Regione Emilia Romagna - Viewing the big picture
Every morning when journalist Daniela Malavolti begins her work day, she opens Microsoft Teams and checks what’s new. She then writes a post on Teams to share the news leads she’s acquired overnight, and her small team begins a discussion on what stories to follow up for publication on their government’s corporate intranet, Orma.
Orma’s team is in the top 0.15% of the almost 100,000 teams analysed in SWOOP Analytics’ 2021 Microsoft Teams Benchmarking Report, with rankings based on high productivity measures.
Each day, the team tosses around story ideas on their Teams channel and comes to a decision on what news to pursue for the day. These corporate news stories will be shared on Regione Emilia Romagna’s (RER) intranet, Orma, the official internal news source for the 4,000+ employees, administrators and politicians working at RER, a regional government in northern Italy covering about 4.5 million residents.
Daniela Malavolti, RER Journalist.
“Particularly when the Corona pandemic broke out, we were always on Teams sharing authorities' declarations and the continuous flow of news and data coming out from web sites,” said Daniela.
“We had to broadcast internal news on prevention measures, anti-contagion safety protocols etc. Fortunately, this way of sharing was not new for us, we have been using Teams since 2017 to collaborate within our team.”
An example of the Orma team sharing story ideas and photos before publishing on the intranet.
The Orma team collaborates on the daily agenda setting, the news of the day, or the message they have been asked to broadcast, with all discussion in their Teams channel. Their news leads come from email, a ticketing system, phone calls and comments made on other posts on the intranet, as well as from leaders and government administration.
“It’s very helpful to have a place to share with my colleagues what I receive, and other people can add their news,” said Daniela.
“We share, we debate, we share our communications, what we’re going to do for the day, or what we know is about to come, maybe for next week.”
An example of discussion on Orma’s Teams site.
The team also holds a weekly meeting on Teams to discuss the intranet content for the week ahead and documents are shared on Teams.
By sharing stories in their Teams channel before publishing, the team is able critique each other’s ideas and formulate a plan for publication. This is especially helpful, Daniela said, when the team deals with controversial topics or comments submitted for publication on the intranet.
“Of course, a lot of time is spent on discussions on the comments themselves, to publish or not to publish, according to the intranet’s policy,” Daniela said.
Prior to using Teams, Daniela said she would knock on her boss’ door to ask for advice.
“We’re interacting more as a team with Teams than beforehand,” she said.
“I think this method we try to learn is very useful to arrive where we are today because we learned a lesson - share with your teams.”
A lead story published on RER’s intranet home page.
Daniela’s colleague and web editor Marcella Bongiovanni said the team works in five channels within their team on Teams.
General - for everyday posts.
News - for all discussions around news requests.
Notes on team meetings - where they record the weekly newsroom meetings, plan the home page layout, discuss everyday work, air problems and controversial topics.
Personal - everything related to the “me”, not the “us” of a team. For example, if someone is away from work to take their child to the dentist, they will record it here.
Data - where Marcella posts on data, benchmarks and analytics.
“We have lots of everyday use in this team,” Marcella said.
“We both work and do the pre-work for the intranet on Teams.”
The Orma team is made up of seven members - two journalists, two web editors, a communications manager, HR manager and an IT tech member working for the Political Assembly.
Two other teams at RER ranked among the top 0.2% in SWOOP’s benchmarking, one an “eDemocracy” project team working on a new software platform and the third is a cybersecurity training team. Like Daniela’s team, these two teams have small numbers and almost all posts receive reciprocal interaction.
Using data to break the bureaucratic mould
RER began rolling out Teams across the government in late 2017 and in May 2018 it trialled a work from home scenario.
Marcella Bongiovanni, RER Web Editor.
Marcella said RER’s experience with Teams ahead of the COVID-19 lockdown held it in good stead, and hundreds of new teams were created during March and April 2020. That’s why Marcella was so keen to use SWOOP for Teams, to see if there was cross-collaboration among RER departments and staff, especially as everyone was working remotely.
“What I wanted to check using SWOOP was how much we could break the bureaucratic mould,” she said.
Unfortunately for RER, the data didn’t paint a rosy picture across the organisation, although there are pockets of high productivity, like the intranet team.
“I’m sorry to say, we are not that good yet,” Marcella said.
“It seems to be most teams are drenched in their own department and only talking with their own departments. I really had hoped we could break something of that bureaucracy. But the SWOOP data shows we’re still talking with each other in our own department.”
While there are some high performing teams, overall interaction and cross collaboration remains very siloed at RER, SWOOP data shows.
“We are still very much divided into chunks, even if we’re the same department, so there is not a lot of talk between us,” Marcella said.
She said she was actually surprised by the data from SWOOP, as she thought there may have been more collaboration across the organisation. But she said the data adds so much value to identifying the gaps in collaboration.
“I would have thought there was more collaboration if SWOOP Analytics had not showed me such a low level of interaction,” Marcella said.
“The data scares me a little bit. It really shows me we need to improve a lot.
“We really need to do something to change our culture. I was so sure that we were mature enough after a year of the pandemic and we were correctly using Teams and there were less silos, but no.”
With the data as a guide, Marcella hopes 2021 is a year where RER can begin to break down silos for better cross-collaboration across the organisation.
Hear more from Marcella as she tells her story in a webinar with SWOOP.
