Microsoft Teams – The Driver for Remote Workers

All of us have had our struggles over recent years – the pandemic forced us to make dramatic changes to the way we go about our daily lives. We had no chance to prepare our employees or businesses for the rapid changes they were subjected to just to survive. Remote working is a practice that will continue to grow in commonality, business owners are realising the value that a successful thought-out transition can bring.

Most don’t realise just how much remote working can improve work process, if the right tools are used, managed, and maintained in the correct way – anything is possible. Maintaining the levels of productivity and collaboration achieved in office can be difficult to achieve when out of the monitored, regimented environment, some can find adjusting a little difficult, which is why, technology – if implemented and maintained correctly – can bridge that gap and even fill in existing holes left from the workplace.

Introducing Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams – one of the newest and best additions to the Microsoft suite of tools, it centres around boosting communication, collaboration, and productivity in your workplace. This is made possible by its combination of document sharing, online meetings, formal chat, and informal chat,  that are all brought together by this one business communication enhancing platform. Teams has already – in its short life – revolutionised businesses across the globe, it has over 250 million daily active users that utilise the app in their workday.

Teams Collaboration Tools Explained

• Chat – This enables remote workers to keep in contact with their colleagues from anywhere. Staff can talk as freely when working remotely as they can in the workplace. This will not only keep your employees in contact with each other but will also allow them to have a laugh and build positive relationships with fellow employees. Working from home, especially within the stressful world of today, can be draining and leave you feeling isolated if not kept in the loop.

• Co-authoring – A particularly good collaborative feature of Teams is the ability to co-author documents, it enables people to work on the same one at the same time – meaning fewer duplicates.

• Video conferencing – The video conferencing feature allows you to video call colleagues and clients for a formal or informal conversation. An important feature for conversing about work and for a good chat.

• File sharing – File sharing makes it possible to share documents through Teams, all are saved within the Cloud using SharePoint and are secure.

• Fewer emails – In the workplace it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of emails you receive on the average workday, as conversations are now held and structured in Teams, there is no more email-upon-email staggered responses.

Teams allows you to speak on a personal level as friends whilst sending mission critical documents simultaneously – a unique offering that hasn’t been possible before.

As good as Teams is with aiding you in ensuring you get the most from remote working, here are a few other things to consider about your practices to assist in collaboration.

Remote working – upon implementation – may have a derogatory effect on work process or essential business functions, this is expected, as is with anything new and unfamiliar. It opens up doors to opportunities that – for those that are happier behind the safety of a screen – may not have had in the office setting. Some members of your team may be introverts, they may not be comfortable being as vocal as others normally, but you could see a different side to them through technology. A keyboard can be like a musician’s instrument, or a sportsman’s bat, the tool that allows them to be themselves.

All of these tools and tips can aid you in creating a collaborative, effective remote working culture, and hopefully in the process it’ll put you in good stead to create a productive interactive environment for you and your employees to communicate seamlessly.

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