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.

I don't have a jiggler, but this would be the reason for getting one.
Lots of people have jobs with built-in downtime so have to come up with creative solutions to still look serious.

Yet another thing the new version doesn't have. What's the point of it?

I can't see how to go back to the old version.

Since my employers introduced a 30 day chat deletion rule I've been using email far more, so am going to yellow far more frequently

It's because they think that this is the only way an employer has to tell whether a person is working or not. In actual fact, activity can be monitored many ways, so if the employer chose to look, the fact that they have a jiggler will be obvious, and could be used in a disciplinary as an attempt to decieve.

IMHO it is better to just be away, or to be actually working.

That's all well and good, but sometimes there just isn't any work to do.

My old job (made redundant because there really was so little work after the company lost big contracts related to big quality/safety issues) I could have 4 small pieces of work to do and that would be it for the whole week. In fact, I went 4 weeks without a single bit of work to do. I was at home, I reaches out to others in the company to offer help, they didn't have any work to do either. I wasn't really monitored on teams status but I did use a clicker software and had my emails and teams on my phone so could pick up the work from anywhere. I was always available to work but I wasn't spending my life staring at a blank screen for 9 hours a day. They made over half the workforce redundant and I hear there are still people twiddling their thumbs.

Get a mouse jiggler

IMHO it is better to just be away, or to be actually working

you can be both.

And it might not be your own manager who cares, but an insidious perception that arises due to the yellow not being green when it should be.

That's fine though. As long as you are available, it is the problem of your employer to solve whether you are busy enough. You clearly were not trying to hide it.

It is worrying for the future as it is an unsustainable position long term.

It should only be your line manager and direct chain that should concern themselves. Everyone else can whistle.

I never even think about it. Do you have to always have Teams open? I only open it if I have a meeting. Also I have to actively search for colleagues to see what their status is.

If anybody notices your inactivity then they clearly have too much time on their hands!

Oh yeah I hated it! I was so bored and felt guilty walking away from my desk to get on with stuff despite not having anything to do. I like being busy at work. Infact my user name is linked to me leaving a busy, fun role for that job as I thought it would bring lots of opportunities. I would have left much earlier but was trapped due to pregnancy. Just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

It is a problem, I know people who 'work from home' and spend the day doing absolutley nothing. Then you have people like my DP who feel they can't take a full lunch break when at home as they want to be seen as constantly present. I don't overly think wfh is the best option for many people on both ends of the productivity spectrum.

Sorry, I can't explain it as our IT guy did it for me. You could try googling how to do it.

I don't have these options in my Teams to update the away duration 😭

I would not recommend installing a 3rd party tool like that especially if you have a corporate device. Your boss is able to see everything you install and something like that just screams "Guilty" even if your not

I think it is normal for your status to change to Amber, it is odd when colleagues status are always green/red but when you call them they don't answer 🤔

As you say, it changes to away after just a few minutes and I think most people are aware of that and won't just assume you're skiving off. If you hover your house over the person's status it normally even says how many minutes it's been since their last activity, so if you're just talking about loo breaks here and there you should be totally fine, even if your company is monitoring quite closely.

Companies don't need to look at the Teams status to know whether you are active or not. There are many, many ways for them to see.