Microsoft Execs Hit Employee Monitoring, a Microsoft Teams Feature

There is currently a debate regarding the effects of employee monitoring. On one hand, the activity somewhat ensures that members of the workforce are truly working on their tasks. On the other, it can adversely affect employee morale. Oddly, Microsoft finds itself on both sides of the argument. While Microsoft Teams carries implied employee tracking features, the company’s top executives publicly decry a form of employee surveillance.

In an interview with BloombergTV, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted that remote work has bred among managers the distrust of employees and has led them to use software solutions to spy on the workforce. Coining the term “productivity paranoia” to describe the scenario, Nadella went on to imply that employee monitoring isn’t effective. He suggested that communication tools are a better option since people can get their point across sans paranoia.

Microsoft vice president Jared Spataro echoed Nadella’s sentiment by saying that employers should not be “taking note of the activity of keystrokes and mouse clicks and those types of things.” In his point of view, such actions equate to “measuring heat rather than outcome.”

Their narratives are backed by research from the company. A Microsoft study on productivity amid remote and hybrid work reveals that 85% of managers feel that the company’s employees are not being productive. On the other hand, 87% of workers believe that they are productive at work. Moreover, recent remote work and telecommuting statistics indicate that 59% of employees feel stressed or anxious about the presence of employee surveillance.

The take of Microsoft on employee monitoring is a peculiar one. The company’s top executives have clearly sided with the employees. However, its communication platform appears to be playing for the other team.

Employee Monitoring Using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has a multitude of functionalities that benefit business users, including video conferencing, file sharing, and real-time collaborations. Nadella and Spataro might have overlooked that the communication system is equipped with features to manage and monitor teams. And its approach to surveillance is quite comprehensive.

Microsoft Teams enables managers to track the workforce’s video and voice calls, chats, and meetings, along with the durations of each. The platform has an admin center from which managers are able to pull up information regarding the individual activities of all team members. In addition, Microsoft 365’s admin center has a Compliance module that contains the private channels used by teams, part of which are instant or direct messages.

Furthermore, the reporting capabilities of Microsoft Teams include team activities. These include app usage, device usage, user activity, live event usage, and PSTN usage. This means managers are able to not only monitor app activities but also the devices used to log in and even the mics and speakers hooked up to the system.

For voice calls, Microsoft Teams has several means for monitoring and ensuring quality. The platform has a dashboard built with features for tracking calls. It also leverages analytics to see the people, devices, and networks related to each call.

In a nutshell, Microsoft Teams comes as an ideal example of a platform that enables employee surveillance. This runs counter to Nadella’s and Spataro’s statements. For the executives’ part, they have doubled down on what they said by introducing new Microsoft apps that empower communication and self-expression. Changes might come to Teams down the line but until then, Microsoft appears to be appealing to both sides of the fence.