Successful collaboration in the Modern Digital Workplace with Microsoft Teams

Part of the transformation into a Modern Digital Workplace includes a flexible work environment where time and place no longer play the lead. As the workday is no longer 9am – 5pm and the amount of working hours outside the office increases, the need for user-friendly and productive online tools grows. The time where you could just head next door to ask a colleague for advice or schedule face-to-face meetings, is coming to an end. As a result, the market is floating with tools that promise successful communication and collaboration, just to mention a few; SLACK, GoToMeeting and Yammer.

However, we all know the difficulties associated with introducing new external platforms. Even though the potential might be a no-brainer, convincing employees to changes their everyday habits can be both a long and often unsuccessful process. Office 365 now has 135 million monthly active users clearly indicating that the Office suite is the go-to-tool in many companies. However, why is this important when talking about collaboration? Being able to combine these everyday tools with a collaboration platform might be the key to a successful implementation. Microsoft Teams provides a collaboration platform with the option to chat, have online meetings and share material created using your favorite Office suite – all in one place. Why don’t we check out a couple of examples of how Microsoft Teams not only ensures but improves collaboration?

Making virtual meetings easier

When arranging an online meeting in Microsoft Teams it’s not just visible in Teams but also becomes part of your Outlook calendar right away. The meeting can be accessed by anyone whether they have Microsoft Teams or not. In the meeting it’s easy to create meeting notes, that can be viewed by all participants. In addition, if you choose to record the meeting a file is automatically updated to your Microsoft Stream channel even with the option to get an automated transcript. This can be particularly helpful if you need to search for a specific topic in a longer session.

More than a social media chat

Admittedly, having the option to chat, send memes, gifs and much more, makes the Modern Digital Workplace a fun place to be. However, Teams provides much more than just this. If the L&D team needs to create, plan and organize the next compliance training program, it would usually mean a lot of emailing being sent back and forth with draft one, two, three and four. The process would maybe even cause miscommunication as one part edits a section while another is sending just the same ideas. Not to mentioned who hasn’t tried being cc’ed on e-mails that eventually aren’t relevant to you. In Microsoft Teams L&D can create a channel for this specific project and share files which can be edited directly in Teams. It’s even possible to view the edits being made live and who’s making the edits. As the project moves along you can mention the people whose input and assistance is relevant at a certain stage to ensure a smooth and productive process.

Adding the social aspect to learning

The marketing department is planning a rebranding course. Microsoft Teams offers seamless integration of many external apps, one of them being the LMS365, the learning platform fit for the Modern Digital Workplace. By adding this app to the Teams marketing channel, the marketing manager is able to add the new course directly into Microsoft Teams. Learners are provided with the ability to not only take the course within the Teams platform, but also talk about and discuss any questions and problems they might experience while taking the course. The flexibility of online learning and the advantage of the social aspect, seen in classroom training, is combined thereby, bringing together the best of both worlds.

Collaboration is successful when people are able to reach a common goal in a shorter amount of time in a more efficient way. Overall, it’s proven that your company’s productivity can increase by 20 to 30% by using the right collaboration tools. Remember that if you introduce a collaboration solution successfully it will diminish distance between employees and make it better and more fun being part of the Modern Digital Workplace.


Reference:

LMS365. (2018). Successful collaboration in the Modern Digital Workplace with Microsoft Teams. Available at:
https://www.elearningforce.com/blog-post-lms365/612-succssful-collaboration-in-the-modern-digital-workplace-with-microsoft-teams [Accessed: 3rd September 2019].

Share this on...

Rate this Post:

Share: