Caps N Lock® closes the collaboration gap between employees and their colleagues as they work on multiple devices at home.
We empower workers to control their working status at home while embracing the trust bestowed upon them by their employer.
By empowering workers we can start to prevent unnecessary anxiety while working from home. Many Microsoft Teams and Slack users feel the need to return back to their computers for the sole purpose of moving the mouse to keep their presence icon green.
When we learn that Microsoft Teams and other work platforms automatically and publicly present our activity status to others (based on factors outside of a users control) it becomes easier to empathise with those home workers frustrated by this feature.
Eliminating collaboration issues with their colleagues and preventing being labelled as ‘Away’ while working are some of the very reasonable arguments for circumventing a work place platform's presence status.
It’s easy to believe that those who aim to bypass the Teams automated status icon are focused not on work but on doing other non-work related tasks. It’s easy to jump to this conclusion without due diligence or consideration for the individual’s circumstances because we all know how easy it is to be distracted from work while at home.
Are we all jumping on to Netflix while working from home? Of course not. However do we sometimes put the bins out, hang those wet clothes on the dryer or pop out to post a letter during the working day? I’m convinced that we do and within the boundaries of respect and trust while working from home I believe that such tasks are acceptable if not inevitable while we change our private home spaces into areas of work for our employer.
The realities of working from home mitigate the assumption that bypassing the Teams auto-status is only for slackers. This is a far more complex topic than it first appears.
I am typically working 10 hours a day. I care about delivering results to my employer and I know that I can be trusted to work. Nevertheless between the hours of 9am-5pm I can’t handle my status showing as Away. I work hard without needing recognition but to be labeled as Away while I’m working really grates on me.
I work between laptop and mobile. I make phone calls, use Teams and Zoom in meetings so why am I being publicly clocked out when I leave the laptop for 5 minutes?
Anxiety, insecurities, fear of misunderstanding and paranoia all play a part in explaining why I hate this automated Teams feature so very much.
There is something not quite right about the Teams status icon showing us as Away when we are simply working elsewhere.
It is for these reasons that we invented Caps N Lock.
There are 200 million daily MS teams around the world. Over 68 million users (34%) would pay to stay Available on Teams. Not everyone cares about this however a significant portion do.
For those that want this issue solved reliably, we invented a hardware solution that clips to any laptop or desktop keyboard and keeps the Teams status Green for hours, days or weeks (NOTE: We've only tested it for up to 15 hours so far!).
We are on a mission to bridge the gap that exists between employees and their colleagues while they work Away from Microsoft Teams. We hope our solution will bring back harmony to the world of Working From Home #WFH