What Your Boss Can Track About You with Microsoft Teams

Ever wondered if your digital workspace is watching you? If you're using Microsoft Teams at work, it might be. From your meeting attendance to your app usage, this powerful collaboration tool isn't just connecting teams—it's also tracking a significant amount of data about users.

Understanding what’s being monitored and why is crucial for protecting your privacy and ensuring your work aligns with company expectations. Let's break down exactly what your boss or administrator can track about you on Microsoft Teams.

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[Russel_Brand_Official_Youtube]

The days I forget to open teams are the most productive

[todhold]

I'm in the IT department. Yes. Teams tracks all this and managers can see this. However, most managers don't even know Teams does all this and probably don't care. I've been working IT since it was created and I've never had anyone ask me for any of this information or what someone sends in teams.

[danielames]

My rule has always been: if you want to say something that you don't want getting out, DO NOT put it in writing. Ever.

[bipolarbear-N]

I can just imagine how wonderful it must be to work for a company that engages in this kind of employee monitoring. The people that have to rely on this to determine the performance of an employee should be the first to be fired.

[MVIVN]

I genuinely feel bad for people who work in places where they’re constantly being tracked, monitored, micromanaged and performance-evaluated. I’m so grateful to work at a very chill tech company where no one really cares what you’re doing as long as you’re getting all your work done on time.

[jesusdaniel]

It’s incredible that teams has invested time to do track all this things instead of actually fixing teams which honestly works very bad

[AngelTeaWitch]

Hot take but employee engagement should be based on whether or not you respond to emails and get work done that is requested by you... not whether or not you do the clapping reaction in meetings or not.

[Replicant]

I’m a manager with 13 people reporting to me. We use teams for everything. I DO NOT give an F to look at anyone’s activity on teams. If I’m tracking people’s activity on teams, that means I don’t have enough to do with my day and that never happens.

[EbenezerYiadom]

Just assume everything is being watched at the work place! ❤

[scottxiong]

I totally agree. I've notice many features of Teams that make it clear that Teams is now a tool for more than communication within one's organization. It's now a tool to micro-manage/surveillance a organization's employees. I think it's a great tool to see where one's organization can find possibilities for efficiency. However, the essence of the tool is far beyond that in nature. This at the end of the day just builds distrust within the organization.

[sa]

It's amazing how many companies trust Microsoft with their data.

[kevinperez]

Don’t worry about conversations. Worry about results. I could care less if employees have conversations about dogs, tik tok, or any number of non work related things as long goals are met. If goals are met, then you literally should not care.

[a]

Very large Australia company tried to say employees were slacking off. Ironically the word Slack because Slack was also in use along with Atlassian stack and other developer tools, yep, 90% of their work was outside of the Microsoft ecosystem but it didn’t stop Senior management disbanding a whole team.
Those jobs are now available for contract at $1400 to $2000 per day as the panic sets it.

[Totomuncher]

I work as a systems administrator. Trust me we have better things to do than monitor your team activities!

[MrXeroliphe]

20 year infosec vet here, currently my shop is full M$, full M$ security stack, I can tell you we can see 100% of what you put in teams, and do not care. Unless its our job to monitor none of us have time to care what you do in teams.

[dadlord]

As a software engineer I still don't really understand what manager is for apart from wasting my time imposing management shit. The level of distrust is just getting higher and higher and it just makes me instead of liking my jobe - feel like a failure.

[onlydavid]

As a mid level manager at tech companies for 15 years, this video has the right perspective, information and insight about this monitoring. It’s just data and this is a game, you generate the data… you are in control of your stats.

[patchouli]

If you are using your company's laptop or phone, just assume they have screenshots of everything you're doing.

[moetocafe]

Excellent video to remind people of the dangers of using dystopian technologies.
In the first minute of the video my thoughts were - people should not communicate anything over big tech tools, that they won't say in a court of law and - keep your devices separate. Have a work device, that you use only for work, with nothing personal on it at all at any given time and have a second private device, on which you never have anything work-related at any given time.
But you've covered all that in the video. Bravo!

I personally would seriously consider, if I would work at all in such dystopian environment, that is so wiretapped with Microsoft or other big tech tools.

[thermitebanana]

What sucks is that if this is being used to measure productivity, that it's not available for individuals to use to try to be more productive, but just so employees can be punished if their statistics don't fit a certain profile.