Building teams via Teams: How technology is fostering a modern workplace

In December, some of the country’s leading HR executives attended a conference titled The Future of Employee Engagement Forum organized by HR Leadership Network and Microsoft. The event explored how work culture is changing, what is driving the change and what HR professionals across the country can do to ensure they are prepared.

At the heart of the conversation was the role technology has played in not just driving the change, but giving HR teams the ability to monitor, collaborate, promote, and drive happier and more successful workforces.   

Digital tools like Microsoft’s Teams is one of the platforms that has played an important role. In fact, the number of daily Teams users jumped from 44 million globally to more than 115 million globally in just the space of few months this year.

Those using Teams have found it strikes a perfect balance between flexibility and inclusion that ultimately increases engagement. Long email chains are replaced with instant messages and team accountability can be boosted through the Tasks allocation feature, making employee engagement in a digital workplace easier than ever.

Supporting employee wellbeing

When remote working means less human interaction and blurred lines between work and home, a culture that fosters healthy wellbeing is crucial. It’s no secret that 2020 has seen an increase in stress and anxiety levels amongst workers around the world – so businesses are looking for ways to respond and help staff more.

Thankfully, Teams can be used to drive better staff wellbeing so they can thrive in the new normal. Guided meditation apps like Headspace, which will be available via Teams in 2021, can give workers the ability to tune out, dial down their stress levels and meditate for just a few minutes a day.

And, if HR managers are concerned about employees, or want to monitor how they’re feeling, daily health and wellbeing surveys can be sent out via Teams and are quick and easy to fill in. However, it’s not just up to the HR team to support team well-being. By enabling team members to acknowledge and praise each other’s work through the Kudos app, the entire workforce can collectively raise each other’s spirits.

Similarly, features like Praise, which works on the basis that people are happier and more productive when they get recognition for their efforts, allow employees to send “badges” of Praise to their co-workers via message.

Teams also gives HR managers the analytics tools they need to ensure staff are happy and staying motivated. You can monitor how much one-to-one time team members are getting with managers, what percentage of staff are working overtime each day and how much time staff have to focus on tasks each week.

With personal productivity insights, which will be added to Teams soon, people will be able to strengthen relationships with important people in their networks, seamlessly schedule time for 1:1s, stay caught up with key communications, and carve out time for important tasks and uninterrupted work.  

By analysing this information, businesses can make incremental changes to improve workflow and, make the business more resilient, engaged and agile.

As this shows, fostering employee engagement goes well beyond holding regular Teams meetings. There are a huge range of tools available for Teams users to increase wellbeing and create a sense of shared purpose and connection.

Wellness bots can also be installed to help employees provide regular feedback on their wellbeing and help make their remote working experience happier and healthier.

Disco does this at scale by allowing colleagues to give kudos to their co-workers when they have succeeded. Whichever employee gets celebrated the most can be rewarded with an incentive, helping celebrate successes and foster that sense of community even more.

Organisations can also get creative and host events in Teams to bring some fun to the remote working day and let people socialise with their workmates even when they can’t be together. Team building activities like dressing up or holding contests by sharing photos or videos are some of the many ways businesses can use Teams to keep teams motivated and engaged – or even hosting events in platforms such as Minecraft. The opportunities here are endless.

Strengthening company culture

Face-to-face meetings are crucial for strengthening relationships between staff members and building a strong and resilient company culture. Sometimes more can be achieved in a 30 minute face-to-face meeting than hundreds of emails. But, how do you get team members to actually meet? Workers can become set in their ways and often fall into hanging out in the same circles.

Teams’ Icebreaker Bot pairs staff members up for a meet up every week to help people get to know other team members, and foster stronger team relationships.

Sharing information quickly and easily

In a fast-paced workplace where projects and plans are constantly evolving, transparent communication is important at the best of times. When employees are working remotely and are not communicating as frequently, keeping them armed with the latest information is critical to engagement.

Quick communication is particularly key in a crisis, and Teams provides a single source of information for businesses, as well as all sorts of tools that take care of coordinating information and team collaboration in response to evolving conditions. The Crisis Communications Power App helps businesses push through organisation-specific news, updates and content at lightning speed, and Teams Live events allow for larger groups to attend interactive live chats in a one-to-many format. This was revolutionary for BNZ, which switched to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business in January 2020. Senior Executives at BNZ are now able to engage with all employees using Teams and Teams Live events. The collaboration power Microsoft Teams unlocked for BNZ is astonishing.

If an organisation is wanting to foster a culture of inclusive communication, overcrowded calls are likely not the best way to go. Naturally, some people will dominate conversations more than others. Reducing numbers on calls, uploading pre-recorded videos to Microsoft Stream, or recording meetings for watching later are perfect alternatives, ensuring that everyone can contribute, and those who cannot attend can catch up in their own time. Live captions during meetings can also help those that are hearing impaired feel more included. 

Pre-boarding and on-boarding staff

For many HR managers, a large portion of their time is spent pre-boarding, and on-boarding new staff members. However, for some businesses, the teams and departments workers need to co-ordinate with can be in completely different countries and time zones. This can make the process of setting up an email account or payroll details a time-intensive and complex mission.

Teams can help make this a more streamlined and efficient process. Using apps like HR Tools, which provides a step by step wizard for onboarding a new staff member, some customers have been able to reduce the time it takes to onboard new starters from four weeks to just 40 minutes.

Lending HR a helping hand

While Teams is best known as a communication tool, its usefulness goes well beyond that with a host of handy apps that can be added to the platform. The Human Resources App within Teams includes a bot that enables employees to manage processes such as leave requests and viewing leave balances, freeing up HR teams while giving assistance in real time.

Teams is also able to hold important HR files such as team policies, procedures, onboarding guides and instructional videos in accessible locations, giving employees instant access and reducing wait times.

HR is also responsible for increasing positive company culture and ensuring employees are striving to reflect company values. Microsoft research shows that when employees know their company values, businesses’ employee retention increases by 30%, and the average net promoter score increases by 7%. The Teams Disco feature incentivises people to understand and live up to their business’s values, rewarding employees who demonstrate these in their daily lives. If businesses can master the Disco tool, engagement will follow.