Do you know the digital workplace and all of its collaborative potential? Discover how collaboration can work for your business.
At first, shifting to a collective way of working online was quite a ‘wild move’, but now the future of remote working is being consolidated. How to make sure that digital workplace platforms deliver all its collaborative potential?
The key questions and lessons learned while implementing the digital workplace for our customers provides us with interesting insights into asuccessful shift towards the new way of working. Olivier Fabes and Eline Uvin, our change and communication experts for the digital workplace, share their take on how collaboration can work for business.
Get your change message accross internally and boost user adoption.
In 2020, digitalization of the workplace had to be done and it had to be done fast. But what about the long-term? Based on our customer experience, these three steps are crucial to make the implementation of a digital workplace succeed:
Explain the ‘why’:
Changing our working habits at home or at the office implies being completely informed on why this change is an improvement compared to the old, siloed ways of working. In circumstances where digital work is temporarily perceived as the ‘only way’, it is also important to explain the advantages of a MS Teams-based digital workplace in the long run, when everyone will be able to go back to the office. It’s only when we truly understand the why and the how that we feel eager to start exploring and develop a new habit of being collaborative at work.
The workplace is changing dramatically in terms of time, space and collaboration mode. Explaining why the new ways of working are important for the company, the team and every individual is an important part of our change and communication strategy.
Explain the ‘how’:
Once people know why this is important, we create change awareness using various formats so people feel the urge to discover more on their own. Here are some examples on how we make people keen to use MS Teams and other digital workplace services:
People need to feel at ease with the tools they will use day-in and day-out. At times like these we face challenges to access necessary information and to keep up with the constantly changing look & feel or different functionalities the new platform brings.
not everyone has an identical pace when it comes to adopting new learnings. A more digital-minded crowd is eager to discover new tools in self-service at their own pace, while others learn in a more guided, human-centered way. And that’s perfectly normal. It’s our job to find the matching communication and learning format, so everyone is able to pick his or her own learning trackEline Uvin, Senior change management consultant
Being creative with sources of information, we managed to bend these challenges towards opportunities. In our expert opinion, classical informational sessions or trainings should be replaced by other formats, for example:
Create a network of ambassadors to guide their colleagues: As more ‘informal’ contacts like discussions at the coffee machine are not possible right now, ambassadors are the way to go if you want to collect feedback from users or to ease the workload of IT support by answering small questions. When onboarding your ambassadors, it is crucial to make them understand that their digital role should be more proactive – searching contact with their colleagues via chat for instance – then reactive, because questions won’t come up that spontaneously as in the physical office.
Target team leaders directly: In COVID-19 times, relying on ambassadors is not enough. You can also raise awareness and enhance communication by targeting team leaders directly. They are, after all, the main drivers in terms of collaboration, and the prime examples to follow. By organizing Q&A sessions for those team leaders and providing them with presentation material, you support them in the best possible way and allow them to cascade key messages to the end users.
Set up webinars: We’re currently experiencing an excess in webinars, as they are the main way of communicating online. As a result, people have reached a certain numbness to them. That’s why it’s even more important to capture their attention when you use webinars for training. How?
Build a help portal: In COVID-19 times, it’s even more important to have a central point of information where everyone can find answers. Make sure you keep the content up-to-date and share the updates with your audience.
Every platform has its unique purpose to increase collaboration. Email is the most used way to collaborate with colleagues, but more possibilities emerge once we learn how to share more intensively. How do we motivate coworkers to create new workspaces and share knowledge through other means than email?
Governance ‘by design’ is needed: delaware designed a governance layer embedded in Microsoft Teams, called Workspaces, which helps to create and manage collaborative workspaces, based on commonly accepted security and governance rules. It includes a digital wizard, guiding you step-by-step to configure your own workspace as well as a dashboard to manage all your workspaces.
Provide guidance on how to organize your workspace by sharing best practices on file structure, naming conventions, tabs, etc.
VIP coaching: Individual coaching sessions for top management pay off as they foster buy-in from the top and make leading by example much easier. Do not underestimate the time and effort spent in coordinating the agendas.
COVID-19 was an extraordinary accelerator for the adoption of Microsoft Teams. We never used chat and virtual meetings as much as in the last months. This rush to Microsoft Teams was a unique opportunity for many users to get a leg up. However, it takes structured change management and governed processes to make sure that users tap into the real collaborative potential of an ever-evolving digital workplace.
During the pandemic, companies had to start up fast and purchase licenses quickly to facilitate home work. The vision on how to set up a collaboration platform can therefore be lost. However, COVID-19 was in some cases also the trigger for companies to organize their future digital workplace. MS Teams is the first step in this new way of working, but needs to be well-supervised and not implemented in a hurry. Do it right and the digital workplace can guide people and companies towards their future of work.
Want to start organizing your own digital workplace?
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