Microsoft Teams is preparing to release a contentious feature that may appear "unfair" for work-from-home employees. Soon, the app will immediately know if you are really working in your respective location by monitoring through a Wi-Fi tracking feature.
Microsoft Teams Location Tracking
Based on Microsoft's official 365 roadmap, Teams will automatically record a user's work location when connecting to their company's Wi-Fi. This is in line with the effort to provide managers with increased insight into whether or not workers are onsite or remote.
For team leaders, this might mean more precise tracking of attendance and fewer misunderstandings regarding where workers are working from. But for those who value the quiet and focus of remote work, this change might be seen as an invasion of privacy in the form of digital manipulation.
How Microsoft Teams' Wi-Fi Tracking Works
Though Microsoft hasn't unveiled all the technicalities, the new feature seems to use Wi-Fi network identifiers and IP addresses to identify a user's precise location, according to a report by Tom's Guide. After a device connects to the company's network, Teams automatically alters the user's work location status to the office building or campus where they are.
Teams users can currently manually designate their work location, a useful feature for big organizations with several offices. According to the software giant, the new feature just automates that process. The deployment will be rolled out to Windows and macOS.
Significantly, Microsoft made it clear that the feature will be off by default, i.e., it will not start automatically tracking users. However, tenant administrators can turn it on and make it mandatory for users to opt in, possibly compelling employees to reveal their work location within office hours.
Privacy vs. Productivity
Most of us know this update revives the age-old controversy surrounding employee monitoring and office privacy. While organizations claim that tracking employees' locations makes collaboration and openness better, most employees regard it as an additional surveillance layer in the hybrid world.
Such tactics have been seen in other corporations after the pandemic. For instance, there were some Amazon employees who allegedly attempted to spoof the names of their home Wi-Fi to look like office networks to seem compliant with in-office policies. But Teams' sophisticated system probably verifies more than Wi-Fi names. It might check IP addresses or router MAC information, making spoofing almost impossible.
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