Microsoft 365 Feature Could Allow Companies To Spy On Their Employees!!!

Microsoft's new "Productivity Score" tool can provide company executives with information about employee use of services such as Word and Microsoft Thames, and even specify when the employee system camera is turned on.

Monitoring employee performance by companies can have advantages and disadvantages. In the event of low employee productivity, companies can monitor and fix the problem by monitoring their work; But in general, people do not want to be under the control of another person, and this is considered as a violation of their privacy.

In October of this year, Microsoft introduced the Productivity Score tool as a way to improve the quality of employee activity at the "Ignite 2020" virtual event, which was introduced to organizations on November 17.

The tool is designed to measure the performance of the organization and to measure employee productivity, collects information about employee activity in services such as email, Skype, Microsoft Thames, Outlook and Excel and provides it to managers. The information gathered allows managers to identify employees who are less active in call groups, send fewer emails, or do not collaborate on business documents.

Recently, Austrian researcher and author Wolfe Crystal described Microsoft's productivity feature as problematic in many ways, tweeting:

This feature judges employees based on their preferred criteria, rather than the actual quality of their work. For example, a group of employees may work faster and, as a result, have more overtime; But in terms of productivity score characteristics, they are identified as "unproductive" employees. In contrast, some people spend more time doing something to deliver better quality work. Both categories have done a good job and should not score less on productivity with such a system.

According to Crystal; Employers are increasingly using software metadata and devices to monitor employee performance, and Microsoft has made it available to them.

Of course, not all companies use the feature in question. A Microsoft spokesman said in a statement:

Productivity scores have been made available to organizations as an optional feature to provide the IT managers with insights into the use of infrastructure and technology. These perspectives help organizations make the most of their investment in the organization's technology by addressing issues such as slow boot speeds, inefficient shared documents, and poor network connectivity. After 28 days, a set of information about each user is provided and the IT manager can fix the technical defect and provide the necessary instructions.

Jared Spataro, senior vice president at Microsoft 365, commented on the app's privacy breach:

Privacy is a key element of productivity and we adhere to it. To be clear, productivity scores are not an organizational monitoring tool. This feature finds a new way of working and provides employees with better technology experience and collaboration. For privacy, user information is collected as productivity points over a 28-day period.

According to Dr Claudia Pagliari, a community and digital health researcher at the University of Edinburgh, corporate oversight of telecommuters has increased since the outbreak of the Coronavirus. According to Crystal Wolfe, the use of Microsoft's productivity tool is likely to be banned in some countries in the region due to "strict rules" on EU data protection and privacy.