I couldn’t take it and I quit.

I’m a physician in a non-patient facing speciality, and joined a new group that - seriously - had communications via Teams, email (which all went out to all 19 of us because the admin couldn’t be bothered to figure out which doctor was taking care of a specific patient) , text, pager, land-line phones, and epic chat.

It was just all binging and beeping and interruptions all day long.

And the administrators would freak out and file a complaint that you were “not respecting” their time if you didn’t answer all of their dumb messages within 1 hour.

I could get no work done until after 5, and was doing most of my work 5-10 PM. But then the oncologists would yell that their patients were finding out on MyChart that they had a mass at 9:30 PM because I released a case, and told us to only release cases 9-4:30. But I was too busy reading/investigating/responding to the 200+ messages I got every day to work during normal hours.

It was insane.
I quit for a position as a director of a group. When I got there I told them no Teams - if you want to chat for fun, feel free to text each other cute dog/park/kid pics, but not on my freaking work channel. If there is an interesting study or paper, use our weekly group meeting to bring it up.
We also have an auto-reply up when we are on a busy service that says we may not respond in a timely fashion. If it’s an emergency then we get a phone call/page - after the admin figures out the correct doctor to call - none of this garbage where 12 of us are pestered and interrupted because of one study that needs to be rushed.

So, sorry - no advice other than quit & become the boss and set new rules.
And I swear that Teams is a plague on our society. That noise it makes to alert you of an incoming message now actually makes my heart rate go up!

For your reports you can dictate how you want to receive comms.

For your supervisors, look at what’s taking up your time and see if you can delegate better.

I just change windows so that Teams does not automatically start on login. When I turn it on for meetings, I may see some chat messages that went unanswered, but it never seems to impact my or the senders productivity, which reveals the uselessness of the whole concept. People email me when they expect a response / deliverable.

I hate Teams. It doesn’t actually make a noise when I get a new one (which is good because on meetings I am “required” for, I get every message whether or not I attend; it’s awful). I feel old, but I massively prefer email. I hate how people feel free to not provide full context on Teams and don’t actually think about how they frame issues. I think people are naturally much better at framing emails for all-at-once digestion, which is what I want in 90% of cases. I guess I ultimately do prefer Teams to phone calls, because I absolutely will not answer cold calls at this point in my work life. (I’m a supervisory lawyer at an agency and 90% of the questions I get should not actually be directed to me.)

I'm the manager, and I just don't check it all the time. My team knows that I'll check it occasionally but I'm not focused on Teams all day and they're mostly likely not going to get an immediate response. Exception for meetings, I make sure it's up during meetings in case someone wants to highlight something for me or doesn't feel comfortable speaking up.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I use teams and really prefer it to emailing back and forth for quick communications. If it’s complicated and difficult to understand the details of over text then I’d prefer a conversation.

Oh I should also add I do mute chats that I don’t need to respond to/that have lots of chatter I’m not involved in. I pin the chats from direct reports and sups and respond to them as they come in

Interesting. I use teams and really prefer it to emailing back and forth for quick communications. If it’s complicated and difficult to understand the details of over text then I’d prefer a conversation.

Anonymous wrote:I recently started a new role, and one of the ways that the team communicates is through a Teams group chat all day. I find it terribly distracting and hard to keep up with.

Additionally, it's not an effective way of communicating pertinent information because it could easily go unnoticed due to the volume. To me, it's the equivalent of coworkers talking all day, which would not ordinarily be acceptable even if it were work-related chatter.

That is the point of weekly meetings-- to discuss priority matters. If we are going to be on group chat all day, why bother with meetings?

Why not mute the chat? Check it deliberately when you have time for it. This is the same as getting annoyed by your inbox pinging you- just turn off the notification!!

How did you make manager at a consulting firm if you’re burned out from Teams messages?