Following some controversy about Microsoft Productivity Score, and the ability of Microsoft Teams to track the performance of their employees, concerns about privacy are mounting. In today’s world of remote work, employees must ask how much their employers are “watching them” work.
Ultimately, business supervisors and team leaders need some way to track what’s going on in the remote workplace – even if it’s just to find out what apps people are using. However, figuring out how much information should be available is a tough line to walk.
Now that CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, is saying that Teams could be just as crucial to the digital world as an internet browser, what does that mean to the future of workplace privacy?
What Can You Learn on Teams?
Microsoft Teams is clearly a popular choice for collaboration and communication. Its incredible 115 million users are a testament to how much companies appreciate the all-in-one environment for productivity tools, messaging, video, and even calls. Yet, despite the evident love for Teams, employees still aren’t willing to submit to sharing too much of their data.
The massive controversy over the Productivity Score feature, which eventually led Microsoft to apologize to users, is evidence of this. However, Productivity Score isn’t the first time Microsoft began exploring the collection of information. In one way or another, Microsoft has been capturing data on chats, shared meetings, files, transcriptions, and profiles for a while now.
In September 2020, Microsoft offered new insights through the Teams Activity Report, which gave users a breakdown of usage for each person on your team. You could use the technology to see how many meetings someone organised, or how many messages they sent.
By October, a new analytics and reporting feature for Teams emerged, which delivers way more information. The table covers usage by user, as well as:
- The username or display name of the user
- User’s settings in the Microsoft Teams admin centre
- The number of unique messages posted in a chat at a certain time
- Number of unique messages posted in a channel in a certain time
- The number of urgent messages sent in a specific period
- Total number of scheduled and non-scheduled meetings in a period
- The total number of meetings organised in a specific period
- Number of scheduled meetings organised during a certain time
- The number of ad hoc meetings organised at a specific time
- Number of meetings a user participated in within a period
- The number of scheduled meetings a person participated in within a time
- Number of ad-hoc meetings during a specific time
Microsoft is further measuring everything from device usage to privacy settings, and time stamps on meetings. It’s a lot of information.
How Much is Data Capture a Problem?
On the one hand, the ability to capture data on usage for a crucial team application is important to any team leader. As we all make the switch to the digital world of work, employers and business managers need to know what their employees are using. This information is crucial, for productivity purposes, and to ensure that an investment is actually paying off.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see employees having a lot of control over the amount of data a company captures. Ultimately, the business leader decides whether Teams is the right solution for their company, and which data they should be paying attention to.
Could future managers cause trouble for employees who fail to turn up to scheduled meetings too often? What about those who don’t send messages back to colleagues quickly enough? Clearly, employees are already concerned about the possibility of too much surveillance in teams. Staff members have taken to social media forums to highlight how nervous they are about their employers “watching them” through productivity apps.
Microsoft clearly believes in the importance of data-driven information for business decision making. It’s not alone either. Look at virtually any team collaboration tool and you’ll find countless solutions for collecting information on employee usage. There are also various applications that you can specifically use to track customers.
Microsoft notes that although it appreciates the power of data, it also believes in the importance of privacy as a human right. As such, they ensure that the “global administrator” for the Teams instance is the only one with the rights to reporting and analytics.
Do We Really Need All This Data?
Ultimately, it’s difficult to determine whether Microsoft is in the right or not here. It probably depends largely on your attitude towards analytics, and how much you see this kind of data as Big Brother surveillance. Clearly, business leaders need some information about how their users are accessing various tools – but when does that insight cross the line?
When exactly does gathering data about usage and adoption become a process of scrutinizing every message a user does or doesn’t send? Even if employers aren’t using the analytics available to make decisions about their employees, it’s likely that staff will start to feel that way. Paranoia is already high among today’s workers when it comes to privacy in the digital world – and for good reason.
The right analytics from Teams could easily give way to a terrible type of new ever-watching manager. With this business leader, you won’t be able to simply “look busy” when the right person walks in the room. Everything you do will be under observation. Obviously, the threat of this leads to a significant trust problem between employers and their staff.
As valuable as data can be, remote workers also need a sense of freedom and autonomy to perform at their best. This is something that has been proven in studies since before the pandemic was ever a thing. People who work remotely need more flexibility, freedom, and the chance to be creative.
So, where’s the line?
Ultimately, it depends on the business.
