Do people realize your boss and colleagues can see how long you’ve been offline?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any chance your colleagues think today is a holiday? (Veterans Day observed?)

Nope. It’s not a holiday for us.

Plus, this is becoming the new normal on Thursday afternoons/Fridays.

If people keep this up, I’m confident we will be dragged back into the office everyday.

People aren’t working.

If they have kids, their kids are off.

Actually, I’m off today and my kid is at school.

[Anonymous]

Relying on Teams or Slack to show when people are "working" is dumb. First off, it's easily gamed -- just log into Teams and then watch a movie and you appear to be working.

If you are worried about productivity or people abusing remote work, you need other ways of communicating and check in. Do short, weekly check ins with people on your team to discuss their ongoing projects and upcoming deadlines, and troubleshoot any issues. You can also use project management tech to be able to easily see what assignments everyone has and get a sense of availability for new projects.

Sitting around stewing about how some people haven't logged into Teams yet today and therefore must not be working is just idiotic. "Being on Teams" is not a work task.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My TEAMS will show I’m offline when I am actively working. It’s not fool proof

Also when I’m on a phone call, that’s not through Teams. Which I get a lot of.

I’d stop looking at people’s statues. Focus on responsiveness.

ICYMI: it’s not just teams. Outlook tracks when your laptop is on.

Our office ditched landlines and mobile phones. Our work phones are through our laptops.

[Anonymous]

In Zoom you can just start a new meeting with no one else in it and your computer won’t go into sleep mode and it will show you as online all day long.

Just sayin’

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Relying on Teams or Slack to show when people are "working" is dumb. First off, it's easily gamed -- just log into Teams and then watch a movie and you appear to be working.

If you are worried about productivity or people abusing remote work, you need other ways of communicating and check in. Do short, weekly check ins with people on your team to discuss their ongoing projects and upcoming deadlines, and troubleshoot any issues. You can also use project management tech to be able to easily see what assignments everyone has and get a sense of availability for new projects.

Sitting around stewing about how some people haven't logged into Teams yet today and therefore must not be working is just idiotic. "Being on Teams" is not a work task.

For the umpteenth time: it’s not just teams or slack.

Outlook tracks when your computer is turned on and you are logged in, and your boss and colleagues can see this.

If you shut off your computer at 2pm Thursday and don’t bother to log in on Friday until noon, people will notice.

I’m not talking about teams (although it should go on when you log into your computer generally). I’m saying your online presence is visible simply by turning on your computer and logging in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well you’re “online,” but you’re on DCUM. So there’s that.

A huge part of my work is writing. I deliberately stay off of email/Slack, etc., during focus time.

Touché.

But I average 10 hour days and often get pulled into meetings late at night and weekends.

Seeing worker bees offline for significant chunks of the day is problematic.

I look like I am online right now and I am out to lunch. Are you sure you know exactly what people are up to?

If you emailed a time sensitive request to someone and didn’t get a response in a timely manner and noticed they’d been offline since yesterday afternoon, what would you think?

Have you been online at all today? Presumably so. NBD.

I get work email on my mobile so I look incredibly responsive while I grocery shop.

Point is, for most of what you are complaining about, you really can’t know iff someone is or isn’t working.

So let it go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In Zoom you can just start a new meeting with no one else in it and your computer won’t go into sleep mode and it will show you as online all day long.

Just sayin’

We engaged IT to look into a person who was suspected of doing that…and he’s no longer with us. IT can run zoom reports.

[Anonymous]

90% of my work is done on a non-network "offline" computer. I'm only online on my networked computer when I have to email the work I did on the offline computer. I can't get work done if I'm checking emails constantly. Projects sometimes need hours of uninterrupted focus to be done well. This can be challenging in the office with people stopping by to talk every half hour. And I'm usually tackling multiple projects a day like that. So when I telework, I'm knocking out all the projects I could've done on my in-office days but had to be cordial and waste 20 minutes here discussing my boss's sister's dog and 20 there discussing colleague's new car. If my boss sees that I'm offline, he doesn't say anything bc the clients rave about my work that was done on time despite countless interruptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relying on Teams or Slack to show when people are "working" is dumb. First off, it's easily gamed -- just log into Teams and then watch a movie and you appear to be working.

If you are worried about productivity or people abusing remote work, you need other ways of communicating and check in. Do short, weekly check ins with people on your team to discuss their ongoing projects and upcoming deadlines, and troubleshoot any issues. You can also use project management tech to be able to easily see what assignments everyone has and get a sense of availability for new projects.

Sitting around stewing about how some people haven't logged into Teams yet today and therefore must not be working is just idiotic. "Being on Teams" is not a work task.

For the umpteenth time: it’s not just teams or slack.

Outlook tracks when your computer is turned on and you are logged in, and your boss and colleagues can see this.

If you shut off your computer at 2pm Thursday and don’t bother to log in on Friday until noon, people will notice.

I’m not talking about teams (although it should go on when you log into your computer generally). I’m saying your online presence is visible simply by turning on your computer and logging in.

