My manager started doing random “wellness check” calls to make sure we were actually working from home
A few months ago our company went fully remote and honestly things were going great. Productivity was up, nobody missed commuting, people seemed happier. Naturally management decided this was suspicious.
Now our department manager has started randomly calling employees on Teams throughout the day with no message beforehand. Not meetings. Not scheduled check-ins. Just sudden video calls out of nowhere to “maintain connection and accountability”.
The first time it happened to me I missed the call because I was literally in the bathroom. Two minutes later I got a Slack message asking if “everything was okay” and whether I was “still available during core hours”.
Since then everyone’s become weirdly paranoid. People panic if they step away to make lunch. One coworker said she keeps her headset on while folding laundry during breaks because she’s scared of missing a surprise call and looking “unresponsive”. Another guy admitted he jiggles his mouse anytime he leaves his desk for more than 3 minutes now.
Yesterday my manager called me at 4:47pm on a Friday. I answered and after an awkward 15 seconds of small talk he asked what I was currently working on. I started explaining a report and halfway through he interrupted me to say “good good, just making sure people aren’t mentally checking out before the weekend haha”.
Brother YOU are the reason people are mentally checking out.
The wildest part is morale has absolutely cratered since this started. Turns out treating adults like sneaky teenagers does not magically build trust