Why presence is an incomplete measure
Online status is easy to see. Good work is often harder to observe, especially when it involves thinking, planning, helping a colleague or preventing a problem. A green dot may mean someone is answering messages, but it says little about whether they are making progress on an important task. Conversely, a person who closes chat to concentrate may be doing exactly what the team needs.
This does not mean availability never matters. A support desk needs coverage, and colleagues need dependable ways to reach one another. The mistake is treating visibility as a stand-in for contribution in every role. When people feel pressure to appear active, they may interrupt focused work to send updates that do not help anyone. A better approach asks what the work is meant to achieve, then makes both results and necessary collaboration visible.
Define outcomes people can influence
An outcome describes a useful change, not just an activity. “Attend three meetings” is an activity; “agree on a handoff process that reduces missed requests” describes what those meetings should accomplish. Teams can start by naming a small number of priorities, explaining who benefits and setting a reasonable point to review progress. For work with a tangible deliverable, they can agree on what a satisfactory result looks like before anyone begins.
Consider an illustrative team updating an internal help guide. Instead of tracking how long each writer stays online, the team might agree to publish answers to the most common questions, have a colleague check them for clarity and make the guide easy to navigate. A weekly check-in could reveal that a writer is waiting for information from another department. That conversation helps the team remove an obstacle; a log of the writer’s active minutes would not.
Not every valuable contribution fits neatly into a target. Mentoring, maintenance and careful review can prevent difficulties that never become visible. Managers should therefore use outcome measures as prompts for discussion, not as a single score. Ask what was delivered, what changed for the people using it, what support made it possible and what work deserves attention next.
Make coordination explicit without demanding constant access
Outcome-focused work still needs shared expectations. A team can agree on response windows for routine messages, a faster route for urgent issues and times when people should be available for collaborative decisions. Outside those commitments, people can choose when to do uninterrupted work. Writing these expectations down reduces the need to guess whether a quiet colleague is unavailable or concentrating.
Progress updates work best when they are brief and useful. A simple note can state what has been completed, what comes next and where help is needed. For longer projects, a shared task board or document can hold decisions so that colleagues in different schedules do not need to reconstruct them from chat. Regular conversations remain important, particularly when priorities change, but they should help people solve problems rather than perform busyness.
Teams should also check whose work is easiest to see. Someone who speaks frequently in meetings may attract more notice than a colleague who quietly fixes recurring issues. Inviting people to describe behind-the-scenes contributions, and asking peers who relied on that work, can provide a fuller picture without requiring everyone to be constantly visible.
Review the system, not just the individual
A shift away from screen time can fail if goals are vague or people lack the authority, tools or information to meet them. At review points, managers and team members can ask whether priorities were realistic, whether dependencies caused delays and whether the agreed measures still reflect useful work. If a target rewards speed at the expense of quality, change the target rather than asking people to work faster.
The approach also needs boundaries. A person should not have to be reachable at all hours to prove commitment, nor should an outcome target quietly turn every spare minute into more assigned work. Clarifying capacity and deciding what can wait are part of managing results responsibly.
Start small: choose one project, agree on its intended result and collaboration needs, then review what the team learned. The goal is not to eliminate judgment or count every contribution. It is to replace a weak signal of productivity with clearer expectations, better conversations and a more honest view of how work gets done.
