#ReadySetGov: Accelerate your Governance in Microsoft 365
VirtualMicrosoft 365 Proactive Governance & Adoption: What You Need To Know Richard Harbridge will share proven approaches to getting started and succeeding in establishing and improving...
Today, the digital employee experience matters more than ever. Download our eBook for 40 ideas that can help you maximize resources, efficiency and effectiveness in your organization.
Join Richard & Asif, two Microsoft MVPs and internationally recognized experts on Microsoft 365, as they share insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee management.
Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Digital Workplace, as he shares insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee collaboration.
Join James Robertson, from Step Two author on digital employee experience, Suzie Robinson, author of the ClearBox report, and Richard Harbridge, as they share insight on how to better understand, and leverage the future of employee communications.
Do you want to make sure you aren't making any major mistakes when managing Microsoft 365? Join two Microsoft MVPs, Richard and Christian as they help!
We work with more people today than ever before. The scale, speed, and sprawl that collaboration requires are some of the biggest challenges facing organizations today.
Internal Communications leaders have shifted from editors to enablers. With that shift comes a change from enforcing messaging to empowering and amplifying excellent communications and great ideas throughout the business. From preboarding to offboarding, HR's challenges are harder today than they have ever been before. Naturally, how these leaders leverage the digital workplace has changed as well, especially in how they leverage technology to achieve more with less.
Having effective Governance is about a lot more than just creating and maintaining a “Governance Plan” or having policies and leadership around how the service is run.
While navigation is the #1 use case for an Intranet and its most crucial purpose, many fail to deliver dynamic and personalized navigation. We are happy to help you improve your Intranet and Digital Workplace navigation with this eBook.
Join Richard & Asif, two Microsoft MVPs and internationally recognized experts on Microsoft 365, as they share insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee management.
Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Digital Workplace, as he shares insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee collaboration.
Join James Robertson, from Step Two author on digital employee experience, Suzie Robinson, author of the ClearBox report, and Richard Harbridge, as they share insight on how to better understand, and leverage the future of employee communications.
Do you want to make sure you aren't making any major mistakes when managing Microsoft 365? Join two Microsoft MVPs, Richard and Christian as they help!
We work with more people today than ever before. The scale, speed, and sprawl that collaboration requires are some of the biggest challenges facing organizations today.
Internal Communications leaders have shifted from editors to enablers. With that shift comes a change from enforcing messaging to empowering and amplifying excellent communications and great ideas throughout the business. From preboarding to offboarding, HR's challenges are harder today than they have ever been before. Naturally, how these leaders leverage the digital workplace has changed as well, especially in how they leverage technology to achieve more with less.
Having effective Governance is about a lot more than just creating and maintaining a “Governance Plan” or having policies and leadership around how the service is run.
How do organizations successfully migrate or upgrade SharePoint to SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams? Find out in our webinar with partner AvePoint!
Thinking about getting a new intranet that can help increase productivity and facilitate daily work? Then we have an interesting webinar for you!
Solve for tomorrow's #hybridwork & #remotework challenges by looking at today's #EmployeeExperience and Digital Workplace! Need help? Join us on Thursday at 1:00 PM ET for 3 sessions, each tackling a key area of EX with industry leading experts.
It's no use being sour that hybrid and remote work have stepped into the limelight. After realizing the comfort level that comes with remote work life, employees have put their foot down. While many found and continue to find satisfaction working remotely, a recent report from Buffer stated that 24% of people feel lonely & 17% of people have difficulties collaborating and communicating when working remotely - both signs of struggling employee experience (EX).
Despite the previously stated data from Buffer, employees seem pretty torn on whether they prefer remote or hybrid work. In a separate report from Microsoft, the numbers show that 57% of remote employees want to switch to hybrid, while 51% of hybrid workers want to switch to remote.
Whether your organization is moving toward one or the other, your greatest asset will be a positive employee experience.
This blog aims to reason with the doubters and inform those thirsty for firm numbers on why they should prioritize EX, and how our upcoming event can help guide your efforts.
While every organization can have various reasons to prioritize EX, here are five shared reasons we think stand out for many organizations.
Our five reasons are:
Here are a few facts to provide some perspective on the five reasons.
52% of people in North America are more likely to choose their health and wellbeing after the pandemic.
People spend about 1 hour a day searching for or recreating information.
Strong workplace relationships improve overall employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention by roughly 20%!
50% of surveyed employees with thriving relationships were more productive at work year-over-year, compared to 36% of employees with struggling relationships.
However, only 27% of companies have created new hybrid meeting etiquette to ensure engaged employees that feel included. Better inclusion and engagement combined with wellbeing are essential to improve employee satisfaction.
