Leading technology innovator Microsoft, recently apologised for their decision to enable a new feature named “Productivity Score”, after critics said that it was basically workplace surveillance. The feature allows IT admins to help their people get more from Microsoft products by examining how they use the software and technology.
After a backlash from the public, Microsoft has said that it’s going to make changes to the service, to limit the amount of information managers can get about individual employees. According to the Corporate VP for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, Microsoft believes that data-driven insights are crucial for empowering people and organisations to accomplish more. However, this doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t respect privacy as a basic human right.
Giving Workers Back Their Privacy
The productive score service was intended to help admins get technical information about their workforce and see how employees were using features like scheduling tools and chatrooms. However, the information was also available to see on an individual basis. This meant that supervisors could identify employees that might not be contributing enough or using tools frequently.
Microsoft has responded to complaints by saying it will remove individual user names from the productivity score completely. Going forward, the meetings, communications, content collaboration, mobility, and teamwork measures shown in the feature will only be available on an organisational level. This will provide a measure of organisation-wide adoption, without imposing on privacy.
Nobody using Microsoft tools will be able to see how individual users are using apps and services going forward. Microsoft is even making changes to its branding for the service, making it clear that it is productivity that is being addressed here, not individual users.
Offering Insights into Business Productivity
While it’s clear to see how information about how employees use tools like Microsoft 365 could be useful to administrators, it’s also obvious that too much information could be an imposition. Microsoft wants to make it clear that they are offering these features to evaluate productivity, and nothing more. A veteran engineer from Microsoft, and CTO of the modern workforce transformation segment, Jeffrey Snover, spoke out about the change. He thanked the Australian privacy activist, Wolfie Christl, who raised the alarm about the feature initially, for the feedback.
According to Snover, he respects how Microsoft acknowledges when it makes a mistake and does everything it can to fix the problem.
