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 think you'd need to be notified that this was being done though.

It's clear from this thread that some people think that everyone has the same job and works in the same way.

News flash We don't.

Agreed, results speak for themselves, or at least they should.

A fun feature of 365, for those subjected to it, is that you can have a mooch at the cloud-based files people have been working on recently. This applies to everyone, including the managers themselves unless privacy etc is configured properly (almost never).
I've found out a few interesting things over time by looking at what directors etc are up to 😛

You realise that reading documents you aren't meant to be in is probably still a breach of the rules and could lead to a disciplinary, even if they haven't been locked down?

Did you realise 365 shows you who last accessed your files?

Same - as is my DH who is a snr director of a FTSE100 company! He sometimes prefers to read complex legal docs in hardcopy so would show as ‘off line’. Being on external telephone or video calls also wouldn’t show, nor would desk side catch ups or stepping into an empty office to have an impromptu meeting. I think employers (colleagues) who go down this route are laying themselves open for considerable grief - not every minute of the working day can be accounted for by Teams Log on data.

It might not be good for communication (which I’d disagree with, as there are plenty of other ways of communicating) but it’s certainly much better if you actually want to get work done!!

"There seems to be an assumption that everyone has a job where you need to be at your desk logged into a computer from 9-5 and if you aren’t then you’re slacking and letting the team down."

I have one of these jobs and I have the opposite experience. I think most MNers are in higher jobs than that where they have more control over their working day.

There was even a post in a recent thread where someone was arguing that adults at work don't suffer mindnumbing boredom and get to organise their own day the way they want to. I found that quite ignorant about the reality of a lot of jobs.

Sometimes communication IS actually getting the work done e.g. in a middle of an event where there are technical problems.
The other ways of communicating is by email, which in my office isn't really used for things that you need an instant reply for. Then, there's whatsapp, but I find it intrusive to use people's personal whatsapps for work queries. We don't use the actual phone very much.

Even if they appear is 'my flux' which these things do sometimes and aren't marked 'confidential'?
(And yes, I know they can see if you open them).

I can understand if someone is not working to their targets and they always seem to be showing as away, but as long as people are delivering the work they should be on time and on standard then I don't really care.

Also, sometimes if I am watching a webinar or am on a zoom call my teams will show as away even though I am working, or if you are writing things down on paper or reading things out of books and making notes it obviously will show as away as you're not moving the mouse.

I think it's very unreasonable for managers or other team members to be bothered about the odd 20 mins here and there for that reason, and just because someone is always showing online it really doesn't mean they are working harder than someone who is showing as away for a few periods during the day.

I have suspicion some people showing online at my place have mouse jigglers or just open word documents and put something weighted on the keyboard so they stay online, as if I try to call or message them they won't reply for a long time.

They’re not talking about opening them, they’re talking about the feed where it shows you what other people have recently opened/edited. I don’t really know why such a feature exists but it does, and I have also found it quite illuminating at times!

People on MN are always claiming wfh is great and they do more than in an office.
But I go to an exercise class (shift work) some mornings and there are always people laughing that they are wfh.

I'm fairly senior in my organisation and would never use this function to judge if someone was working or not. I look at it before messaging someone to get an idea of whether they may respond immediately. Also would never bother with last online. My team are left to their own devices and they're all brilliant and productive enough. What do I care if they take some time out in the middle of the day to do something. They do a great job, and they're happy, that's all that matters!

Teams activity would be a very misleading measure of my actual work. I don’t sit in front of a computer every day all day and prefer to read hard copies of documents than stare at a screen. Luckily, where, when and how I work is more or less left to me.

I have a remote desktop which I generally use for most of my work (more software on it). Only open Teams on my laptop itself as the audio wouldn't work in the remote desktop.

Makes it look like I'm sitting idle all day even though I'm working hard.

I have suspicion some people showing online at my place have mouse jigglers or just open word documents and put something weighted on the keyboard so they stay online, as if I try to call or message them they won't reply for a long time.

Years ago I had a colleague that wrote a script to keep his PC busy while he was away from his desk or having a kip. A quick Google brings up a fair few hits on similar tools.

Not RTFT, so following points probs already raised.

My Teams status is often attached to my mobile app for some weird reason - people can see me typing in the chat on my laptop while I’m still showing as away. I have to log out and back into Teams on my phone to temporarily sort this.

