Why should I use Microsoft Teams?
Why should I use Microsoft Teams? According to Google this is one of the most popular questions the search engine receives about what is becoming a keystone product for Microsoft. If I were Microsoft I could respond with a plethora of features and functions about what Teams could do for you. The fact it can be used as a hub for all your day-to-day work, its central place in the Microsoft 365 suite, being hosted on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud and so on. But is this enough to convince you?
Benefits of collaboration tools in the workplace
We think a more compelling reason for using Teams is contained within the stories high performing digital teams can share. We have identified several in our 2021 Teams Benchmarking Study. We set out to use our analytics to identify the highest performing digital teams from almost 100,000 teams we analysed across 33 organisations. We then looked to uncover the stories behind what we determined were exceptionally high performing teams. We weren’t disappointed. They were inspirational. They were operational. They were performing tasks and creating value for their organisations that would have been impossible to do without Teams. Here is just a sample of the stories we heard; and a reason why you should be using Microsoft Teams.
Examples of successful collaboration in the workplace
Edwin Morales knows his teammates have his back. His tight team of four have never met face to face, there’s a huge geographic divide between them all, they rarely speak, and yet they trust each other implicitly through their digital interactions on Teams. Edwin is a member of a digital leadership team responsible for 50-60 service centre staff for US Health Insurer Humana. They facilitate customer problem resolutions around the clock. While each leader has their ‘own’ team, they have been able to meld their function into a self-directed team; effectively covering for each other’s teams whenever unavoidable absences occur. Edwin told us he has personal connections with all staff in his peer leaders teams; and they are likewise familiar with his team’s staff. Read more.
How many office based teams have you seen operate like Edwins?
Chris Shada, the CEO of Real Estate consultancy Real Foundations is not your normal real estate sector CEO. He is a champion for digital collaboration, not only for his own 400 strong firm, but now also for his clients. As well as providing expert advice on real estate development practice, Real Foundations also coaches them on how to collaborate better on digital platforms. It’s therefore not surprising Chris’ strategic leadership team were identified (anonymously by us) as one of our leading digital teams on Teams. His small leadership teams of four talk strategy every day, online. No need for the annual strategy planning retreat for Chris. Strategy is not something they do once a year or even once a quarter. They do strategy every day! Hear more from Chris.
How many leadership teams to you know of that talk strategy every day?
Professor Nick Barter is Dean and Director of Learning Futures at Griffith University in Australia. Griffith University is recognised for its post graduate remote learning courses. The university forms digital teams for each of its courses. Students are expected to interact with each other online to facilitate their learning journeys. In fact, Nick coaches instructors to try and not be the one to answer all of the questions students might post, but to leave room for students to learn from each other. Nick’s experience tells him that when classes connect well with each other online; their results achieved are higher and even better; the students rate these classes higher. It was therefore not surprising for Nick to find that a number of their classes featured amongst the highest performing digital teams.
We often hear that the best form of learning is on the job. Have you considered that cohesive and connected self-directed digital teams could be central to the emerging skills crisis, post COVID-19?
Emma Cashen is Cricket Australia’s Manager of Technology Adoption. It’s not surprising that Emma’s job became a focus when the national team was prevented from training together when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Could digital technology help? Not only was Teams used to facilitate national team members' training on their own with their local coaches, the use of video and mobile technology facilitated a group coaching regime where these local coaches could be assembled into a collective coaching squad, to review players’ progressions at a level that was not logistically possible in the physical world. Cricket Australia’s use of Teams is a perfect example of using Teams as a hub, drawing from disparate technologies like video, mobile, content sharing into one place for execution. Learn more from Emma.
Teams is more than a substitute for face to face interactions. Teams can facilitate brand new value propositions. All of the above examples and several more contained in our report are examples of how organisations are using Teams, not just to survive, but to positively thrive ahead of a new way of working, post COVID-19.
Collaboration in the workplace
Why should you use Microsoft Teams? We hope these stories can motivate you to see Microsoft Teams as a ticket to thriving in a new way of working. These stories are not the result of carefully crafted new business processes or re-engineered old ones. They result from small teams of people collaborating and just working it out amongst themselves. While Teams is an incredibly rich digital environment; these teams just worked out which bits worked for them, and then just got on with the job!
If you want to see how analytics can inform your digital teaming performance watch this SWOOP Teams demonstration here.