My two computers are always on and I am always logged in. Doesn’t mean I am there working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well you’re “online,” but you’re on DCUM. So there’s that.

A huge part of my work is writing. I deliberately stay off of email/Slack, etc., during focus time.

Touché.

But I average 10 hour days and often get pulled into meetings late at night and weekends.

Seeing worker bees offline for significant chunks of the day is problematic.

I look like I am online right now and I am out to lunch. Are you sure you know exactly what people are up to?

If you emailed a time sensitive request to someone and didn’t get a response in a timely manner and noticed they’d been offline since yesterday afternoon, what would you think?

Have you been online at all today? Presumably so. NBD.

I get work email on my mobile so I look incredibly responsive while I grocery shop.

Point is, for most of what you are complaining about, you really can’t know iff someone is or isn’t working.

So let it go.

+1. I'm remembering how many emails I answered while watching a Disney movie with my kid in March 2020 versus how many times I've looked offline because I was reading a 1000 pages I printed out to review. I'm a manager and I look to see if people get their work done; that's it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relying on Teams or Slack to show when people are "working" is dumb. First off, it's easily gamed -- just log into Teams and then watch a movie and you appear to be working.

If you are worried about productivity or people abusing remote work, you need other ways of communicating and check in. Do short, weekly check ins with people on your team to discuss their ongoing projects and upcoming deadlines, and troubleshoot any issues. You can also use project management tech to be able to easily see what assignments everyone has and get a sense of availability for new projects.

Sitting around stewing about how some people haven't logged into Teams yet today and therefore must not be working is just idiotic. "Being on Teams" is not a work task.

For the umpteenth time: it’s not just teams or slack.

Outlook tracks when your computer is turned on and you are logged in, and your boss and colleagues can see this.

If you shut off your computer at 2pm Thursday and don’t bother to log in on Friday until noon, people will notice.

I’m not talking about teams (although it should go on when you log into your computer generally). I’m saying your online presence is visible simply by turning on your computer and logging in.

Where I work, that could be because the person is in meetings or on TDY or something. It’s none of my business, my boss knows my work gets done.

[Anonymous]

Do you have core hours? At my agency I have a lot of flexibility as to when I get my 80 hours per pay period done. Sometimes I work longer days and then a shorter Friday at the end of the week. You also have no idea who is actually putting in for leave, flexing, making up work at night, etc. I assume your job doesn’t involve looking at time sheets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relying on Teams or Slack to show when people are "working" is dumb. First off, it's easily gamed -- just log into Teams and then watch a movie and you appear to be working.

If you are worried about productivity or people abusing remote work, you need other ways of communicating and check in. Do short, weekly check ins with people on your team to discuss their ongoing projects and upcoming deadlines, and troubleshoot any issues. You can also use project management tech to be able to easily see what assignments everyone has and get a sense of availability for new projects.

Sitting around stewing about how some people haven't logged into Teams yet today and therefore must not be working is just idiotic. "Being on Teams" is not a work task.

For the umpteenth time: it’s not just teams or slack.

Outlook tracks when your computer is turned on and you are logged in, and your boss and colleagues can see this.

If you shut off your computer at 2pm Thursday and don’t bother to log in on Friday until noon, people will notice.

I’m not talking about teams (although it should go on when you log into your computer generally). I’m saying your online presence is visible simply by turning on your computer and logging in.

My two computers are always on and I am always logged in. Doesn’t mean I am there working.

This. I almost never power down my computer. Even when I'm moving between home and office -- I usually just put it to sleep, and it will log onto internet once it's in a wireless signal it recognizes.

Also, when people work remotely, they might work somewhere where their computer is not connected to internet. I do this often because when I work remotely, I like to work from the library, a coffee shop, or when the weather is nice, a park. I use my phone to check email via a browser (which does not report my online/offline status because I'm not logged into my computer, just browser-based email) and then use my computer to do off-line work.

[Anonymous]

Where do you even see this on outlook? I hate teams so only keep it open if I’m on a teams meeting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well you’re “online,” but you’re on DCUM. So there’s that.

A huge part of my work is writing. I deliberately stay off of email/Slack, etc., during focus time.

Same. I create reports based on data sets and a huge portion of my day is spent analyzing data in spreadsheets and creating charts and analysis from them. It can all happen offline, and I take advantage of this to work in places where I don't have internet access so that I can work uninterrupted for hours at a time.

Like this morning I checked email at 8am, but then went to a coffee shop (and kept my computer offline) to get some work done. I only just logged on again to check email and take a "brain break" by visiting DCUM. But if OP is one of my colleagues, they probably think I took a 3 hour nap this morning and am only just now getting to work, when the opposite is true.

I find it very hard to do my work while getting pinged constantly on email or Slack. I need deep focus, which means minimizing interruptions.

This exactly. I'm glad my employer measures me more on productivity / deliverables met than how long I'm showing signed into garbage like Slack (where people use it for synchronous communication, no less).