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. From a report: The tools, first released
in 2019, are designed to “provide you visibility into how your
organisation works,” according to a Microsoft blogpost, and aggregate
information about everything from email use to network connectivity into
a headline percentage for office productivity. 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. “This is so
problematic at many levels,” tweeted the Austrian researcher Wolfie
Christl, who raised alarm about the feature. “Employers are increasingly
exploiting metadata logged by software and devices for performance
analytics and algorithmic control,” Christl added. “MS is providing the
tools for it. Practices we know from software development (and factories
and call centres) are expanded to all white-collar work.” …
