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..

using a mouse jiggler can be a sackable offence - a case was reported only this week on this.

And teams can be a red herring; the larger organisations will potentially be checking your keystrokes, and gaps in typing will stimulate a camera check to see what you are doing / if you are there. The next step will be GenAI-led where patterns in behaviour/typing will be used to identify processes that can be replaced by automation.

2025 will be more like 1984 than you will ever imagine.

It‘s not always very accurate. DP and I work for the same employer, and on occasion we’ve noticed that one of us is showing as away when we are both sitting there working, in the same room. I’ve also had a WhatsApp from my boss asking if I was OK because I was showing as offline all morning (she was actually checking from a safeguarding point of view, rather than to accuse me of skiving) when I’d been logged in and working all morning! It was some weird network sync issue.

Genuinely this is not an issue with anyone else within our company. Just this one individual, so in my case it is true. My partner works in the same business and has little use for Teams, still shows as active, despite him not using it for hours at a time. Could it be a general company setting?

Yes, Teams shows us as away when we’re using non-Microsoft applications. In some weeks I spend a lot of time working on web content in a non-MS system accessed with a non MS browser and Teams shows me as amber.

An employer that relies on amber lights to decide on any damn thing apart from when to let go the handbrake at junctions is an employer that has seriously lost touch with staff productivity and performance and should be ashamed of itself.

Why? When the rest of your team equally rely on Teams and don’t show as away for hours of the day, then why?

Why should that employee be treated as productive as those who are turning up? Where’s the respect for the rest of the workforce actually doing their damn jobs?

Why? When the rest of your team equally rely on Teams and don’t show as away for hours of the day, then why?

Why should that employee be treated as productive as those who are turning up? Where’s the respect for the rest of the workforce actually doing their damn jobs?

Surely you don't base your opinion on how productive someone is on their teams status? Why don't you base it on their actual output?

I check to see if someone is online when I am sending them a message, because I may not bother if they’ve already logged out for the day. I look to see if my friends are online in the morning so I can chat to them etc. It’s not really checking up on people it’s using the technology that’s available. We can also change our status to busy etc. if in a meeting. I’m quite conscientious so not worried about anyone looking at my whereabouts, they can have at it.

Are you aware teams changes to amber when you're actively working? You'll have a field day with me I've turned my status to offline.

Would never occur to me to check generally but yes if I think they are taking the piss and underperforming I will. Problem being you can set it to show available or use a mouse jiggler.

I manage team and I’ve never checked. We all work remotely, and as long as their work is done and done well I absolutely have no issues with how they choose to manage their time.

Also, as others say Teams is often wrong. I needed our COO the other day. It told me she was free but in fact she was on a teams call already. It’s not that reliable.

For me it wouldn’t be just teams it would be a number of things that would be just one part of it. So people saying they’ve too much work and can’t get through it and whenever I want to contact them they show away/offline then that would be a red flag to start to do some more monitoring.

This is hilarious because it is rarely right, mine said away for like a week and I was there, you can also check your phone and your status will change. Honestly! You need to get busier if you have time to care about this !

Absolutely this. We've had so many IT issues with remote access that I log into Teams on my personal laptop and work on my own laptop. I've also noticed Teams will sometimes say I'm "away" when I'm on the laptop. So definitely not infallible. But I know my organisation monitor my laptop and I imagine that's more reliable.

I imagine there would be other issues with work/output and the Teams / log in stats would be one piece of evidence used to dismiss someone

I had a boss who monitored my teams like this, I don't think they realise how close they came to getting a record of bullying. Someone from another department was extremely concerned about me at the time. And very close to intervening.

In the area I work - lots of people do design work on Macs, so actually are probably working their hardest when teams is orange on the pc. Sometimes I'm working on pen and paper, or even a mobile phone. And I'm allowed to take long breaks in the middle of the day as long as they are recorded properly.

We only use teams for meetings a few times a week and contact each other through WhatsApp and email. I wonder what my online status would be for that. Not that my boss would care, he knows I'm working, I'm responsive to any query.

Yes to all those who say Teams is a very poor tool for showing productivity. I, like others on here use a variety of devices and programmes throughout the day which don't keep Teams active. I spend a stupid amount of time annotating Contracts and DPAs, I use a tablet device for this as I can handwrite and cross out where needed on the pdf which is easier and quicker. I have conference calls on Team, WebEx and Zoom if on WebEx/zoom then Teams shows me as idle/away. I also have calls on my mobile phone. I travel sometimes or have hours long face to face meetings or conferences or in person trainings.

The idea that my productivity or contribution to the company can be even slightly measured by a little orange symbol on an app is ridiculous.

Unless you have a role where Teams is a key system, actively in use 100% of your working hours and you are expected to be sat at your desk to fulfil all aspects of your job, it is a bad metric to use.

I'm in a job where you can't work from home so don't really know the ins and outs of Teams but how does it accurately show if you are working? If most of your work is creating documents, or maybe some sort of design programme, how does it monitor this? Or are all the programmes synced to together so it can see when you're actively working on a document?

Either way, snooping at time logged in seems unfair so long as people get the work done.

We keep an eye on this in my work but also use another time recording system so you can see what work they have completed and when throughout the day. A couple of people are now on performance management for poor time recording.

It’s another piece of evidence, part of the puzzle when a team member is underperforming. And yes, when I mentioned it as an opening salvo, my team member cheerfully told me he’d ’needed to take his DMIL to the shops’. I suggested that if he was going to do that in peak working hours on the second busiest day of the month then I’d like him to mention it. Amazingly his productivity (and Teams presence) have both upticked.

As someone who can completely legitimately be reading a learned article as part of my role it would never be the only thing but yes, as one triangulation point, absolutely I keep half an eye on it.

No I don't check up on my colleagues and I would be very offended if I found out someone other than my manager was doing this to me and judging whether I was working enough.

You have no idea what else they might be juggling and it's frankly none of your business.

It's also nothing to do with working from home - plenty of people in the office sit there scrolling on their phones or not being productive.

It's also perfectly possible to get apps/ workarounds that will keep your status on green regardless of whether or not you are at the computer.

It's utterly daft to try and judge someone's productivity by their Teams status.

Luckily my manager trusts us and doesn’t check up on us like this. We have jobs that could mean being away from the computer for several hours at a time but we’re very much doing our jobs. I make sure I keep my calendar up to date so she can see when I’ll be back if she wants to talk to me.

My status will often go to away if I’m doing something else on my laptop. Ringing me anyway will soon prove I’m there!

Happens to me all the time!

Are you a manager checking your team members' statuses or are these your peers?

For people I'm managing, the only checking I do is to see if they're meeting the objectives we regularly set together. For my peers it's none of my business what they're doing.