Anyone else snoop on MS Teams Last Online?

[MicrosoftTeamsTwat]

Obvs inspired by an active thread where the poor MNetters DH is being taken for gross misconduct as he’s been found to be not logged in for +2hrs a day…

I will admit to often looking on my ahem less performing team members when they go amber on WFH days and it’s always ‘LAST SEEN 2 HOURS AGO’ at like 3pm in the afternoon, and it’s always the same people consistently throughout the day, they must work (be green/red) 3 hours max a day…and I always wonder how they get away with it - although if the other threads anything to go by perhaps no one will for much longer.

Will absolutely caveat this post with the fact that I definitely sometimes take a slightly longer lunch, and also put the washing out, see you chores and generally make the most of WFH on those days but genuinely I’m never offline more than an hour a day, so I do get a bit peeved that my team mates just seem to get away with it.

Sooo..

YANBU: Everyone checks their lazy colleagues last online and wouldn’t be sad if they were pulled up on it
YABU: Be prepared to suck up others workloads as companies aren’t pulling up their employees..

I’m so glad I’m self-employed. I didn’t even know you could do that. Seems invasive!

The time you spend checking up on your colleagues and thinking about what they’re doing is skiving too.

At home, I work on my PC because it has a bigger screen, then have Teams open on a separate laptop at the side for meetings. So I would definitely appear as away for hours when I hadn't been. Some people might just be using two devices?

I honestly don't think it's always accurate either. I WFH as does everyone in my team- my boss was showing offline all morning and I needed to speak to her. I asked a colleague if they knew where she was - she was scheduled to be in and available. Colleague was WFT are you on about?! she's been working since 7am and was showing available to her 🙄

Same. If I am working on other documents and haven't "clicked" Teams (normally because it's minimised if I'm doing other stuff) then it often goes to amber/away. It's also not uncommon for people who are concentrating to set their status to appear offline or appear away.

Mine often goes into an away status when I'm not interacting with Teams - which is normal for my job. I hope my boss doesn't assume I'm a lazy cunt but doesn't have the bollocks to have a conversation or address any perceived dips in performance.

I do a lot of reading from actual print books and so often go to orange even though I'm physically at my desk and quite willing and able to answer messages and calls. Sometimes, I'll set a status message to say this; sometimes, I just try to remember to jiggle the mouse every so often to stop my laptop going to sleep.

I hate the whole Teams changing to orange thing.

My Teams goes amber after 10 minutes 🙄 Even if I'm reading a flipping document I have to remember to nudge. That said as long as I answer to my managers' incessant last minute demands there's never a problem.

I'm always snooping 😂
Our work load is up and down though so like today I only really had about an hour of actual work to do so I keep an eye on my emails but that's about it.

Yeah, what previous posters said. Probably about half of my work was on Teams today, other half not. So I’d have appeared idle for that part of the day, but alas I wasn’t.

Ooh - where is the original thread?

Teams goes amber/away if you haven't been active in the laptop/pc it's installed on, so basically if you're not doing any work, it'll go to away. I don't understand how people have separate computers? Surely if you're on your companies network you wouldnt have a separate laptop/pc?? Don't understand how people's teams are going yellow of they're actively using the pc?
I'd say companies may start reporting on this in the near future to monitor productivity and just right, people are doing feck all, I know people in my company who set up meetings with themselves to get an hour of doing nothing! And they brag about it too

If it seems someone has been amber a while I always have a look at the last seen 😅 Also note if people are logging on late, leaving early etc

Mine goes amber if I'm in a meeting or a webinar and I'm not contributing - given that I'm often there to learn and/or take notes/do minutes, it's not ideal that it decides I'm not 'there' when actually I'm just not engaging with the computer mouse/microphone/keyboard. I'm still using the speakers! Still making notes!

It's a real bugbear for me!

I have as many problems when colleagues are in the office (we are all in different offices to each other) and they go awol for chats, walks, etc.

Good managers deal with the performance/motivation issues of individuals not lazily jump to blaming the location for all.

Also, my status regularly goes to away status when I am in a zoom call if I don’t touch my mouse or keyboard, which I regularly don’t do as I have wireless headphones so sometimes walk about the house while on the call, especially if I have been sitting down too much. (Off mute so I can talk freely, so I am fully focused on the call and not doing the vacuuming/dishes before anyone suggests it).

Top tip to solve this problem if you have someone who checks your status.

Schedule a meeting with yourself and join and then minimise the window. Bingo you're show as busy and red all day.

Nope.

This is just an online version of presenteeism.

I'm a senior leader and wouldn't dream of doing so. I treat my staff like adults and that's how they behave.

I always leave mine on 'appear offline.' Not many people in my work place use the Teams status. I keep my shared calendar up to date so people can see where I'm at.

We do about half of calls on zoom, so if we're using zoom it'll look like we're offline. Or if I'm on a telephone call my laptop won't be active. The teams status thing is not an accurate indicator of productivity at all.

Anyone have the link to the other thread or know what it was called?

I set mine as offline/away as I prefer to prioritise my own workload and not have lots of interruptions. My manger is thankfully more interested in what I get done than what my status on teams is.

I wfh one day a week which is usually when I make lots of phone calls. So I could easily just be on the phone and not actively online for a few hours at a time. Plus I like to do some of my more creative planning by hand first so again would appear offline while doing that. Some days I'm less motivated and I might go and do something more practical around my house but then I make those hours up later in the evening or the following morning. I think that people tend to leave companies that are inflexible and that don't promote good work/ life balance so really I think the question you should be asking is whether your team are delivering on their targets and if their workload is handled properly. If it is, then i think it's good management to give them autonomy over that. I'd only pull them up if there were people who are consistently under delivering on targets. But I wouldn't necessarily use teams to do that, I'd use the targets themselves.

I’m a lecturer, and a student commented to me that I had better watch because she could see my Teams status was orange - I was right there in the room teaching her class, just not at my laptop! After that I set it to grey/offline and it has been like that for a year now.

I have my Teams status set to permanently ’Appear offline’. My boss knows I’m very responsive so haven’t ever mentioned it.

When people such as yourself do that, in my experience, your colleagues will end up having to field the messages that you should be dealing with because they are showing as available and online.

No, I’ve seen people I’m working in the same office as have the ‘away’ icon despite being able to see that they are working.

It’s not accurate.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/5107524-gross-misconduct-hearing

No because I don’t have time for that and it’s not accurate. If a colleague calls me at home on my mobile, I can be talking for up to an hour but my teams will suggest I’m away. I also might be on site and in a face to face meeting - again, teams would suggest I’m away. I also might have printed some work out for proofing - again, teams would suggest I’m not working.