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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having been both a "worker bee" and a "manager," there's a disconnect here that I think is really common.

When you are a manager, you think of "work" as being available. Work is sending and receiving emails, attending meetings, talking to people on the phone, etc. You may have some head-down work when you write reports, but the vast majority of your day is spent on communication, trouble-shooting, and delegation.

A lot of worker bees have the opposite workload. The vast majority of their work time is creating actual work product -- writing, data entry, editing/reviewing, etc. Work like this requires chunks of time where you are NOT looking at email or talking to people. Those things can get in the way, or can significantly slow you down. A worker bee who is on Teams or Slack all day long is likely neglecting their work, chatting with colleagues or procrastinating.

When I manage teams of people, I encourage them to identify chunks of their day for dedicated time to create work product, and to put these times as "unavailable" on their calendars to protect them from meeting requests. I schedule team meetings in a way that accommodates having "head down" time to get work done, and I check in with people when I see deadlines aren't being met or quality of work is not up to par, to see if the issue may be insufficient time to work.

When I was a worker bee, it was very common for me to take my actual work home with me at night and on the weekend, because my days were so filled with meetings, admin, colleagues and managers dropping by to chat, getting pulled into someone else's projects for a time, etc. I eventually wised up and realized that I needed to prioritize my actual work, which meant shutting my door more often, telling people I was busy, marking time as unavailable on my outlook, and staying of internal comms for chunks of the day.

See, OP, you can learn from this poster.

I thought your original post was terribly ignorant of our work reality. PP explained it nicely, but come on. You should know this already.

[Anonymous]

Can they work without logging in to Teams and Outlook?

I can. I'm supposed to be logged in to 5 different systems. But I can get all of my work done in just two. Outlook and Teams aren't necessary for me to work.

Also, aren't people expected to just... perform? If I'm doing nothing, it would be very apparent by the end of the month, even the week.

I believe you that SOME people who have no accountability will slack off. I am just surprised there's no way for your company or agency to say, for example, woah you work 40 hours a week and only have two items logged on the WENUS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having been both a "worker bee" and a "manager," there's a disconnect here that I think is really common.

When you are a manager, you think of "work" as being available. Work is sending and receiving emails, attending meetings, talking to people on the phone, etc. You may have some head-down work when you write reports, but the vast majority of your day is spent on communication, trouble-shooting, and delegation.

A lot of worker bees have the opposite workload. The vast majority of their work time is creating actual work product -- writing, data entry, editing/reviewing, etc. Work like this requires chunks of time where you are NOT looking at email or talking to people. Those things can get in the way, or can significantly slow you down. A worker bee who is on Teams or Slack all day long is likely neglecting their work, chatting with colleagues or procrastinating.

When I manage teams of people, I encourage them to identify chunks of their day for dedicated time to create work product, and to put these times as "unavailable" on their calendars to protect them from meeting requests. I schedule team meetings in a way that accommodates having "head down" time to get work done, and I check in with people when I see deadlines aren't being met or quality of work is not up to par, to see if the issue may be insufficient time to work.

When I was a worker bee, it was very common for me to take my actual work home with me at night and on the weekend, because my days were so filled with meetings, admin, colleagues and managers dropping by to chat, getting pulled into someone else's projects for a time, etc. I eventually wised up and realized that I needed to prioritize my actual work, which meant shutting my door more often, telling people I was busy, marking time as unavailable on my outlook, and staying of internal comms for chunks of the day.

This is fantastic. You totally know what's what.

I refer to myself as a worker bee. I love my job. My supervisor and her supervisor are really great and I think they would have us do this if they could. But their bosses and on up the chain want to track our time, especially since working from home became the norm. I'm part of a work group that is discussing a new work flow system, and I battle constantly against the idea that tracking our every move contradicts our goal to get sh&t done.

The disconnect you speak of is huge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course I realize that. It's why I have a mouse mover.

And people like this are why their colleagues will be dragged back into the office.

[Anonymous]

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.

Well then stop looking. Problem solved.

Found the lazy (non)worker!

