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Original poster

Can work make me do this?

66 replies

Nopicplease · 14/03/2023 23:22

We use outlook and teams at work a lot. They have said recently that they want all employees to have a picture of themselves as their profile picture on teams by the end of this week
I really don't want to see my face staring back at me every time I send a message. Can they make me do this?

OP posts:

TheIsleOfTheLost · 15/03/2023 11:45

When work were trying to make profile pictures compulsory, someone quite high up Compliance complained and said it was not gdpr compliant. Your photo is personal data that they would be using and storing. They haven't tried pushing it again, so I assume she was right. I don't have or want my picture there. Nothing to do with how I look.

MaidOfSteel · 15/03/2023 11:52

You're not being pathetic, OP. Ignore any insensitive, non-empathetic poster who says that.

I hate every photo I've ever been in aso I actively avoid having my photo taken wherever possible.

I'd ask if it's mandatory. If not, ignore the requests. If it is, could you do a bit of photoshopping? Or take a photo from as far away as possible or with big sunglasses.

I think workplaces have gone mad lately. The world didn't fall apart before digital photos and team building stuff.

rookiemere · 15/03/2023 12:07

Yes @MaidOfSteel but in the past people were generally in the office having meetings face to face.

VeloHostage · 15/03/2023 12:37

I'd ask if it's mandatory. If not, ignore the requests. If it is, could you do a bit of photoshopping? Or take a photo from as far away as possible or with big sunglasses.

If it's mandatory (for example because you are handling personal sensitive data that would be a safeguarding concern) then the whole point of the exercise is that someone charged with enforcing data protection is able to confirm that the person in the photo is the person they have just seen take a stash of documents off a printer. Trying to be clever and obscuring your features would defeat the purpose.

Hence why I used to take - and upload - the pictures.

You may know your colleagues. An auditor won't. And if that auditor has the purse strings to a million pound contract that relies on a certain level of data protection, you won't be popular for getting yourself noted. (And those contracts commonly have named parties only that can access the data anyway).

EarringsandLipstick · 15/03/2023 12:47

OP, gently, you are being daft.

Your picture 'won't be staring back at you'. It'll be in a tiny icon, like in WhatsApp, where you can click into to identify the person if you need to.

It will show up a little larger if you are on a Teams call with your camera off.

Other than that, you won't see it at all.

Also, stop putting yourself down - you being the most junior doesn't mean you shouldn't be recognisable - you matter as much as everyone else.

PlateBilledDuckyPerson · 15/03/2023 12:55

In my experience, people's Teams pictures rarely look much like the person in real life because they either choose something several years old and very flattering, or they filter the life out of it.

You could get away with a random photo as long as it bears a vague resemblance to you, I should think.

AlisonDonut · 15/03/2023 13:02

My work asked this in about 2017. I put a comedy photo up, expecting it to go internal only. It didn't. So I took it down. When they asked again I said no as it goes external and I don't want my face ending up in emails in a court case [we were investigating an attempted fraud at the time] and they never asked again.

EarringsandLipstick · 15/03/2023 13:12

God Alison someone like you on my team would drive me nuts! It's not a complex nefarious request to have a photo on your profile.

drpet49 · 15/03/2023 13:13

Nopicplease · 15/03/2023 07:32

Thanks everyone, I work in the office every day and I'm on the lowest grade, nobody actually needs to know who I am. It just feels massively unnecessary.

I really don’t see what any of that has to do with anything. It is just a picture FFS!

WispaBite · 15/03/2023 13:15

I use my Bitmoji, so it looks like me, but isn't my photo. Can you do something similar?

SpringIntoChaos · 15/03/2023 13:27

My place did this...I added a picture of me in the middle of two llamas. I was very small in comparison to the llamas, and was wearing a large fluffy bobble hat and wellies...not sure this was 'quite' what they had in mind (everyone else added very professional looking head shots 🤣)

I've not been asked to change it 🤩

billyt · 15/03/2023 15:40

ChristmasRoses · 15/03/2023 09:25

Get someone to take a photo of you with a light behind you so you're almost a silhouette. Be grateful you're not in my company where cameras on is mandatory!

My previous company enforced camera-on Teams.

So I sat with my back to a window............

No bugger could see my face (better for them, really )

VeloHostage · 15/03/2023 17:27

Teams/Zoom/Skype/whatever calls with video are also safeguarding concerns. Pictures in background ? Family members in background ?

Filters should be used at all times.

RampantIvy · 15/03/2023 17:40

We use a background of an office with our company logo, so that deals with any safeguarding issues.

TBH, I don't think it's an unreasonable request to have a photo on your profile. I also don't think it is unreasonable to have cameras on during meetings. If you were all office based the meetings would be in person anyway.

In our case it has helped integrate two of our remote team members far better than if they had been a disembodied voice on a blank screen.

VeloHostage · 15/03/2023 17:45

We use a background of an office with our company logo, so that deals with any safeguarding issues.

I set that up too. 😀However I then discovered (after an afternoon I'm never getting back) that you can't enforce it across Office 365. At least not in 2021 (I've moved on since then to the wonders of Google Workspace in a non regulated industry). No one at Microsoft could understand why it might be an idea.

Mummys · 15/03/2023 19:45

What's the concern OP about it?

Mine was me with a massive pair of sunglasses holding a cat for quite some time, no one would have had a clue who I was from it and I've worked for 2 companies now where I have never actually met someone face to face 😂

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