Yahoo Finance Microsoft under fire over 'dystopian' tool that helps bosses snoop on staff
Microsoft is facing criticism over a new 'dystopian' tool that allows managers to snoop on employees while they work from home.
The feature, known as "productivity scores", turns its Microsoft 365 software suite into what critics describe as a fully fledged "workplace surveillance tool”.
Microsoft 365 is one of the most commonly used workplace software systems. It offers a subscription service including Teams, a video calling app, and email system Outlook.
Wolfie Christl, an Austrian researcher at Cracked Labs, claimed that managers can now use the latest version to measure an employee's individual performance, for example by calculating the number of days an employee had been sending emails, using chat or other services linked to their job.
“This normalises extensive workplace surveillance in a way not seen before,” he tweeted this week.
Esoteric metrics based on analyzing extensive data about employee activities has been mostly the domain of fringe software vendors. Now it's built into MS 365.
A new feature to calculate 'productivity scores' turns Microsoft 365 into an full-fledged workplace surveillance tool: pic.twitter.com/FC3N6KkIR3— Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) November 24, 2020
The tool also attracted criticism from David Heinemeir Hansson, the co-founder of office programme suite Basecamp.
“Just as the reputation of a new and better company was being built, they detonate it with the most invasive workplace surveillance scheme yet to hit the mainstream,” he said, describing it as "dystopian".
Mr Christl said the feature, which was first released last year, was problematic “at many levels”. The researcher also said that an evaluation of productivity data can “shift power from employees to organisations”.
“Not least, Microsoft gets the power to define highly arbitrary metrics that will potentially affect the daily lives of millions of employees and even shape how organisations function,” he said.
In a statement, Microsoft insisted that its productivity score system was an “opt-in experience” that offers insights about the use of technology.
“Insights are intended to help organisations make the most of their technology investments by addressing common pain points like long boot times, inefficient document collaboration, or poor network connectivity,” the company said.
“Insights are shown in aggregate over a 28-day period and are provided at the user level so that an IT admin can provide technical support and guidance.”
Microsoft claims the productivity score doesn’t provide scores on individuals employees but rather calculates a company-wide score.
