In 2019, Buffer reported that 22% of remote employees surveyed identified their biggest struggle as collaboration and communication. Now, Buffer’s state of remote work 2022 reports that number is down to 17%, and the highest percentage of people surveyed, 31%, stated they don’t have any struggles working remotely.
You can improve how employees interact with your workplace byfocusing on improving EX using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva. Learn more in our definitive and free 80+ page guide.
So, what’s changed? While it varies, we can identify a few main factors.
While this blog will cover how 4 Microsoft 365 applications improve collaboration, remote and hybrid work has created several organizational concerns. One of the big concerns is, determining if your employees are staying compliant? We’ll be addressing this in our upcoming webinar with partner Colligo titled, “Compliant Collaboration: Responsibly Empower and Sustain at Scale.”
Now, let’s dive into the 4 applications.
SharePoint
For over a decade, companies have relied on SharePoint for their Intranet. A strong indicator of its relevance is how many times the application has been the foundation for the Neilson Norman award, the equivalent of winning a Grammy in the Intranet space.
While many have relied on it as the foundation for their Intranet, SharePoint has taken things up a few notches, enabling advanced capabilities for engaging with your employees. Their modern UI/UX is as simple to use as a Square Space website and as easily configurable. This means that you can easily create and test new sites to develop the optimal experience that will facilitate collaboration.
Teams is a perfect example of Microsoft innovation at work. It combines video conferencing and collaboration tools into the ideal workstation (What is Microsoft Teams used for in the Digital Workplace?). Microsoft Teams continues to push the boundaries of communication and collaboration through apps, connectors, and customization capabilities. If you haven’t already, there has never been a better time to join its 270 million monthly active users in improving the way team collaboration and communication happens.
Collaboration becomes a lot smoother when all team members operate out of one application. Also, any number of channel configurations (5 Tips for Creating Compelling Microsoft Teams Channels) can help a specific team or subset work together more effectively.
Since most of the buzz has been around Microsoft Teams, you might be wondering, “is Yammer still relevant?” Absolutely, and it has advantages you will want to leverage on your journey to a better and more collaborative employee experience. Yammer is a great place to have social interactions between colleagues without adding more clutter to your Teams channels and form bonds, will have an easier time working together.
What if collaboration wasn’t limited to a specific place or document? Imagine if it didn’t matter what application you were working in because you could pull components from different apps and collaborate on it in real-time, guaranteeing it is always up to date. While this product isn’t fully available yet (currently, there are some limited components that you can leverage), Microsoft Loop will help employees collaborate more effectively.
While multiple individuals can already collaborate on specific documents, enabling collaboration anywhere is sure to have magnificent effects.
For a clearer image of what is possible with Microsoft Loop and the idea behind its creation, watch our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, in the video below.
Or, if you are wondering how Loop differs from the likes of Notion or Coda, watch this video below.
We hope this blog has helped you understand how much Microsoft 365 can positively impact collaboration. However, it doesn’t only improve effectiveness; it also helps you stay compliant.
