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..

Really hope my kids, when they finish uni and start work, find bosses like you! It’s a shame when the behaviour of a few slackers - whose output should reflect that and mean they are picked up without company wide invasive monitoring - should shape the way all employees are managed.

I will schedule time out in my calendar to complete tasks so I'll show as red. But I don't do it to skive 😂

Whoops posted in wrong place

This is how I operate too. If someone's not meeting targets or skipping meetings I'll have a conversation with them but otherwise if you're doing the job you're paid to do work your hours how you need to work them as long as the core 10-3 is covered.

Thank you, that's a very kind comment.

Honestly, treating staff well is just good business sense. Most businesses are heavily reliant on the quality of their staff. If you are reasonable, fair, flexible and look after their wellbeing, you will attract and retain good people, they will be loyal and you will get the very best out of them.

It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. We can only ever be as good as the people we employ.

Totally agree. In a really difficult market I still had some great applicants for new roles in my team purely due to word of mouth recommendations

I actually don’t understand…..won’t it only show green if I’m logged into Teams? I can go days without turning Teams on, but I’m still working. I only use Teams for meetings.

I have two computers, plus laptop. I have also used my phone to look stuff up when they're all churning through reports.

I'm not signing into Teams on three devices so somebody can live out their fantasies of being a secret police force and demand I provide evidence of actually working stuff out with pen and paper to avoid accusations of stealing from the company.

Teams opens automatically when we turn our laptops on. I don't always turn mine off after hours if I'll be WFH again the next day - I assume it shows inactive, but wouldn't show offline.

I ping messages to people on Teams, but I don't necessarily expect them to answer immediately. Even if they're showing available, they might be busy with a piece of work. If something is urgent, I'd phone.

Yes. The other person would be at fault too but most organisations would consider that a breach. We are asked to report documents we see that we shouldn't. Exercise some self control!

However much you big up his job the point is that he is subjecting the plebs to management by presenteeism in a way he does not conform to himself.

Leadership is by example, not by "do as I say, not as I do". I would expect him to have senior and middle managers who can actually do their job, not hide behind this kind of nonsense. If his management layers cannot do that he should be looking to replace them.

I find that annoying. Just because I've put a task in my calendar doesn't mean I'm not accessible on Teams. I think I can turn it to green, but then it goes back to red.

Presenteeism is a big thing with my employer. If we're seen to be "idle" on Teams we get picked up on it even if there's a perfectly good reason like the ludicrously complicated spreadsheet we're meant to use regularly takes all the computer's resources for 20 minutes at a time.

The solution is very simple, a couple of lines of Visual Basic and now my computer never goes to sleep and Teams never sees me as being away from my PC. The other benefit is I can leave my laptop running after I've knocked off for the day and I get brownie points for working late.

If your employer wants to play games, it's better to join in than fight it.

He isn’t subjecting them to anything - it’s a global corporate policy in which he has no say. Which is why ONLY two people, in a company of 87,300 employees worldwide have been suspended for not doing their contractual hours or complying with the terms of their employment contracts, which may initially have been flagged because of the IT monitoring protocols flagging it.

… and how can you assume from my post he doesn’t have senior and middle managers who can do their job? None of his team have ever been suspended because they, like him, all work hard and are loyal to their teams. He leads by example - 14hour days, responsive supportive management 24/7 as his team requires etc means he is totally permitted to work ‘off-line’ as needed and can justify it to HR should anyone think to ask. And there are no ‘plebs’ in his team as he doesn’t subscribe to that sort of bigoted labelling or denigrate any members of his team with such a small-minded perspective (FFS give yourself a shake).

You’re projecting and letting your inverted snobbery show.

@StormingNorman just hover your mouse over the persons name and it’ll pop up

Presumably your meeting times are in your Outlook calendar so if your manager needs to know where you are, all they have to do is look in your calendar and see you aren't at your computer but you are working. If you're wfh and you're on a meeting then it will show you as red ie in a meeting on MS teams.

maybe your settings are different but where I work, amber means idle/ away / not present, red is connected / engaged on an MS Teams meeting that's in my calendar because you need the link to connect in the calendar invitation.

the 2 hrs a day non-working thread was because the employee actually logged off when wfh so couldn't have been working as they'd need their computer if that was the type of work the employer was expecting them to do.

I’ll admit that I snoop and I do judge, but it’s idle nosiness on my part and something I do when I’m distracted. I know it’s ultimately not my business how other people work as long as they are getting their work done, even for the team I lead. I trust them to be getting on with it. I’m a workaholic to an extent (trying to address this), I wouldn’t want other people to be like me. We are mainly WFH.

Workplaces vary, but I’d support going on red / DND when there’s a piece of work that requires focus (we work in a very technical area). In our workplace culture, if you’re on green it means you are accepting calls.

That’s interesting @Gwenhwyfar ! I guess we all notice different things here. I often see people saying that someone shouldn’t, say, eat breakfast at their desk because they’re being paid to work during that time. Which is always funny to me because I’ve never had a job where the specific hours I work matter or where taking 5 minutes to eat a croissant would affect my productivity in any way.

I’m not particularly senior and I’m paid peanuts (creative/academic type job) but I do really appreciate the autonomy I have. My sister has what sounds more like your type of job where she needs to be at her desk at specific times and hit call targets etc and I am very grateful that’s not the case for mine.

The flipside is that there’s never a clear stopping point in my day and it’s not uncommon for my team to be whatsapping late at night if someone’s had a particular brainwave or found out something exciting, which makes it hard to put boundaries in place sometimes.

I think the school monitor crowd and knows all the office gossip due to always being on a tea break crowd overlap on a Venn diagram is near enough the same circle.

My teams had the little yellow clock as I was actually typing on it…it’s not reliable at all.

We use WebEx and I've actually been on a call with my boss and he says my status is showing as inactive. Which it can't possibly be as I'm literally online with my boss. I don't place too much accuracy on it.

What does amber actually mean? I have just started a new job using Teams (not used it before). I appear to be amber a lot of the time, but am actually working hard, doing online training etc. just not working within the Teams environment.

I put ‘admin’ tasks in my calendar to remind me not to book an appointment in that slot and to make sure I’ve actually allowed myself time to do it.

It will show me as red on teams but not ‘in a call’. My colleagues can all see my calendar and will ring me if they need to still. You can also set appointments so that you don’t show as busy I think.