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

[88tthh]

I've recently started a work from home job and I get quite anxious about my Teams status going to the yellow 'Away' status, as I worry I'll get picked up on it or people will think I'm taking excessive breaks from my laptop.

For example, yesterday my status went to Away a couple of times when I went to the loo, and when I went and made a coffee. I get stressed and try and rush back to my laptop, as 5 minutes goes by so quickly. I know if I was in the office I definitely wouldn't be panicking about the amount or duration of toilet breaks, for example, yet at home I do. I also time my lunch hour down to the minute to make sure I'm back at my desk after exactly an hour (or sometimes less).

I follow some influencers online who have similar work from home jobs and I see them pottering around putting washes on and even taking quick showers during the work day, yet also spending their lunch hour at 1-hour exercise classes (so they're not doing these things during their lunch breaks). I guess the normal is probably somewhere between their approach and my approach.

It would be interesting to know what seniority level people are at / what salary they earn alongside whether they worry about being monitored or not.

I'm not suggesting people answer this I'm just saying it would be interesting to know as I'm guessing there's correlation between lower paid roles being more closely watched.

😂

It is worth noting that being permanently on green might raise more suspicion than having occasional yellow periods.

That's now my view on it.

I used to worry with an old line manager - just because I knew she was quite meticulous on everything and I was her first person she'd properly line managed so initially she was very keen (it settled down and she was absolutely lovely once she knew I was absolutely fine and on it all). My current line manager - nope I don't worry at all about it because she's very laid back and we both know that our working patterns are variable but neither of us take the piss. I tend to use my outlook diary as a bit of a to-do list and block times for tasks out so it's usually clear what I'm working on anyway - and since I started doing that half of the team has followed.

Plus our work is such that we can be in and out on visits and moving between sites so we're all on and off amber like mad for that kind of reason alone.

I never even think about it. No one cares! Who would be watching?

Install an autoclicker if it looks at mouse movement.

It would be interesting to know what seniority level people are at / what salary they earn alongside whether they worry about being monitored or not.

I'm not suggesting people answer this I'm just saying it would be interesting to know as I'm guessing there's correlation between lower paid roles being more closely watched
In general the people I know who are paid for delivering on projects or have some responsibility don't seem to care about their Teams status because they're working well and don't want to be in a position where they attend a meeting with clients, colleagues, manager and look useless and incompetent. They work in a way that allows them to get the job done. Their colleagues aren't likely to care either.

My friend who complains a lot about their colleagues disappearing for long periods of time (because it impacts friend's ability to do their job) are in more junior jobs where being at the computer, responding to emails, completing lots of smaller tasks is the job. My friend is also reasonably junior and it annoys them that there was talk of increased monitoring from management because there's obviously some people skiving. It's annoying for them that they have tasks they want to complete by 5pm but they know that certain colleagues are never contactable after 3pm.

Exactly. I have the kind of job that's mostly measured on output and hitting deadlines but we have to be available to speak to colleagues and external clients during core hours.

It is frowned upon and noticed by management if you are unavailable without explanation (eg in a call with an external client or a meeting, which needs to be logged in the online diary) or don't answer when called.

This option appears to have been removed in the new version of Teams.

As has saving chats (some employers, maybe most of them delete chats after a certain number of days so you needed to save posts if you didn't want to lose them. Microsoft has removed that functionality in its wisdom).

The new Teams is a nuisance in more ways than one!

I did at the beginning. But soon Worked out that people are too busy to be paying too much attention. 2 years in and I’m doing school runs, exercise class at lunch time (travel time plus class takes an hour and a half). No ones mentioned it to me once….. we also do visits so sometimes I tag lunch/ chores onto that.

tbh when I work from home I have frequent breaks - think pomadero technique- that’s how I work best.

m imagine if how often your thing would go yellow in an office- I reckon it would be more than at home x

Not read the whole thread so someone has probably already suggested it, but just change the timeout before it goes into away status.

I've never even noticed it change, let alone worried about it.

My job can involve long spells on the phone so it wouldn't matter anyway. Plus my manager is not a control freak or an arsehole, so she wouldn't think anything of it. And sometimes I can spend quite a while going through case papers that are actual paper!

She may be different with my colleague who has a caseload a fraction of mine but does 40% more hours though.

I don't think you can - at least not with the new Teams.

we have to be available to speak to colleagues and external clients during core hours

I used to carry my mobile phone round with me when I had this - yes I've taken calls when I was in the shower after a lunchtime run! But you can't really do that with a laptop

I thought about getting one of these ☺️

I looked at the jigglers on Amazon, I think I will get one too.

I have a jiggler, it was the best £8 I ever spent! 🤣

I manage a remote team and pay no attention to it. It's meaningless

Why do you need one if your aren't skiving?

To all those with mouse jigglers, why? Is it because you are taking the mick?

No it's because my laptop times out after 3mins (set by employer, can't change it) and closes down all my programmes and kicks me out of any searches I'm working on which can mean huge swathes of research lost.

I can replicate it, but it takes some time and if it's complex work it can take me 30mins to get back to where I was.

3mins isn't enough time to pee and make a cuppa in the same break. It doesn't allow for a chatty postman (all of ours) or the month I had really inured my back and hobbled everywhere abnormally slowly and gripping the stair banisters.

I had one because I'd like to not get a disciplinary for letting my screen lock itself when there wasn't anything to do in the first place.

If you haven't worked for a company that expects to keep track of you staring at the screen for several hours irrespective of how productive you actually are, you won't get it.

This 👆

There are tons of ways to see what team members are doing, and whether they are active without worrying about whether Teams shows as active or not.

The best option is to trust that they are doing their job until you find out otherwise. Output is what matters.

Mine never goes to Away.

I wrote a "mouse jiggler" program that just sits in the background and "jiggles" the mouse cursor at whatever interval I tell it to.

Sorted.

You can still choose to use the old one. I do because the new one doesn't have the Outlook plugin.