Microsoft Teams will ‘snitch’ to bosses about who’s in the office — update due December

Microsoft is preparing a Teams feature that will automatically register when an employee connects to an organisation’s Wi‑Fi and update their “work location” accordingly — and the change is scheduled to begin rolling out in December 2025. The functionality is listed on the Microsoft 365 roadmap and, if enabled by tenant administrators, will run on Windows and macOS devices. According to the roadmap entry, Teams will detect when users connect to their employer’s network and set the building as the user’s work location. Microsoft says the feature will be off by default, but tenant admins can enable it and require end‑user opt‑in, meaning the final decision often sits with corporate IT rather than individual employees. For managers juggling hybrid teams, the capability promises a simple administrative benefit: fewer mystery statuses when scheduling meetings or trying to locate staff. But for employees and privacy advocates, it raises immediate red flags about creeping workplace surveillance. Automatically tying presence to a person’s profile could be used for attendance monitoring, productivity judgments or disciplinary action unless clear guardrails are put in place. The roadmap entry is light on technical specifics. Industry commentators suspect Teams will infer location from network attributes such as IP ranges, SSID membership and related metadata rather than GPS, which has practical advantages but also ways it can be gamed. Workers at other companies previously tried SSID spoofing—renaming a home network to match an office SSID—to fool presence checks. That tactic may be ineffective against a system that also validates IP address ranges, gateway MACs or VPN status. Legal and policy questions follow. In regions with strong data‑privacy rules — notably the EU under GDPR — employers must articulate lawful bases for processing employee location data and ensure proportionality, minimisation and retention limits. Labour representatives and works councils are likely to demand consultation. Microsoft’s roadmap does not address retention windows, access controls or auditability for the location data the feature generates. What employees can do now - Check your Teams and Microsoft 365 admin communications: tenant admins, not Microsoft, usually decide whether the feature is enabled. Ask HR or IT whether the organisation plans to turn it on. - If the feature is activated, request written policy covering purpose, who can access location data, retention period and how it will or will not be used for performance management. - If you have a union or staff representative, raise the issue early — location tracking is a common subject for collective bargaining or consultation. What employers and admins should consider - Be transparent: announce any planned rollout, explain the business need and get consent where required. - Limit scope: only collect the minimum data necessary and set short retention periods; restrict access to people who genuinely need it. - Publish a usage policy: state explicitly that location data won’t be used for disciplinary decisions absent a fair process. - Engage stakeholders: involve HR, legal and employee representatives before switching the feature on. The feature’s arrival highlights a broader tension reshaping hybrid work: tools that make collaboration easier can also enable closer monitoring. For now, Microsoft is providing the technical capability; how it is used will depend largely on employer policies and employee pushback. With the rollout slated for December, employees and their representatives have a narrow window to seek assurances and shape how, if at all, automatic location reporting will be applied in their workplaces. We contacted Microsoft for further comment on technical specifics, data retention and recommended admin controls but had not received a response at publication. The Microsoft 365 roadmap entry is publicly available and was the primary source for this report.