Microsoft 365 feature lets companies spy on employees, says report - 9to5Mac

Privacy and misuse concerns have been raised about a Microsoft 365 feature that allows companies to spy on employees.

A ‘productivity score’ feature promoted as providing aggregated data on how organizations are performing can be used by managers to monitor individual employees ….

Microsoft has been criticised for enabling “workplace surveillance” after privacy campaigners warned that the company’s “productivity score” feature allows managers to use Microsoft 365 to track their employees’ activity at an individual level.

But by default, reports also let managers drill down into data on individual employees, to find those who participate less in group chat conversations, send fewer emails, or fail to collaborate in shared documents.

But Christl points out that this appears to be contradicted by the fact that Microsoft assigns ‘influence scores’ to employees.

In Workplace Analytics, Microsoft assigns every employee an ‘influence score’, a ‘numeric score that indicates how well connected a person is within the company.’.

Microsoft’s documentation shows that this score is calculated based on the use of … Microsoft tools.

A numeric score that indicates how well connected person is within the company.