To ask, if you work remotely/from home do you worry about your Teams status going yellow/'Away'

It just depends on the culture of the office.

In my old job someone commented about me being ‘away’ and people pissing about at home. This same person that would spend an hour every Monday talking about football but they were in the office so obviously working.

My work now wouldn’t care. Plus there are a few times when my status changes to away but I’m still at my desk working, I’m just not moving my mouse such as watching webinars, trying to figure out how to word something or reading something but making notes in my notebook rather than typing. My teams also shows us offline quite a bit but people respond to messages.

You can set the timer so that if goes to “away” after a specified period of inactivity. I did this in my old job as sometimes I’m working but writing things by hand to understand things (mathsy job!) However when I changed jobs my new company I think have set Teams so you can’t do this! Or I just can’t remember how to do it but I think it’s set at 15 minutes now.

When I first started wfh I cared about it but now I don’t really care. Sometimes I set my status to”Away” so people don’t bother me anyway.

I don't think it's reliable enough for anyone to judge - mine sometimes goes on 'do not disturb' for no reason at all, which is a pain if someone's trying to phone me.

No, I don’t worry about this at all.

But if you are worried, download the Teams mobile app and you can make yourself green / ‘available’ on the go.

I have a ridiculous micro manager and monitors us all. I have to read a lot and it's easier to print and read so it slips to away quite a lot. I'll get a message asking if I'm there. Not just me, the whole team.

How she has time I don't know.

I am looking to move jobs.

Teams statuses are a total mystery to me. Sometimes I'm green and sometimes and I'm yellow and I'm doing the exact same thing. Nobody cares at all.

I left a business like this because they told me that peeing was in my own time.

So if I took 6mins in which I left my desk (0.1hr), pee and walk back, that was time I owed out of my breaks or I had to work on.

Absolutely unbearable employer tactics.

You shouldn't worry about it. If you have an employer that monitors every keystroke then change jobs.

I’d only worry if I was away for hours doing something. Putting on a wash or making a coffee is only 10 minutes- I don’t think anyone would be looking at it so closely. It’s all about outputs when you are working from home.

Yes I worry about this too! So I have it open on my phone if I'm leaving my desk to keep it green

In my place it really depends on management. Some managers will question people if their status goes to yellow, senior management encourage this. I’m a line manager, I don’t care if I see someone on yellow if they’re generally a good worker. I encourage my team to manage their own time in the day. For example if they’ve had a busy morning and are over productive, then it does not bother me if they want to take an extra 10 minute break at some point. Plus I know I have breaks away from my laptop when working from home to put a wash on or run the hoover around, I’m not gonna come down on someone in my team for doing that. Generally if people are happier, and there is trust, they work better.

It's not conning employers, it's not wanting to look like you're not working just because you're not wiggling your mouse all the time. As a pp said, you can be reading long documents or doing other work away from the screen. I had a previous job where the laptop locked after ten minutes (whether in the office or at home) so I used to jiggle it every time I walked past eg if I was on lunch.
This.
I couldn't work somewhere that tracked my Teams status though. The people I work with tend to value everyone's contributions and roles.

Someone I know is forever moaning about their colleagues and it sounds like many of them are piss takers. As an example it's very convenient how some are apparently online but never contactable from around 3pm-3.45 and don't seem to get much done between 3pm and the end of the working day.

Nope. Mine is basically always yellow, because for me it's literally for meetings and calls, and accessing a few documents. The core of my work is done in Illustrator, Excel and other applications, so it looks like I'm basically idle for long. periods of the day. That said, members of my team know that they just need to call or message and I usually respond there and then.

My line manager encourages us to set Teams to Away / Offline & switch Outlook off for a couple of hours if we need to concentrate on something, as long as we let her know that’s what we’re doing. She trusts us & it works.

My workplace is similar.

I can't believe the amount of people conning their employers here by pretending to work and even going as far as buying equipment to make the mouse move

It's not conning employers, it's not wanting to look like you're not working just because you're not wiggling your mouse all the time. As a pp said, you can be reading long documents or doing other work away from the screen. I had a previous job where the laptop locked after ten minutes (whether in the office or at home) so I used to jiggle it every time I walked past eg if I was on lunch.

It's funny that you mention this, because we are now using the "new" Teams, and my status goes to yellow within about 5 minutes, and can't apparently be changed. With the old Teams I think it took about 15 minutes which I think is more reasonable.

However, I've just seen the post above about being able to change it. I have looked at the settings menu but will look again to see if the option "Show me as away when inactive" can be toggled off on mine.

No, I have never worried about it or monitored my team.

However, there are some hacks. You can set your status to available or busy for a set period of time or simply go to PowerPoint and ‘present in teams’ this will keep you as ‘do not disturb’.

Never occurs to me at all, or anyone else's. As long as I reply in a reasonable time and others do, don't care.

No - not all of my work is Teams-based or computer-based. There are good work-related reasons why I am often away or offline.

I deliberately set mine to show me as away so I don't get pestered unnecessarily! I read and reply in my own time, but I don't notice anyone else's status at all.

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I've never thought about it.

I think it massively depends on what job you do and how much you’re generally monitored/have targets for example in a call centre.

For me I probably show as ‘away’ more than I do busy / active but it’s not a problem for me or anyone else.

I could be ‘away’ from teams but that doesn’t mean I’m not working. It could mean I’m still sat at my desk but taking a call on my mobile, on a zoom call ( we use both teams and Zoom and I’m sure a zoom call will show you as inactive if you’re not moving your mouse) or I could be planning / prepping and tend to do this old school with a pen and paper before I try and design it on the computer.

As a PP said, if you’ve got nothing to feel guilty for, don’t worry. Do I sometimes put a wash out between meeting? Yes. Do I take in parcels? Yes. But I also get all my work done and more and will always work over my hours as I love and put a lot into my career.