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 will be becuase there are other concerns a out your work rate. No one cares if you make a cup of tea 14 times a day, if the works getting done. MNetting during the working day, in addition to multiple "short" breaks will show.

It might be helpful to know what sort of work you do to figure out how unreasonable your boss may or may not be.

In my team, we would only comment on someone's Teams light if there was another performance issue and/or the person was routinely hard to contact/unresponsive to emails and calls. If things were otherwise well, no one would generally notice.

It's possible this is some sort of excuse - i.e. they can't think of a more mature and direct way to raise performance issue with you.

On Teams when you hover over someone’s away status, it does give a ‘last seen 37 minutes ago’ time message.

I have a colleague who is visibly away for 1/2 hour stretches. I’m aware of it, but it’s not really any of my business. It may be if I was her managers, but I’m not.

Are you delivering well regarding workload?

Ultimately I see home working as a big perk, and it doesn’t bother me to be available for the majority of the working day. I don’t feel like I need to give my employer a reason to be displeased with my performance.

This thread is so depressing. Cannot believe the nonsense that is the modern office workplace.

The idea that someone managing professionals is monitoring bloody teams lights or anything like that is utterly ludicrous. That is not management - I don’t even know what I would call it. An absolute waste of time and money.

Productivity and quality are not measured by time spent, but by output.

No wonder there is a mental health crisis, people aren’t meant to live like this.

Sweet lord - The other day i was on site for an all day meeting, yes i was physically in the room but even though my meeting was in my calendar my teams often went orange, Does this mean i wasnt working ? No it doesnt, also often have been at my desk and a colleague comes over and talks to me my teams goes orange too. When at home if taking time to read something or on my work mobile, it also goes orange. Unless your work is lacking and manager are not getting responses then this screams micro management. You should not be chained to your desk 24/7. Lord we even have training there a few weeks ao to manage emails and the tip was only to look at your emails three times a day if your work dependent on it - Teams is not a way to monitor people

I would assume the breaks are longer than five minutes and that’s why it’s flagged up. I would be careful, as you might find they will call you back to the office.

I agree it's a sad state of affairs. But I think if companies focused more on output, deadlines and performance rather than mechanical bums on seats, mouse clicking measures, which betray a lack of trust in employees and treat them like wayward children, they can only expect these sorts of workarounds.

I have a friend whose company has a ridiculous system where the laptop screens switch off to lock screen every 30 seconds. So if you turn away from your PC to make a call, or even if you're reading a document without moving the mouse, the screen locks and you have to input your password to log in again. It's madness. They say it's for security but to me it's just a way to control their staff. My friend is so demoralised by it. And it's such a disruption to one's workflow, too.

Are you adding up the time? It seems a bit odd that your manager has managed to notice you are away a lot unless they are a micro manager it's pretty unlucky that anytime they check you are frequently away especially as everyone presumably is at various times for toilet breaks etc

@scotstars I’d bet that the manager has set that her direct reports status changes come through as a notification, so she may not be looking at it but being notified each time it happens.

If your manager is noticing it enough to comment, I would think either you are away far too much or your manager doesn't have enough work to do.

But then, if all your work is getting done when it should do, does it matter?

I think it's a legal requirement you have a full 20 minutes break in one go if working more than 6 hours rather than have it if you fancy or split it up throughout the day?

And you lot with your mouse jigglers, really? And people wonder why WFHomers get called lazy!

Not using the new version of Teams right now but a thing that used to work was blocking out time to work on a task (e.g. "write annual report") as a meeting with yourself, then your status will go red/DnD instead of orange. Does that still work?

Also a counter-intuitive thing I recommend is manually setting it to away at a time when you are in regular communication with your boss to undermine Teams' credibility!

Or just tell your boss that you print stuff off and work offline.

Whole thing is totally ridiculous, and I say that as a digital native millennial who is generally pro-tech, with 10+ years line management experience.

It still goes orange if you're away

My Teams goes on to 'Away' when I am active on the PC in particular programmes, although I'm very much there, so they'd have a field day with me.

Take up smoking

Well...not really...but I understand your frustration that others can have smoking breaks

Indeed, but teams as a default doesn't switch to orange/away for 5 minutes, so no one is likely to know which suggests OP is taking longer.

This. They can be detected.

I need this app! Thanks for recommending. What kind of movement do you do for the 5 minutes? Chores or walking on the spot ir something? I'm not sure what I'd do.

Also I'm sorry that your health was so badly affected, but I'm glad you are doing better now.

I find it really disturbing how many companies and people here think it's ok to make workers chained to their desks at the expense of their health and wellbeing.

Default Teams takes 5 minutes to show you as away (though worth checking if your company has set something different). That's enough to go to the loo/put on washing/make a cup of tea. Or get up and stretch.

If your manager has flagged it I suspect that you are taking a lot more breaks, and for longer, than you think you are. She might be monitoring you closely, or she might just be finding that every time she wants to talk to you, you are "away".

I would suggest keeping your own log of every break. This will either give you evidence to prove that your breaks or not excessive, or make you realise that, actually you are taking more thank you think you are.

I never get the "I'm still productive" reason. Unless you have fixed tasks to do in the day, you will generally "produce" more if you (e.g. ) work for 7 hours a day than if you work 5 hours a day.

You've committed to an answer now by being honest about your 5 minute breaks, so most of the options posters are mentioning are no longer open to you unless you want to look uncooperative to your boss, no matter how unreasonable she is.
If you can't set the time that the status turns from green yourself, you'll have to use a timer to ensure you aren't away for longer than 5 minutes for a while, until you are off her radar.

Who is suggesting people are chained to their desks? There is a difference between taking a break every so often to stretch your legs/go to the toilet etc and claiming to stagger your breaks through the day instead of taking a lunch yet appearing away a lot of using a mouse jiggler as some suggest. It's not unreasonable for people to be working during the work day.

this x 100000... what am I reading?

It's the thing that employers are well aware of, many now have detectors anyway, but even if they don't they can have IT install activity monitors when they suspect certain people (who may have been pulled up before, for example), and they get you dismissed for gross misconduct. My last employer sacked about five people a week for a month - it concentrated people's minds on not assuming employers are stupid.

Ridiculous and draconian. I never even look at my team’s status on teams.

Open a word doc, stick a large paper clip in keyboard to the right of the page down key.