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What do collaboration analytics mean for employee privacy?
As employers gain new ways to track workforce behaviour, concerns have been raised around the potential impact on employee privacy. A CCS Insight employee survey report from January indicated that nearly half of workers (46 per cent) in the US and Europe are uncomfortable with the prospect of an employer monitoring their productivity via digital tools when working from home.
It’s a topic that has come to the fore during the pandemic, as businesses have shifted to remote work, disconnecting workers from managers in the office. At the extreme end of this has been a reported increase in interest around controversial “bossware” apps that allow managers to track employee activity at a granular level, drawing criticism from workers’ rights groups and highlighting sensitivities around digital productivity monitoring.
The analytics available within collaboration and productivity apps are much less intrusive, with data typically de-identified to prevent misuse by those inclined to micromanagement. Software vendors are keenly aware of potential for reputational damage if they get the balance between surfacing business insights and protecting employee privacy wrong in their products.
After Microsoft rolled out its Productivity Score analytics last fall, for example, the company was criticised for providing application data that highlighted metrics relating to individuals. The company responded by making changes to the tool to ensure that data is anonymised at the individual level.
All software vendors are under pressure to ensure that surfacing workforce data doesn’t infringe on worker privacy, said Ashenden, and though there may be mistakes, maintaining trust is a top priority. “Their entire business is dependent on trust at all levels: trusted by IT, trusted by end users, and trusted by business decision makers. They have to keep the equilibrium across all of them, so they're really cautious about it.”
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “At Microsoft, we believe that data-driven insights are crucial to empowering people and organisations to achieve more. We also believe that privacy is a human right, and we’re deeply committed to the privacy of every person who uses our products...
"We take a number of steps in our tools — in some cases enforcing role-based access and audit logs, in some cases only reporting aggregated data — that help organisations prevent misuse or accidental disclosure.”
Google has also taken steps to prevent its Work Insights metrics from being used as a monitoring tool by aggregating analytics to the team level. “Data surfaced in Work Insights is only available at an aggregated level; they do not include the ability to drill down and see any individual’s activities,” a spokesperson said. “In order to protect the privacy of individual enterprise users, team reports and organisational insights are only available for teams of 10 people or more.”
Cisco said that its analytics tool is aimed at “enabling teams and individuals to use data to see how they are spending time and ensuring they have the relationships they need to be successful” and is not intended to be a measurement of productivity or performance.
To this end, only aggregated data will be available to teams, including the team’s manager. “This is not a tool for managers, but rather a tool for ALL individual employees,” a spokesperson said. “Neither managers nor co-workers will be able to see data about any individual, although individuals will be able to see their own data. Managers will only be able to see aggregated high-level trend data.”
Slack allows all users to view a small set of analytics relating to named individual users, including the ability to rank colleagues by the number of messages sent and days active, though it suggests on its help centre website that such metrics should not be used to evaluate an individual’s performance. The company said that the scope of analytics offered restricts any potential for micro-management or productivity monitoring.
“Given these metrics don't provide insight into who individuals are communicating with, if they were active or how active they were on a specific date (only the last 30 days aggregate), we feel strongly that the opportunity for misuse is mitigated,” a spokesperson said.
Any businesses using analytics that track employees’ use of productivity and collaboration tools should be aware of the potential impact on trust, said Ashenden. A failure here could undo efforts to improve company culture and job satisfaction. “All that goes out the window from just one misstep … you don't want to be associated with trust-breaking activities,” she said.
Can businesses rely on collaboration analytics?
Analytics within collaboration and productivity applications can provide a variety of insights to businesses. It’s possible, for instance, to use the data to benchmark teams to detect and replicate the collaboration habits of high-performing teams. Data could show, for instance, that a successful sales team has high levels of communication — not just externally with clients, but also internally with colleagues across different departments.
“If you have some real business challenges, like organisationally you're too siloed and people aren't sharing information effectively across the business, or you’ve got blockers somewhere, then you could use the tool to evidence the parts of the business where that's the case and where there is cross-organisational collaboration,” said Ashenden.
Microsoft
With Microsoft’s manager insights dashboard, team leaders can identify areas of improvement and compare metrics such as time spent in email with other groups.
However, there are limitations to what can be derived from the data, and questions around the degree to which the analytics can be used to gauge productivity. What works for one team might not work for another, and there’s a danger of over-interpreting collaboration stats.
“There is a risk in trying to correlate the output of the tools to KPIs,” said Castanon. “I don't think you can say, for example, that if a team or group of individuals spend many more hours in meetings, or less on email, then that means they are doing their work better than other teams. “Aggregating all of that is not really going to give you a team productivity indicator.”
The range of accessible data is another issue. When analytics are limited to a product from a single vendor, it can be difficult to provide a broad picture of working patterns. Many businesses rely on productivity and collaboration tools from several vendors, which can mean that analytics that track working patterns for a single app or platform reveal only part of the picture.
“It does raise the issue of whether you need the functionality to be standalone or part of another system,” said Castanon.
To that end, Microsoft’s Viva Insights will incorporate data from some third-party applications, including videoconferencing apps like Zoom and HR platforms like Workday.
For businesses that seek a comprehensive view of workforce data across their operations, the analytics available within collaboration and productivity tools may just be a starting point. Data from these tools can also be integrated with other sources of business information, such as CRM data, for instance. There’s also growing demand for performance and employee engagement analytics, part of the wider drive to quantify the employee experience within organisations.
Nevertheless, as the tools that employees interact with throughout their day, analytics from collaboration and productivity applications are likely to play a bigger part in helping businesses understand their workforce going forward.
“Every vendor has their own way of showing how their solution helps improve the employee experience,” said Ashenden. “I think that will be a key focus over the next couple of years.”
