a person holding a phone in front of a window
Read Time, 2 min.

In today’s increasingly competitive world there has never been a more important time for businesses to be aligned in their ways of working.

Success demands that everyone within the organisation is pulling in the same direction but as Microsoft’s Work Reworked report reveals, there is still much room for improvement.

This is highlighted in the discrepancy between how managers think the implemented technology is being used by employees and the reality of the situation. So what exactly does the report reveal and what can be done to improve business efficiency?

Make the objective obvious

Unless the goal of the deployment of a specific solution is  made crystal clear across the organisation , your employees are unlikely to use the solution as you intended. Perhaps because managers are closer to the corporate mission, they are 20% more likely to use a collaboration tool than an employee and 12% more likely to get the most from a tool’s functionality.

Make the benefit personal

Change is easy to adopt if it’s apparent what’s in it for us. Since a manager’s performance is only as good as their team’s, it can be no surprise that they view collaboration tools to be more important than employees do. 22% of managers gave it the most importance, compared with 16% of employees.

Make technology accessible

Investment in technology sometimes favours the more senior staff but seamless collaboration demands everyone has access to the same tools and devices. 66% of all employees regarded lack of access to the right tools as a major obstacle to effective working while just 17% of managers believed this to be an issue.

Make it easy

Human behaviour dictates that unless migration to new ways of working is made simple, we will default to what we know. With employees more likely to feel that there is insufficient training, the use of non-compliant applications remains commonplace. This not only poses a security and compliancy risk but can also dramatically impact productivity.

As the headlines of this report imply, it is not enough to have the best technology for your business. You need to implement fit-for-purpose technology that addresses the needs of your business and the mindset of your employees.

Microsoft Teams does it all. As a tailored collaboration tool it is designed to enable the new culture of work, by breaking down silos and empowering everyone to work the way they want, wherever they are in the world.

Discover what makes teams work better in our new eBook

Free eBook: The Psychology of Workplace Collaboration

Discover more related articles per industry:

Education

Government

Healthcare

  • a woman standing in front of a screen

    Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta: providing essential patient care from a distance

    “Telehealth was a technology we’d been planning to implement for a couple of years. But then almost overnight everything changed – it became a must-have platform the hospital needed today.” Francesca De Giorgi, CIO of Italian research hospital IRCCS Carlo Besta, reflects on the recent challenges her team faced when social distancing measures imposed by […]

  • A smiling man wearing glasses looking at the camera

    HUS: sharing data securely to make life-saving decisions

    Illnesses and diseases don’t often play fair – an unfortunate truth that was proved by the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, heavily hitting healthcare organizations with challenges the world hadn’t seen in a century. Hospitals needed a rapid response to reduce spreading the virus without affecting patient care. A high-pressure situation for any institution, but […]

Manufacturing

  • Mais on a sunny day

    COFCO International: How cloud technologies ensured business continuity during challenging times

    “I have worked at COFCO for 12 years, always in an office. But I have spent the last 63 days working from home.” Marcus Seelbach, Chief HR Officer at global agribusiness COFCO International, is talking from his home via video call about the transition he and all his colleagues have undergone since COVID-19 led to the closure of the company’s offices worldwide. “But thanks to the preparation and […]

  • a woman smiling for the camera

    Etex Group: Future-proofing employees to work anywhere across the world

    When COVID-19 spread across Europe in early 2020, businesses entered a new digitally-dependent age. Social distancing measures had asked offices of all shapes and sizes to close their doors, sparking organizations to quickly find other virtual ways for colleagues to meet and collaborate remotely. But for Belgium building material specialist Etex, this was a step they were ready for – having already implemented a cloud-based infrastructure and collaboration tools […]

Retail

Discover more related articles per dossier:

Customer Stories

  • a person sitting on a chair in a room

    Bridging the education gap in challenging times

    Across the globe, teachers, students and parents are dealing with a new reality: how to adapt to an educational environment that has moved from the classroom to the internet. As in many countries, the remote Faroe Islands, more than 300 kilometres off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea, has found the lives of […]

Digital Transformation

Security & Privacy

  • a close up of a logo

    Five things we learnt from the Security and Compliance Summit

    On November 4th 2020, Microsoft Western Europe hosted its first Security and Compliance Summit. Experts and Security Blackbelts from across Microsoft, including the Detection and Response Team and the Digital Crimes Unit, came together virtually to share perspectives on the latest security, compliance and privacy challenges that seek to compromise the modern workplace – a […]

Tips

  • a person sitting at a desk in front of a laptop computer

    Top tips for smarter remote working with Microsoft Teams

    With remote working becoming the new normal for many, people are having to find different ways of effectively functioning as a team. Microsoft Teams is designed to keep colleagues productively connected and ensure that everybody can continue to work as collaboratively, efficiently and securely as in the office. So, whether you already use it or […]