Microsoft Teams Will Soon Tell Your Boss When You’re Not in the Office
The pandemic has proven that many of us can do our jobs very well outside of the office. Nonetheless, companies continue to push for workers to return to offices, whether under a hybrid arrangement or mandatory attendance five days a week. In either case, many companies are looking for ways to empower their employees: Since many of our tasks can be done anywhere with an Internet connection, if your boss isn’t monitoring you, it’s not always easy to know where you’re working from.
Perhaps your company has rolled out initiatives designed to encourage presence in the office. Maybe your boss counts your badge passes to make sure you’re meeting your weekly office quota, or you’re required to attend in-person meetings. But it is not only the companies themselves that are working on these types of measures. Even Microsoft is trying to make it harder for remote employees to continue working wherever they want.
How Teams will track where you work from
As spotted by Tom’s Guide, Microsoft Teams will roll out an update in December that will have the ability to report whether or not you’re working from your company office. The release notes are light on detail, but include the following: “When users sign in to their organization’s account [wifi]Teams will soon be able to automatically update their work location to reflect the building they are working from. This feature will be disabled by default. Tenant administrators will decide whether to enable it and ask end users to opt-in. »
The language suggests that Microsoft wants this feature to focus more on helping workers locate coworkers in large office complexes, and less on reporting employees working from home when they shouldn’t be. Fair enough: If I worked for a company with multiple buildings on campus, it would be helpful to know where the person I needed to speak to was that day.
But let’s be realistic. This feature will also be used by businesses to track their employees and ensure that they are working from where they are supposed to work. Your boss can view your Teams status at any time, and if he doesn’t report that you’re working from one of the company buildings, he’ll know you’re out of the office. No, the feature will not be enabled by default, but if your business wants it, your IT department can enable it and require you to enable it on your end as well.
As someone who has worked remotely for most of my professional career, I find return-to-office mandates generally ridiculous. I understand that there are tasks that cannot be done remotely and that aspects of others are enhanced by in-person collaboration. But if the vast majority of your work is done on an internet-connected laptop, it doesn’t make sense for you to be forced to work from a desk. It also seems demoralizing to treat employees like children, tracking their movements to ensure they perform their work from a pre-approved location. If you do your work, who cares where that work happens?
