A security software expert is raising questions about a new Microsoft tool to keep track of employees.
The tech giant is introducing a feature to its digital work and communications platform Teams that will allow remote monitoring of employees’ presence in the office or offsite.
When the feature is enabled, Teams will detect activity on the user’s device even if they are not actively using the Teams tab, Microsoft says on its website.
Users will have an option to ‘Keep my current status when I’m active outside of Teams on the web’.
The update “addresses common feedback about inaccurate presence status and improves collaboration visibility”, the website says.
Microsoft said it was another way to understand people’s availability but Auckland University’s Alex Baird told Checkpoint the use of the data collected by the tool needed to be considered.
“The Privacy Act is pretty clear on being thoughtful about why something is being collected and then only using it for that purpose,” he said.
“So, if it’s collected to help your teammates know where you are, great. Is it being collected for performance tracking? Well then that’s a very different thing.”
Baird said organisations were able to configure whether the feature was turned on or off.
“There’s always the option to turn the feature off at the individual level, which is great – we really like to see that sort of thing,” he said.
“The challenge is that if you distribute this to a whole organisation – opt-in – every single employee has to consider it and then manually turn off a setting, and we all know how hard it is to change settings in these complicated apps.”
Parts of the feature made sense, Baird said.
“Does your line manager need to know where you are? Yeah, they need to be able to pop down and have a chat with you or jump on a call with you,” he said.
“But is it appropriate for everyone in the organisation to know? Perhaps not.”
Baird described the feature as an extension of the ‘active’ status on Teams.
“I think it’s a very well-intentioned feature, and we just need to be thoughtful about the conversations we have with our teams, with our bosses, about whether this feature gets turned on and what it gets used for.”
