What happened?
In October, Microsoft announced a handy Productivity Score for employers to measure how much each employee uses ... Microsoft 365.
The metric and dashboard rolled out to little fanfare last month until an in-depth look at the data sparked an outcry from privacy and productivity advocates alike.
On the privacy side, the level of employee surveillance was alarming. On the productivity side, the score was more marketing gimmick than valuable insight. (The more you use Microsoft 365 apps, the more your score increases.)
This week, Microsoft issued a mea culpa promising to anonymize the data, so employers could only see organization-wide usage. They're still calling it a "Productivity Score."
Story over, right?
Not quite. A few eye-raising Microsoft patents were uncovered for a "meeting insight computing system" that would make even Big Brother blush.
The proposed system combines cameras, sensors, and software to measure body language, facial expressions, room temperature, time of day, non-meeting-related apps open on attendees' computers, and more to create a "meeting effectiveness score."
Isn't more data better?
The drums of Big Data and Big Efficiency have been beating for years, pushing the idea that if you can measure it, you should optimize it.
If 2020 has taught us anything, weathering unexpected storms requires flexibility and an obsession with efficiency destroys resilience.
So the question becomes: are increases in time spent in our inbox and minutes shaved off from meetings that probably shouldn't have been called in the first place, worth thousands of dollars in technology and the loss of employee trust?
Or is it better to invest in becoming better leaders and managers? (Hint: It is. Double hint: If you need that much data to tell you how a meeting went, you've got EQ work to do.)
So what's the big picture?
The story of "Efficiency vs. Privacy vs. All-Encompassing-Enterprise-Collaboration Software" is far from over. (We see you, Slackforce.)
This particular chapter serves as a reminder to look under the hood of pre-packaged people analytics and question not only if they measure what they say they do but also if it's worth measuring at all.
