In a post on the Office 365 blog, Microsoft has announced the general availability of Workplace Analytics, a tool that uses Microsoft Graph data and is designed to give managers and executives a deeper understanding of employee productivity across departments.
The new Office add-on improves upon last year’s MyAnalytics, a tool that enables employees to analyze their individual productivity based on information gleaned from their Office 365 data. Both tools are the result of Microsoft’s 2015 acquisition of VoloMetrix, a startup that helped large businesses assess employee efficiency.
Workplace Analytics takes Office 365 email, calendar and other metadata, and turns them into a set of behavioral metrics that can be used to provide insight on how to improve efficiency across an organization. The tool has built-in privacy and compliance capabilities and only leverages metadata that is gathered and then anonymized.
According to Kathleen Hogan, chief people officer at Microsoft, Workplace Analytics is already being used by the software giant internally and has yielded significant insights.
“We believe building a true digital, data-driven enterprise requires organizations to empower and connect their people across everything—people, processes, data and systems. Our HR Business Insights group is using Workplace Analytics across a variety of initiatives—from understanding the behaviors driving increased employee engagement, to identifying the qualities of top-performing managers who are leading Microsoft’s cultural transformation from within. We believe people analytics is a competitive necessity for any HR team.”
Workplace Analytics is available now as an add-on for Office 365 enterprise customers.
Source and image: Office Blog