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Privacy and misuse concerns have been raised over a Microsoft 365 feature that allows companies to spy on employees.
A “productivity score” feature touted as providing aggregated data on the performance of organizations can be used by managers to monitor individual employees …
The Guardian reports.
Microsoft has been criticized for enabling “workplace monitoring” after privacy activists warned that the company’s “productivity score” feature allowed managers to use Microsoft 365 for monitor the activity of their employees on an individual level.
The tools, first launched in 2019, are designed to “give you visibility into how your organization works,” according to a Microsoft blog post, and aggregate information on everything from email usage to network connectivity in an overall percentage for office productivity.
But by default, reports also allow managers to explore individual employee data, to find those who participate less in group conversations, send fewer emails, or fail to collaborate on shared documents.
Researcher Wolfie Christl says it’s problematic because it allows employees to be judged on purely arbitrary measures, rather than on the quality of their work.
The software publisher claims that the individual data is purely for IT support.
The information is presented in aggregate over a 28 day period and is provided at the user level so that an IT administrator can provide technical support and advice.
But Christl points out that this seems contradicted by the fact that Microsoft assigns “influence scores” to employees.
In Workplace Analytics, Microsoft assigns each employee an “influence score,” a “numerical score that indicates how connected a person is within the company.”
Microsoft’s documentation shows that this score is calculated based on the use of… Microsoft tools.
A numerical score that indicates how connected the person is within the company. A higher score means that the person who is better connected has a greater potential to drive the change. (A person’s connection is based on the frequency of collaboration activities, which include emails. Meetings. Team calls. And team conversations with others within the company. .)
Founder of Basecamp David Heinemeier Hansson describes the practice of offering tools to spy on employees as worse than dystopian.
The word dystopian is not strong enough to describe the new hellhole that Microsoft has just opened. Just as a reputation for a new and better company was built, they blew it up with the most invasive workplace surveillance system to date.
Being under constant surveillance in the workplace is psychological abuse. Having to worry about looking busy for stats is the last thing we need to do on anyone right now.
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