smart glasses will land differently across teams and roles. Some employees, such as field workers, support staff, and accessibility advocates, will push to use them immediately. Others will feel uneasy, wondering if they’re being watched, judged, or recorded.

That fragmentation will show up fast:

A new hire joins an onboarding session wearing smart glasses. No one knows whether they’re using them for accessibility or silently recording.

A field technician captures every service call for training purposes, but IT can’t secure the footage or control where it’s stored.

A senior leader delivers a town hall while wearing smart glasses. One group sees openness to emerging tech. Another sees surveillance.

These scenarios are already playing out in early-adopter teams, and they’ll scale faster than most policies will.

During this fragmentation period, don’t expect uniformity.

Lean into dialogue. Encourage teams to name discomfort early, pilot use in clearly defined settings, and surface conflicting norms. Leaders don’t need to resolve every edge case immediately. But they do need to create conditions where new norms can emerge with clarity and consent.

This isn’t just a tech integration problem. It’s a leadership question.

• Will we treat these like phones, laptops, or surveillance tools?

• Who decides where they’re appropriate?

• Do they create more openness, or erode trust?

And if someone records a sensitive conversation without consent, who’s liable: the employee, the company, or the vendor? You’ll want that answered before it happens.

The complexity goes deeper than intent.

Smart glasses often process and store data across multiple systems, including, device memory, cloud servers, AI training datasets. Legal teams will need frameworks that account for passive recording, automatic uploads, and distributed liability chains.

What HR, IT, and Legal Should Be Asking Now

• Do our current policies cover smart wearables, passive capture, and AI-generated memory logs?

• Are there clear boundaries for where and when these devices can be used?

• Can our infrastructure support them or block them if needed?

• What early use cases (accessibility, field service, onboarding) are worth piloting?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who feels safer or more successful when this tech is present?

Who feels less so?

What a Minimal Viable Policy Might Include

• Disclosure rule:

Employees must notify others before using recording or summarization features.

Note: Disclosure may be challenging with passive recording or selective processing features. Defaulting to over-communication may be the safest early posture.

• Device use notification:

Employees are expected to notify their manager and IT if they use smart glasses in work-related meetings or spaces, even if personally owned.

• Zoning guidance:

Smart glasses are prohibited in private spaces (bathrooms, wellness rooms, prayer areas) and clearly marked no-record zones.

• Accessibility exception clause:

Employees using glasses for assistive purposes can request accommodations under existing policies.

Where accessibility needs and disclosure expectations create conflict, leaders should prioritize clarity, consent, and shared agreements, not blanket rules.

• Data boundaries:

Content generated at or for work should be captured and stored within approved enterprise systems.

Many organizations may not yet have suitable platforms in place. Until then, strict boundaries on consumer cloud uploads may be aspirational, but they are necessary.

Closing Thought

Let’s start with one clear decision:

“What’s our position if someone shows up to tomorrow’s meeting wearing smart glasses?”

The answer doesn’t need to be perfect. But it needs to exist.

Because these glasses may not be adopted overnight. But they will show up.

And when they do, it won’t be the specs that matter.

It’ll be the signals they send about safety, consent, and attention.