The New Teammates Feature On LinkedIn
James Potter — November 15, 2019 LinkedIn are currently piloting a new feature called Teammates. This isn’t available to everybody yet, but the idea is that this feature will “ensure you never miss an update from your team” and by team they mean work colleagues.
If you have access to this feature you can currently add people such as your manager, teammates reporting to your manager, other teammates, and direct reports. Currently you are restricted to adding one manager, 19 teammates who report to your manager, 20 direct reports and 10 other teammates, but LinkedIn are working on expanding this feature to include other types of co-workers and your important professional relationships in the future.
Subject to their privacy settings, once you have added your teammates, they will receive updates on your activity on LinkedIn, including work anniversaries, your birthday, posts and shares, comments and “other uses” explained in LinkedIn’s privacy policy. They won’t be able to see any of your private actions on LinkedIn such as messages.
To use the Teammates feature, click on the My Network icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage and select Teammates (see below):
You will then see two options:
Option one: Current team – This is where you can add a manager, teammates reporting to your manager, other teammates or direct reports. To add a teammate click the + icon and type a name in the box and you should then see your teammates name appear (providing they are on LinkedIn of course!). If you are already connected to them click the Add next to their name. If you are not connected to them you will have to click Connect next to their name before you can add them to your team.
Once you have clicked Add, your teammate will receive a notification alert and will have the option to either:
- Verify that you are a teammate (in which case they will start receiving updates about your activity on LinkedIn)
- Indicate that the information is incorrect, in which case your LinkedIn activity won’t be prioritised on their feed.
Option two: Past – if you change teams you can move your current teammates to your past team here. To do this click on the three dots next to Message and you will see the option to Move to past team (or Remove from direct team should you wish to) see below:
On the surface this is a great bit of functionality to keep in touch with your work colleagues or bosses to see what they’re up to and interacting with them more within LinkedIn so that is all good.
However, there is a little cynical bit of me that wonders if this is LinkedIn getting you to map the organisational structure for them for later, might just be me ….
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