The tool provides detailed data on how employees use Microsoft’s tools, including how much they use e-mail, whether they turn on their cameras during meetings.
Microsoft has announced that it has released an analysis tool called Productivity Score for employers. The tool provides detailed data on how employees use Microsoft’s tools, including how much they use e-mail, whether they turn on their cameras during meetings.
However, privacy experts have expressed concern that the Microsoft tool is a serious privacy breach, as employers can view individual employees’ activities with the Productivity Score. Because Microsoft’s new tool that allows companies to allocate how much time employees spend on work tools such as e-mail, Microsoft Teams and Word, is interpreted by privacy experts as “workplace surveillance”.
The tool, called the Productivity Score, was first announced by the company in October and made available on November 17th. It allows employers to collect detailed data about how their employees use Microsoft’s toolkit. The system then gives an organization a productivity score out of 800 over a 28-day period, which can be compared to scores from other companies in the industry.
What the employees are doing can be seen at any time
The data points the tool uses are incredibly detailed, and employers can focus on individual employees with this tool. For example, an employer can look at how much time a particular person has spent in Microsoft Outlook in the last 28 days or sending direct messages in Microsoft Teams. The employer can also see how many of these messages contain “@”.
According to experts, this tool harms the trust between employee and employer
It is said that the use of the tool may be illegal in some EU countries due to strict rules regarding data privacy. The two arguments in this area are that companies like Microsoft should not encourage employers to spy on employees, and although employers have the ability to turn off tracking of individual employees, the tool came explicitly by default when first installed.
Microsoft says this tool is not a surveillance tool.
