Can you imagine your workplace without the internet? Think of the difference in culture, the pace of change, the connectedness of colleagues and clients. Technology has always had a significant impact on the culture of work. But in today\u2019s workplace, this has proliferated as the speed of technological evolution has continued to accelerate at a rate that few could have predicted.<\/p>\n
We are now in an era where new technologies are so abundant \u2013 and their application so varied \u2013 that we have more choice than ever about how we want to engage with them. This is giving us increasing control over how we use technology to define the culture of our workplace.<\/p>\n
Here we look at the way that three very different companies are using Microsoft technologies to help reinforce and guide their organisational culture.<\/p>\n
Dutch company, Tony\u2019s Chocolonely, has always been about more than the chocolate they make. Grown out of a journalist\u2019s dream to make the chocolate trade slavery-free, the company has had ethics and principles at its core ever since it was founded in 2005.<\/p>\n
And those principles aren\u2019t limited to the way that their chocolate is produced \u2013 it\u2019s also about how their team is organised and interacts. \u201cWe say that our team comes first\u201d, says Rick van Doorn, IT Manager at Tony\u2019s. \u201cWithout the team, there is no company. And keeping that team collaborating optimally is vitally important to everything we do\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the company has thrived and its team has grown from six to over 100, the challenge has been keeping the company\u2019s cultural values consistent through a period of significant organisational transformation. According to Angela Ursem, Marketing Communications Manager, an important part of this has been choosing the right technologies to keep the company \u201copen, honest and communicating\u201d. This has included upgrading to Windows 10, moving company data to SharePoint, and managing devices with Microsoft Intune.<\/p>\n
But perhaps the most significant innovation has been the company\u2019s use of Microsoft Teams<\/a>. As with every other aspect of work life for Tony\u2019s employees, that strategy is carefully aligned with company values and organisational culture. \u201cWe use the chat feature in Teams to build the personal relationships we want to encourage\u201d, says Ursem. \u201cEmail is more formal, more time-consuming. Chat lends itself to the shared humour and quick check-ins that naturally fit our culture and make us more efficient\u201d.<\/p>\n But how new technologies are implemented doesn\u2019t just depend on organisational culture \u2013 it\u2019s about the size of a company too. For global automobile behemoth, BMW Group, the challenges were markedly different.<\/p>\n In the automobile industry, disruption is a fact of life. BMW Group executives know that maintaining excellence in today\u2019s connected world means using technology to move from a process-oriented way of working to a more agile, collaborative ethos<\/a>. This has required a complete shift in organisational culture and the company\u2019s approach to teamwork.<\/p>\n But for a company with 134,682 employees, 150,000 devices and 70,000 phones in 500 locations, making that shift was no small task. It meant choosing the right software and apps to keep everyone productive, while also underscoring its values of security and teamwork. Migrating to Windows 10 was the answer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I value is that Windows 10 is the foundation for our modern workplace transformation\u201d, says Markus Boenisch, General Manager of Global Workspace at BMW Group. \u201cIt will honour our commitment to a new way of working \u2013 new ways of collaborating, all while staying more secure\u201d.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not only software and app solutions that are helping companies drive workplace transformation and define a new organisational culture \u2013 it\u2019s the devices they are using too.<\/p>\nBMW Group: Creating new ways to collaborate<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Vinnova: Attracting new talent with Surface<\/strong><\/h2>\n