Productivity Score” in Microsoft 365 has been criticized by privacy experts

Privacy advocates criticize a Microsoft tool that gives employees a productivity score. It is a feature built into Microsoft 365 that assesses users on the use of certain tools and software.

Microsoft announced the Productivity Score feature in May this year. Users of the enterprise version of Microsoft 365 get a score with that tool based on various metrics, such as which tools they use to collaborate and communicate, how often mentions are used in emails, and how many chat messages are sent. The tool is now being criticized from various sides. This would allow employers to learn a disproportionate amount about individual employees.

The criticism comes, among others, from the Austrian privacy researcher Wolfie Christl . “This new feature makes Microsoft 365 a complete surveillance tool,” he writes. He criticizes the fact that employers can monitor their employees at an individual level and conduct evaluations based on group productivity with links to specific, individual activities. In addition, he says , Microsoft determines which arbitrary metrics are used to guide how an organization operates.

The criticism also comes from others, including Basecamp’s David Heinemeier Hansson . “The word dystopian isn’t strong enough to describe what Microsoft is doing here,” he says. Microsoft itself denies that the tool is intended to monitor employees. “The Productivity Score is not a work monitoring tool. It helps discover new ways to work and collaborate,” Microsoft 365 manager Jared Spataro writes in a blog post. He argues that there are plenty of ways to preserve employee privacy. “For example, the scores are only calculated over a period of 28 days.”