wHour

wHour is a unit used in some digital productivity analytics to measure productive engagement in computing environments. It is not a formally standardized unit and has no universal definition, but most implementations describe it as a measure of active work time rather than calendar time.

Typically, one wHour represents sixty minutes of detected user activity during a single session. A session begins when activity is detected (such as keyboard input, mouse movement, touch, or active use of a foreground application) and ends after a defined period of inactivity. The total active minutes within the session are converted to wHours by dividing by sixty, yielding a fractional value if the session is shorter than an hour or summing across multiple sessions for longer totals.

wHour is used in dashboards to compare productivity across individuals or teams, normalize for time-zone differences, and track engagement trends. It is often paired with privacy controls and opt-in policies to avoid sensitive data exposure.

Because there is no universal standard, definitions of activity thresholds and how to aggregate across devices vary, which can hinder comparability. Critics argue that wHours can incentivize quantity of activity over quality, may be affected by background processes, and raise privacy concerns.

See also: hour, time tracking, productivity metrics.