Pulled up on my teams light

[outlanderish]

I work from home full time with occasional travel. My employer allows either a half hour or one hour lunch break, based on personal choice. I typically don’t take a formal break instead, I take brief pauses throughout the day (e.g. five minutes here and there to make a coffee, play with my dog, or put a load of laundry on), while otherwise remaining at my desk and working.

Recently, my manager called me to ask why I appear “orange” (away) a lot during the day. I explained that I take small, informal breaks rather than a long formal one. She told me this was unacceptable, even though my approach has not negatively impacted my productivity. In fact, I’m often more efficient this way. I also need to get up regularly as it hurts my back sitting for a long period of time

Other colleagues especially smokers also step away from their desks regularly, but it seems to be accepted for them.

It's harder as a manager to keep track or monitor short breaks.

Do you see yourself staying long term at this company? Because if I’d had a conversation like that then personally I would be looking to move on. That level of micro managements just isn’t normal.

Next time she asks why your teams is on yellow (and there will be one!) tell her you were having a poo haha

Join a teams call with just yourself and it looks like you are busy on a call while you are away from the screen. Obviously your manager could check your diary but this could be someone calling to ask a question, vice versa etc.

I work from office and as a smoker had small breaks instead of one long one but a while ago was told that by law I have to have a 20 minute lunchbreak.

Your manager sounds like a nightmare. Personally I’d really struggle to work somewhere with such a micro managing culture.

At every organisation I’ve worked at, people are regularly away from their desks for meetings, catch-ups and workshops, so it would make no sense to monitor teams statuses.

It may be that your manager has taken it upon herself to follow this approach. In which case, I’d contact HR.

My Teams is either logged out or set to busy all day. So your manager would hate me 🤣🤣

Unless I have a call scheduled in on Teams that I’m required to attend, then if people need me they can call my work mobile.

Not everything has to be on bloody Teams!

I have a good manager though who trusts us and judges us on our performance and output and doesn’t micro manage. And who also isn’t bothered if we go put some washing on, take a break from the computer, pop out for 10 minutes to run an errand etc. As long as we’re performing well, getting our work done, and hitting any deadlines, that’s all that matters.

He knows most of us often work longer hours WFH, so he doesn’t sweat the small stuff and expects us to take a bit of time back here and there when we need to.

people aren’t chained to their desks when they are in the office either.

I have watched people waste more time in an office than I thought ever possible.

Years ago when I was office based, I used to work with someone who would arrive at least 15 minutes late for work every day, turn her laptop on, make herself a coffee then wander around the office chatting for half an hour. Another one would watch films on her phone then disappear for a 90 minute lunch break on a regular basis. Neither of them ever did their contracted hours so it isn’t just people who wfh that take the piss.

Get a standing desk, if you can't sit for long periods stand every 20 mins that's what I do but I don't do my washing, play with the dog , feed the cat, you're getting payed to work and your breaks are allocated. This behaviour is why employers want people to return to the office full time.

I'm getting paid to work a certain number of hours across the week. No one in my company cares whether that is 9-5 every day, solidly, or looks different.

I have meetings to attend and deadlines to meet. I have referrals to respond to. But as long as that's done, if I need to log off early and log back on to finish reviewing papers or put together a slideshow, that's fine. My time is mine to manage.

This would be the same whether I was at home or in the office. If I go into the office but leave at 2 so I can walk the dog and pick up DD then log back on later, absolutely fine as long as no essential meeting is missed. And if an emergency comes up or something, I can be called and I'll get myself to my laptop ASAP. No different to if I were in a meeting and they had to wait for me to be out.

Depends very much on your role, company, management and you as a person I think.

"No one in my company cares if thats 9-5 every day solidly, or if that looks different" I wounder why op is getting pulled up about her breaks? Oh yeah because it's not the same in every job, not every employer wants their staff to disappear when it suits them. And judging by the number of recommendations for a mouse jiggler and "team meetings with self" it looks like there are plenty of skivers around.

Maybe try reading my post properly before attacking me. Last line:

Depends very much on your role, company, management and you as a person I think.

Agree, I think you as a person is the biggest factor. Everywhere I've ever worked, we all knew who were the smart ones, who were the lazy ones etc. All the skivers on here won't be fooling anyone, they usually get away with it because the managers are also equally useless 🫤

So out of interest, what's happened? do you get smoke breaks on top of the 20-minute one?

I’m a manager and I don’t have the time to monitor people. They are adults who are capable and trusted to do their job.

If there was issues this would be addressed through 121 and we also have weekly stand ups as a team just to check in around workload etc

I hate the team away status - I could be on a call or reading material. If I’m in the office I could be in a meeting f2f!

That doesn't mean there are plenty of skivers around. Micro management is usually unnecessary.

No it’s not, I agree. But it’s easier to see the skivers in the office.

No, they aren’t, but it’s easier to see the skivers in the office.

In my opinion the way to see the skivers is to look at productivity etc, whether in the office or not. I would say most adults are keen to do a good job regardless of whether they are at home or not. The ones that aren’t will do so regardless of the setting, and the proof will show in their work.

Yes, I can still have my short breaks but have to add 20 mins on my day to allow for unpaid lunch break.

Depends on the job. Obviously. In my last job, part of it was answering lots of calls from the public. Calls answered were counted as a whole by dept. Not by individual. But in the office you could see the people who wandered around chatting, had numerous visits to the cafe for coffee etc so I knew who was skiving and could ask them to answer the calls for a morning.

"Usually "

Put a teams meeting in your diary, join meeting and your status will be red saying in a call. Change status to green. Go and play with the dog etc and the status will stay green however long you are away!

One3C you may not need micro managed but some do....