Our hours are 8 to 5 so my team really needs to be on by 8:30. Having said that, they know I am an early person. I have one very good person on my time who hits her stride in the afternoon and never stops at 5 because she's getting things done. With a small team of 5, I don't use technology to monitor productivity.

I log on between 8 and 9. I don’t care if someone sends me a teams message before these hours and don’t feel bad about not responding until I am available, unless of course I was explicitly told to be available at a certain time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

I’m not interested in booking a meeting with admins.

This seems off. Our administration staff is among the busiest. A good admin is worth their weight in gold.

Um…obviously.

But what about the admin who appears to be offline all the time?

They probably set the team status to “Appear offline”. I know several people do this to avoid worrying about their status turning to yellow when they are reading a printed out document, going to bathroom, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

I’m not interested in booking a meeting with admins.

This seems off. Our administration staff is among the busiest. A good admin is worth their weight in gold.

Um…obviously.

But what about the admin who appears to be offline all the time?

Stop by their desk or send an email? Who cares? If you are managing this person you should know something about their productivity levels without checking their status. If you don’t, that’s a you problem. Maybe you need to start engaging with them more, or if you don’t think their position is useful, you can eliminate it. Either way, monitoring them passively is a waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

I’m not interested in booking a meeting with admins.

This seems off. Our administration staff is among the busiest. A good admin is worth their weight in gold.

Um…obviously.

But what about the admin who appears to be offline all the time?

RTO. Problem solved. Stop by their office.

Anonymous wrote:What time do you expect to see green dots in Outlook/Teams each morning during the work week?

At what point do you start to wonder about someone’s productivity?

At what point do you get frustrated?

For some jobs I will concede that this is genuinely important. Like lots of back and forth, touching base, that kind of thing. If so, just call or message no matter what color the dot is. If they're available like they should be, it will ding through on their phone, etc. If it takes them two hours to get back in (what is supposed to be) a high speed collaborative environment, then you have their answer.

"Your dot was yellow so I couldn't call you or message you" is not true. Go ahead and call or message and see what you get. That's what I do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

I’m not interested in booking a meeting with admins.

This seems off. Our administration staff is among the busiest. A good admin is worth their weight in gold.

It seems kind of petty to be checking those dots for your staff. I don't watch them for my team. They're productive and get their tasks done, usually early.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

I’m not interested in booking a meeting with admins.

I don’t look at dots. I look at the person’s calendar and book a meeting request when they are free.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The green dot means nothing

+1

Who is paying attention to this? If you need someone, send them a message. If they don't respond in a reasonable amount of time, and that happens regularly, then THAT'S your problem. Not the stupid dot.

But what is the reasonable time to start work on a Friday morning?

Is it offensive to send someone a teams chat at 8:30? If the green light is on, game on! If not, how long must you wait…if at all?

The reasonable time to start is the time that you are supposed to start. I don’t look at dots. I send a message ant 8:30 asking if the other person has time to chat today. Whenever they respond, I act accordingly.

Illusion

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The green dot means nothing

Well, the indicator that you are offline and have been away for hours/days isn’t a good look.

It similarly looks bad when you don’t answer calls and can’t hop on Teams when everyone else is joining an impromptu meeting.

Do you have another job or are you just screwing around instead of working?

It is an unreliable indicator. Anyone operating under the dilution it is reliable is a fool.

I’ve turned mine off intentionally because I need to control who has access to my time and schedule. If I’m unavailable, I will put an OOO message up. People can do the grown up thing and reach out if they want to talk to me.

I literally never check Teams status for my staff. I know if they’re working or not, and if I have doubts, there are MUCH better ways to get to the bottom of that.