Sounds like your IT team messed up the setup. In their defense, Microsoft doesn't make it easy to set it up well.
A "good" setup hides all this shit from the end user. All your "library" folders (Documents, Desktop, Pictures, etc) can be invisibly made into OneDrive folders. Still save your shit where you normally do, navigate in the file manager like you normally do, no lag for changes you do locally to show locally, minor lag (like 1-2 minutes) for changes to propagate to OneDrive itself (and other machines you are currently logged into). Just now everything is backed up to the cloud.
I have managed to convince IT that Linux is essential for my line of work.
My work goes smoothly while I watch my Windows colleagues raise the most absurd tickets for their problems.
"Yeah, it's a known issue. This needs access to Microsoft servers but our firewall won't allow it. You need to connect to a hotspot to resolve this."
"You need to install a package for LaTeX for a different font? Better raise an RFC and get it approved by your supervisor"
"md5sum? Never heard of it. Please justify the business requirement for this tool"
I've had exactly the same experience. Let me addd one more: when OneDrive decides to back up open files, they ate regularly deleted both from local and cloud. Those are the files I tend to use the most, and I grew so frustrated that I ended recreating my Documents folder steucture in my Downloads folder, which doesn't get synced. (IT is useless; when I complained abou that, they told me that One Drive was a third-party application, and they didn't support those. )