Microsoft Teams' new workplace check-in could tell your boss more than before — Here's what it shares

With growing workplace surveillance, Microsoft Teams is developing a new feature that might take away some of the liberty of working from anywhere. Managers around the world could soon have another tool in their arsenal to keep track of their employees.

Called Workplace Check-In, the new program could be an extension of an already existing Microsoft Teams feature meant to facilitate room reservations. When the extension goes live, it would actively analyze a worker's Wi-Fi connection in order to identify their location and share it with their team and managers.

Microsoft told PCWorld, “when users connect to their company’s Wi-Fi, Teams will soon be able to update their work location to show the building in which they are working.”

PCWorld adds that Microsoft plans to launch Workplace Check-In later in June.

Is Teams specially designed to report you to your manager?

In a recent Ask Me Anything session with Microsoft's President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms, Alan Ye, on the company's subreddit, a user asked why Teams "has been designed to tattle on employees at every turn possible, from presence to location to activity."

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In response to the query, Ye wrote back, “Microsoft Teams does not track employees’ movements or attendance” — a statement that critics argue is carefully framed.

“There is no automatic detection of work location,” Ye continued. “Microsoft Teams includes an optional feature that helps employees keep their office or remote status up to date so coworkers can coordinate in-person work. It is not a monitoring or surveillance tool and does not track movement, attendance, or store historical location data.”

The distinction, however, is an important one. While Microsoft may not directly track employees' movements or attendance, the platform still provides organizations with tools that can be used to monitor workplace presence. For workers concerned about the expanding scope of workplace surveillance, that may seem less like a meaningful difference and more like a shift in who is doing the tracking.