[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.

So?

[Anonymous]

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.

You choosing to average 10 hours a day is your own stupidity. I don’t get “pulled into” meetings unless it is with the highest level of people because I’m not a dimwit who cannot manage my own time.

No one is impressed by your addiction to work, which shows what you lack more than it shows any good qualities you may have. Do better.

Hi, lazy non-worker!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Umm...not everyone uses Outlook. Not sure why anyone would, actually. There are much better mail clients.

Some people use multiple computers and only run their mail client and/or Teams and/or Slack on one of them.

Some people do a substantial amount of work that does not require using a computer. Phone calls, filing, etc.

In short, this "status" information is effectively useless at determining whether or not people are actually working. So, it is best ignored.

I do tend to think that the people who push hardest for work-at-home tend to be less productive, but their productivity should be measured by actual work output, not by online/offline status indicators. If availability is important to the job, then that should be measured by actual availability and responsiveness.

Some people are just clueless about technology, I guess.

Umm, the people in OP’s company do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s Friday morning, nearly 11am, and the majority of my colleagues have been offline for upwards of 15 to 24 hours. I can see this in outlook and teams.

Does everyone realize this info is available?

Does anyone care?

I’m tempted to schedule Thursday afternoon and Friday morning meetings just to make sure people are working some hours.

Quite the middle management mindset you have.

Does the work get completed or naw? are the deliverables good quality?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Umm...not everyone uses Outlook. Not sure why anyone would, actually. There are much better mail clients.

Some people use multiple computers and only run their mail client and/or Teams and/or Slack on one of them.

Some people do a substantial amount of work that does not require using a computer. Phone calls, filing, etc.

In short, this "status" information is effectively useless at determining whether or not people are actually working. So, it is best ignored.

I do tend to think that the people who push hardest for work-at-home tend to be less productive, but their productivity should be measured by actual work output, not by online/offline status indicators. If availability is important to the job, then that should be measured by actual availability and responsiveness.

Some people are just clueless about technology, I guess.

Umm, the people in OP’s company do.

Then perhaps OP should have sent an internal blast email rather than posting on a public internet forum.

[Anonymous]

I read a lot offline. Lawyer. Like seriously, if anyone wants to know what I do all week I’m happy to send them the thousands of pages of text I need to get through every month.

[Anonymous]

They don’t care. They are napping, watching Netflix, shopping, etc. As long as they get the paycheck, they don’t gives a fcuk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does assigned work get done? If yes, then this bullshit about Teams showing away is meaningless. If no, then address the actual behavior - not getting work done. Your fixation on whether Teams or Outlook is showing someone as present or away is indicative of your inability to manage and lead workers. It's a crutch for your inability to measure the actual work being done (ie, deliverables being timely and of expected quality) and an inability to focus on the actual problems. Learn to do your job well or go back to being an individual contributor.

This is a little simplistic. I have a couple of employees who are not getting work done in anything like a reasonable amount of time. It really does make a difference (at least in the short term) if they are just not working, or if they are working inefficiently. I am trying to figure out how it is taking them so long to do simple tasks but right now I am wasting a ton of my own time giving them additional support and training. If the truth is that rhet are sleeping in and gojng to the movies, I’d be pretty pissed. It does seem like this is an increasing problem — I don’t know if it’s due to remote work or because the younger employees grew up in an educational culture with soft deadlines and lower expectations.

How old are these employees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s Friday morning, nearly 11am, and the majority of my colleagues have been offline for upwards of 15 to 24 hours. I can see this in outlook and teams.

Does everyone realize this info is available?

Does anyone care?

I’m tempted to schedule Thursday afternoon and Friday morning meetings just to make sure people are working some hours.

Do you not have SMART goals to measure performance? Why do you feel the need to babysit adults? I think if you set reasonable goals and folks meet them there is no problem. I'd the goals are too easy set harder ones. If everyone is on track, the problem is called micromanaging.

[Anonymous]

The ones that are online have YouTube streaming so they can watch talk shows on the couch and the little green light is still on. They know all the tricks!