Preparing for the Hybrid Workplace with MS Teams
Microsoft Teams has been one of the phenomena of the Covid-19 pandemic: growing from 75 million active users globally in April 2020 to an astonishing 250 million (and rising) in July this year.
)
Before the rapid move to remote working, we were engaged with a number of organisations who were dipping their toes in the water of using Teams - and now it is at the heart of how so many of us communicate with our colleagues day in, day out.
This incredible level of adoption is now entering a new phase as we begin to shift to a more hybrid style of working, with people going back to the office for a few days a week and spending the rest at home or on the road.
But we notice that many organisations have yet to unlock the full value of Teams as a collaboration platform, using the system solely as a “chat and meetings tool”.
The beauty of Microsoft Teams is that it brings everything together in one place, giving Teams’ collaboration functionality a huge advantage over other platforms.
Your company’s applications, third party tools and documents can all be managed in one place – underpinned by SharePoint and without the need to have multiple windows open (and we all know how confusing that can become).
The way it works is that documents in Teams all create a SharePoint site in the background, so there is no need to sync as any changes are happening directly on SharePoint.
In fact, many of our clients with on-premise SharePoint environments have begun migrating to the cloud, to take advantage of both the functionality of Teams communication and collaboration as well as the enhanced functionality for SharePoint.
Now, as we move into a hybrid working environment, Teams helps people to work in the more flexible way that is required: wherever they are, in the office or out, they can share and collaborate on documents and projects in real-time as well as join meetings and calls.
Clearly, there are some meetings, such as brainstorms or workshops, that are best-held face-to-face, but Teams gives you the best of both worlds.
And with new features such as Viva, which is beginning to replace intranets and internal resources, there are even more reasons to build your organisation’s understanding of Teams.
Because Teams was adopted seemingly overnight through the lockdown to resolve communication issues, many organisations need to go back and look at how they are using it – and how they can get the best out of it.
Staff will likely need training: a common challenge faced by organisations who have had to adopt Teams quickly in response to the rapid transition to remote working driven by the global pandemic. Challenges such as Teams sprawl with duplicate teams and a lack of understanding of how to use channels and governance issues about who can be invited and how to protect data with the right access permissions must also be addressed to maximise return on investment and future proof Teams rollout.
We have been working with Microsoft Teams since its inception more than four years ago and have learnt that no two organisations have the same requirements. We always begin with an in-depth discovery project to understand what they need and how to set them up for success from the beginning.
To find out how your team can leverage MS Teams to support the hybrid working environment get in touch with one of our solution specialists, or check out the webinar below to see how Mainstream Renewable Power have harness Teams to unify their global workforce.
)
)
)