Using Microsoft Teams as a Collaboration Hub for Your Business
The global shift from in office to remote work has created challenges and innovations for businesses. This motion is no longer a simple “shift,” as it has lasted longer than anticipated. We will eventually have a hybrid model of working from home and a return to working in offices, but it will be much different than before and video conferencing and using collaboration tools in a deeper way are here to stay.
A year into working from home and there are currently around 115 million daily active users on Microsoft Teams. Are your employees part of that number? If your business started using meetings and calls with Microsoft Teams in this past year, we know you (like everyone) learned a great deal in a short time. But have you had the chance to dive deeper and leverage Teams for all of your business collaboration tasks? Have you started to build your employee repeatable processes? Have you talked through the workplace culture guidance necessary to help your employees work from home for the foreseeable future? Now seems to be the right time to think about all of these, as the “temporary shift” becomes more of our permanent reality.
Compass365’s team of experts is ready to assist businesses who have deployed Microsoft Teams, helping you get the most out of your investment and embrace the product, not only for video conferencing but as your collaborative hub for teamwork too. Our Workplace Collaboration Enablement Program was built as we were leaning in and running our projects remotely, as we and our customers used Microsoft Teams.
Innovations in Meeting and Calls
Microsoft Teams has been around since 2017, but pre-Covid it was not the way most employees started their day. We all watched the product skyrocket this past year, with its feature list and usage rates growing as a result the unprecedented demand for remote collaboration during the pandemic. Microsoft responded by investing time, money, herculean engineering efforts, and listening and responding to customer needs and feedback.
Together mode, gallery view, and breakout rooms were not a part of the Microsoft Teams vernacular in early 2020. Usage went from four people on a video in a call to up to 49, maximum participant capacity increased to 300, and you can now pop out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window. Many seemingly small feature updates or innovations coming from Microsoft in rapid fire met business needs by providing the tools and nuance needed for employees to embrace the new work from home culture.
Focusing on Employee Experience
This week, Microsoft announced Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform accessed through Microsoft Teams, utilizing the power of the interconnectivity of Microsoft 365. The research Microsoft has been releasing in their Work Place Trends Index has shown the need for businesses to put guidance and thought around employee experience to retain employees, keep burnout low, and productivity and wellness high.
We like this quote from Jared Spataro, CVP of Microsoft 365: “As the world of work changes, the next horizon of innovation will come from a focus on creativity, engagement and well-being so organizations can build cultures of resilience and ingenuity.” Spataro continued, “Our vision is to deliver a platform for the employee experience that helps organizations create a thriving culture with engaged employees and inspiring leaders.”
Planning for the Future
Like our team, now that you have been using the product for the past year, are you pausing to take stock and say… wait a minute, do we have a governance plan? Have we organized Microsoft Teams the right way for our business? Does everyone know how to leverage SharePoint or OneDrive or OneNote in conjunction with Teams? Should we consider embedding the intranet and key business systems like Power Apps into Teams for easy access? Those seem to be the questions on many of our customers minds these days. We are excited to help businesses find the right answers for their business with our enablement program.
Compass365’s experts are ready and waiting to assist you as you dig deeper, going beyond just meetings and calls. With our Workplace Collaboration Enablement Program we address all your Microsoft 365 needs to both inspire and train your employees, showing them all the ways they can use the product to collaborate and maintain productivity. We’re here to supply and help implement all needed guidance and guardrails around processes, governance and wellness. Contact us for a free no-obligation consultation today!
