Health Insurer Baloise has laughter detector tested in office

The Swiss insurance company Baloise is having the frequency of loud laughter tested in an office to improve job satisfaction. Those who laugh infrequently are sent an e-mail to cheer them up, for example with a funny video.

The device, which looks like a handy loudspeaker, has a microphone and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to measure sounds in the environment, as project manager Alexandra Toscanelli from Baloise said in an interview with the Tamedia newspapers (Friday editions).

Baloise installed the so-called Chief LOL Officer in the offices of a long-standing business customer with ten employees, the Appenzell-based online company start-up portal Fasoon. The test is scheduled to last four weeks.

"On average, an adult laughs about 15 times a day, so we said: four laughs in two hours should be possible, anything less is not enough," said Toscanelli. If you laugh less often, for example because you are stressed, you get an e-mail to cheer you up.

According to Toscanelli, this could be a meme, a video of a cat falling off a table and rolling over, or someone accidentally performing a funny stunt on a scooter. A social media agency has collected the best from the Internet.

Baloise wants to strengthen mental health with this project. One target group is small and medium-sized companies. Absenteeism and mental health are an important issue there, not least because they cost companies a lot of money. According to Baloise, Swiss companies lose CHF 6.5 billion a year because employees' mental health is impaired.

"Mental health problems are still talked about much less than a broken leg," said Toscanelli and admitted: "Laughter is not the solution to everything. You also have to name contacts, hotlines and help centers."

SDA