Microsoft first announced its Productivity Score tool back in April, but recently, it's come under fire by some concerned about the privacy aspects of it. According to Wolfie Christl, it can be used as a "full-fledged workplace surveillance tool", and now, Microsoft has responded.
In a blog post titled Our commitment to Privacy in Microsoft Productivity Score that was penned by Microsoft 365 CVP Jared Spataro, some new features were announced, or rather, some features are being removed. There are two key changes being made. The first is that Productivity Score will no longer have user names in the product at all. It's measuring aggregate data from now on, so you can see the score at the organizational level.
The other change is that the UI is being changed to reflect that the product is meant to measure the adoption of new technology, not how much work is getting done. In fact, Microsoft says that Productivity Score was never meant to be an actual productivity score for individual users, despite that being what it was.
Spataro also pointed out that things like Microsoft 365 App health, network connectivity, and endpoint analytics already don't include any user names, so there aren't changed that need to be made on that end. From now on, Productivity Score will continue to offer a score between 0 and 800, combining scores in the categories of "communication, meetings, content collaboration, teamwork, mobility, endpoint analytics, network connectivity, and Microsoft 365 App health".
