Yes, that would work too. Something similar was added in firmware v130 as a fix:

// an uint16_t stores 16 bits, we use first bit for sign, and following 15 bits for number (0..32767)
// result is divided by 100 for a real with 2 decimals, max is 327.00
uint16_t di(double val) {
	uint16_t res = 0;
	uint16_t mask = 1<<15;
	if (val > 327 || val < -327) return res;
	if (val < 0) {
		val *= -1000;
		res = val / 10; // fix double approximation issue
		res |= mask;
	} else {
		val *= 1000;
		res = val / 10; // fix double approximation issue
	}
	return res;
}

and

// an uint16_t stores 16 bits, we use first bit for sign, and following 15 bits for number (0..32767)
// result is divided by 100 for a real with 2 decimals, max is 327.00
double id(uint16_t val) {
	double res = 0;
	uint16_t mask = 1<<15;
	// check negative number
	if (val & mask) {
		val &= ~mask; // remove sign bit
		res = val;
		res = -res;
	} else {
		res = val;
	}
	res /= 100.0; // restore the 2 decimals
	return res;
}

It’s pretty much the same thing.