Those who work on MS Teams - what's the etiquette around group chats?

[Visho]

I work mostly remotely with people in different offices across the UK and some based in India so meetings take place on Teams and discussion happens on Teams chats through the day.

We have various group chats for different purposes. For example, if I worked at a zoo in the polar bear enclosure, I'm in a group chat for the "polar bear" team and a group chat for all the "arctic animals" teams and a group chat for the "deadly predators" teams. Obviously other people have group chats I'm not in too.

People often complain about the number of group chats and while I do agree it's a lot, what's even more annoying is that people don't actually use them properly.

For example, one person is working on upgrading the cooling system for the arctic animals. As a member of the polar bear team she knows it works well for us but needs to make sure it wont have any unexpected negative consequences for the other animals.

She suspects the penguins particularly might have an issue with it so approaches the leader of the penguin team. After discussion they figure out some adjustments and it gets implemented. At this point nobody except this one woman form the polar bear team and one man from the penguin team have any clue what's going on.

The cooling system get set up and arctic hares turn out to be terrified of it (something the arctic hare team could have told her if she'd asked before doing it). A person from that team speaks directly to the woman who did this piece of work so that the speed can be turned down.

The next day everyone is puzzled about why it's suddenly going slower and now it's caused another problem somewhere else.

(Please, I know I'm getting my animals wrong and penguins and polar bears don't live together but I picked a zoo analogy and it's admittedly falling apart).

The point is that has she had all of her discussions in the arctic animals chat, we could all have contributed and got a cooling system that works for all of us. It would have been very quick and wouldn't require repeated changes back and forth.

I feel like almost all of my problems at work are related to not having a clue why somethings been done because it didn't directly concern me at the time so nobody bothered mentioning it.

Then a week later it's broken something I am working on, and had someone mentioned it earlier I could have told them why it would cause a problem before they did it.

This seems to be a massive part of the culture. Often I'm having a discussion in a group chat and the person starts messaging me privately on the side.

So often someone will message me asking me directly a question about polar bears or asking if a proposed change will impact our polar bears. I'm not anywhere near senior and I often wonder why they've picked me. Why can't the questions be visible for all of us in the polar bear team? Sometimes I think it will be fine but someone more experienced tells me there's an issue I didn't foresee.

So what actually happens is that I get asked and then have to check with everyone else and we all start playing this weird messenger game of passing things on which could be solved by using the group chats.

The defence is that there's too many group chats and that they don't want everyone getting bombarded with information but there's enough different group chats that it's basically always possible to only send it to the people it's actually relevant to.

I seem to be in the minority in being bothered by this. I do see people annoyed that they're not aware of what's going on but nobody who seems to want to stop the culture of only ever messaging one person privately.

I'm wondering what the etiquette is at your work place if you do use Teams and if perhaps I've just got unrealistic expectations.

It's my first job of this sort as previously I had jobs where I was working mostly alone and didn't need a constant back and forth and communication with other colleagues in this way. So I am willing to accept I'm in the wrong here.

@Visho That’s kind of you.

I could run with this analogy and did write a long post but I feel my most important message is that it is okay to let your values guide your career. If you need to survive in the meantime try to find allies in the organisation with similar values to you, then you can band together and laugh at the drama whilst doing your bit to prevent animal suffering.

However if the share price increases when animal welfare is neglected this is what will happen (is my experience). Things like bonuses and promotions are used to direct people’s behaviour in certain ways and if you refuse to let these motivators motivate you you are unlikely to get so far up the corporate greasy pole (although the arctic hares might thank you).

Good luck I do know it can be distressing when you begin to understand how it all works.

At any given moment, I might be officially linked to 20 projects. I am not actively working every project. On many of them, I am simply a senior consultant, brought in when they need my specific expertise. I am on the Teams channel for every project and thus the chat.

if people keep all the discussion in the chat, it just becomes white noise and nothing gets noticed. There is no way people can be productive and get through 100s or even 1000s of messages a day.

moving things to side discussions is critical. People need to be smart enough to loop in other staff or being issues back to the larger group once the side discussions are at the correct point.

Thank you as well everyone who said they appreciated the analogy. I'm happy to inform you that my job is nowhere near interesting enough to have me anywhere near any polar bears and therefore you can rest assured that no hares were frightened in the making of this post.

This is a fair point and I see what you mean. I guess if this was done well - people go off and iron out the details in a side conversation then report back in the appropriate group chat it would be much smoother. Instead the amount or back and forth and passing on messages means there's a lot more to catch up on than if we were to use the correct groups. I think this is more the issue than the actual private chats themselves. Thanks

Are you in a position (and have the inclination) to put forward new Ways of Working and to draw up 'rules of engagement'?

Ooh I would love to work at a Zoo, but I think you need to use slack

This to me as an email thing.

We have two types of chat

'Team chats' so eg polar bear team, predator team - these are for general day to day info sharing

Project related chats purely for testing - enabled to get a swift response if you hit a hiccup.

But all design decisions and questions should be meeting / email.

Honestly you'll figure it out. All comms on a teams chat would drive me bonkers. Who has time to read all that! You still need meeting minutes etc or some way to document decisions but it's the team lead or pm who needs to do the running.

You need a business analyst to create those requirements! A good BA is work their weight in gold

Do people at this zoo not actually talk to each other?

In my line of work we use Teams chats just for task collaboration (“right guys, we need x y and z by 9am tomorrow, let’s divide up the work. Here’s a link to the document.”).

But for managing things a level up from task based (“Here’s the plan for the week. Is everyone clear on what they are doing. Remember Sebastian is off this week”) we have a huddle/stand-up/team meeting. And people arrange to talk to each other one to one or in small groups too.

We draw a.distinction between chats and actual teams sies with channels, files etc. we might create a group chat for inconsequential stuff, small issues, etc. bigger stuff that we need a record of goes onto the official team conversation, files in folders etc and subchannels where appropriate. Don't know if that would help sort out your streams of info and help make it clear who shares what and when?

We use it the way you’ve suggested using it so can’t help sorry! Just a suggestion that it’s your organisation rather than Teams…

We have an arctic animals chat and most people use that, we have our sub chats for more niche things but any important stuff goes in the big chat. Every two weeks we meet and the polar bears can say what they have going on, the Arctic hares then update etc. any chances to work together we will set up mini working groups with a representative from each.

I love your analogy!

For reference, my organisation mostly uses Teams for filing, very little chat is the multiple teams and sub channels (IE paperwork for upcoming meeting is here).

We have an incredible number of meetings which are all necessary but it's overwhelming sometimes and I don't know when anyone actually does any work.

You’ve got me wondering about our use of Teams chats. Like most folks, we were thrown into using it after Covid and nobody has ever agreed ways of working. There are several versions of each chat because meetings have been cancelled and new ones set up, but we can’t delete the old chats.

Aside from weekly meetings I try to use channels rather than chats to convey updates and to store useful files, but only a quarter of the team (if that!) use the channel and most miss the updates because they’ve all got their notifications turned off. So I end up double posting and still stuff gets missed.

Part of me wishes for a return to the before times when you’d just email or phone people 😬

Also your analogy isn’t far from my reality 😂

This is exactly what's happening in my department currently- but we have real live monthly meetings for all concerned. And it still happens! 3 key people then just go off and make other decisions and do not tell anyone else about them for fear of being blocked.

Abandon hope...