Even when that’s not the issue, if I minimise Teams and Outlook on my desktop and work in Word or something similar, I show as away. If I’m researching potential event spaces or writing a press release/comms plan/slide deck, this can be for hours.

If I’m being super unproductive and just chatting to colleagues on Teams about TV or gossip etc, I show as green.

I have regular slots of blocked out time in my Outlook diary to stop others from putting in calls when I need time to focus on something as my diary is insane. These invites usually default to including Teams call details and so I appear as red during those slots.

So I don’t think you can use Teams last active status as a guide really.

I manage a team and I can hand on heart say that I do not have time to be checking when they were last on Teams. I get why you do it but it seems a bit of an unproductive use of your time, OP 😁. If any of them are slacking, I’d go to IT to run a check on their actual activity (I know you know that!).

During the pandemic we were all encouraged to take time from our desks and had many walking, running and exercise challenges with leaderboards. Whilst we don't have the focus now, I would not be bothered if someone took a longer lunch break so they could cook, eat, and walk outside or run an errand.

The other thread which was deleted about the disciplinary mentioned the manager suspected low performance so checked the online history. As someone responsible for a team, I definitely do not have such invasive access to my team.

I wonder if even the C-Suite can request hours someone is online at my company. We are often travelling, at team offsides, half business reviews, quarterly business reviews, for our own team and we sit in others. If these are in person, the team are certainly not on their laptops. People can often be travelling back to back for events and such. It would be pointless.

I hate that there are people out there who take the piss when wfh and ruin it for others. Really hope it doesn't go away again because it's so beneficial for most and saves us so much money in travel too

I absolutely do more work when wfh, log on earlier, log off later, sometimes in the evening will log back on if everything in the house is done and kids in bed just to finish up some stuff.
If im in the office, because of the commute I'm straight out of there the second the clock hits 4 and I won't turn on again when home.

Teams for us will show active/amber depending on computer activity. You don't need to be on teams.
Unless in the office and in a physical meeting it should really always show green if working
However in saying that, the team I manage I wouldn't stress if they were away for a bit as long as the work was being done.
If work was being missed and it was constantly showing them away then I'd be concerned

Are you sure? Teams definitely goes amber if I have been working on word on my computer.

Just because they arent on teams doesn't mean they aren't working

If any of them are slacking, I’d go to IT to run a check on their actual activity (I know you know that!).

I really wouldn't do this, it's such a difficult disciplinary route for all the reasons people are giving. It is much easier to discuss recent missed objectives and set out a performance improvement plan. Make sure objectives have extremely clear measurable criteria, and follow up hard. I had one team member like this who absolutely turned everything around, just really needed help in understanding expectations and how to achieve. I've also seen truly lazy ones before and they tend to move themselves out once they get onto a PIP and see the game is up.

I have a government job, so I use a work laptop for teams and working on my job. It stays green all the time regardless of whether I'm using Word, Excel or Edge for accessing online programs and sharepoint. Its connected to two screens for easier viewing.

I look at it before messaging someone to get an idea of whether they may respond immediately.

Even that doesn't mean they will. I had messages come in yesterday, but some I ignored while I was going through something with my manager, and some I ignored while I was writing some documentation. I read them later at the end of an activity, rather than break my concentration and focus.

I have no idea what my Teams status was showing - I know it goes to red when I've got a scheduled meeting, but I haven't looked to see what it does at any other time. I do quite a lot of work on non-Microsoft applications, sometimes have impromptu face-to-face meetings which don't need a laptop, and do some work on paper, because I find it's a different thinking process from on screen.

I suspect my Teams status won't always accurately reflect my working status and therefore assume it will be the same for others. Likewise I my previous role, where we used other tools than Teams (doing the same things) it wasn't always accurate - people coulasshow as out of office, even when I was communicating with them because they were actually in the office.

In my experience, you don't need Teams or other messaging tools to know who the reliable people are and who are the slackers in a department. I've been asked in interview how I manage WFH, as people can be distracted by laundry and so on. I point out I've been WFH for years (or hybrid, at least,) since before covid, so I'm used to working at home, and people can slack off in the office too - it's not location specific. I don't think most managers would mind the odd load of washing being dealt with as long as the work is being produced. It's when non-work activities are being down instead of work rather than as well as work that it's a problem, and you shoukd have tools other than Teams to pick that up.