CNBC reported that "44% of employees are "job seekers," according to Willis Towers Watson's 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Of them, 33% are active job hunters who looked for new work in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 11% planned to look in the first quarter of 2022."
Need help translating the different stages of the employee experience into strong employee communication, collaboration, and management that's adapted for the new norm? Please register for our virtual event happening this Thursday.
The rest of this blog is to help you determine precisely why you should be there.
We could list several reasons to attend our event, but we'd like to respect your time and focus on the following three.
Hear from industry leading experts! Our event has three guest speakers we are thrilled to have join us.
Suzie Robinson (@SuzieRobinson42) and James Robertson (@James_steptwo) are behind various top-tier awards and reports on the digital workplace and employee experience at their respective companies, StepTwo & ClearBox Consulting, leveraged by organizations globally.
We also have two incredible Microsoft MVPs, our CTO, Richard Harbridge, and Visual SP CEO and Founder, Asif Rehmani (@asifrehmani). Asif's company has been helping managers improve the EX with their application for years
Our virtual event is divided into three sessions:
Whatever area you need to understand better, we're sure to cover it in one of the three sessions. However, we highly recommend watching all three for the complete picture.
Have you ever wanted to ask leading industry experts a particular question you don't feel ever gets answered? Each session has a block of time dedicated to Q&A, so get your questions ready!
We hope to see you at the event! Register here.
Our CEO and Microsoft MVP, Kanwal Khipple, is back for Episode 8 of M365 Digital Workplace Updates! Take a look at all the amazing Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace Updates that have been released since our last update.
The Digital Employee Experience is all about going above and beyond to treat your employees like people, not numbers, and leveraging technology to help amplify and facilitate that objective. Since hybrid or fully remote workplaces emphasize the digital environment and de-emphasize the physical environment, there's never been a more important time to invest in digital employee experiences.
Maybe you think looking at the Employee Experience as a people-first experience is intuitively obvious. Or maybe it’s the first time you’re taking a step back from the important distractions that come with managing and maintaining these processes and solutions, to realize and look at the human element. Regardless, helping the humans behind the machines is at the core of a great employee experience and doing right by that is crucial in today’s extremely competitive job market.
Luckily, companies are waking up to the importance of improving employee experience (EX). Why have company alarms started ringing? The people, of course!
52% of people in North America are now more likely to choose their health and wellbeing overwork after the pandemic. Before this, organizations have had to ramp up on a trend that was already gaining momentum pre-pandemic.
In this blog, we will look at the employee experience through the lens of the people and how Microsoft has reacted to the change and can help.
However, if you’re also looking for insight into where EX is headed and how to keep up effectively, join us for our virtual event with 4 internationally recognized expert-led sessions on employee communication, collaboration, and management.
It can be easy to focus on strategy but that sometimes accidentally leads to tactics that don’t leave you focusing on the employees you're supposed to enable. And if we look at the image below, we see that there are several points to consider.
We dive deep into modern Employee Experience in our recent blog “What Is Employee Experience & Why It Matters?” which looks at a lot more than what it is, in addition to answering the question.
At the end of that blog, and in our dedicated blog on the Stage of Employee Experience, we map out the path employees take along their journey at an organization.
Make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your employees across all of the 8 various stages of the Employee Experience.
Here are some questions for your internal EX think tank:
Those were just some quick questions we hope will help get you started on your path to more unique questions, people in your organization might be experiencing.
We promise that all this work is worth it! Having people at the forefront of your Employee Experience plans is not only beneficial for your employees but for the organization itself. Research from Microsoft’s Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work proves that there are clear benefits to thriving relations within and outside your direct team.
Strong relationships lead to a more optimistic and happier workforce. Now, it’s up to your organization to deliver. Here to help you do that is Microsoft Viva. But first a couple of short paragraphs on why this matters to Microsoft.
Back in 2017, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, released his book titled, “Hit Refresh.” In his book, he discussed increasing synergy between the different departments and solutions at Microsoft. In addition, and among many other things, he discussed his aspirations to improve the future of digital business communication and collaboration.
Last year, on February 4th, after accomplishing many of his goals, Satya took another step forward toward his long-term aspirations. On that day, he said,
"Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we are ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and to help them thrive in this new era of flexible work."
Satya Nadella @satyanadella
This statement was part of the Microsoft Viva announcement. The new, growing suite of applications is dedicated to improving the future of the employee experience through a more robust digital workplace.
Microsoft offers several ways for employers to increase collaboration across the organization. There are several components to an improved employee experience.
Here are a few are examples:
Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps employers improve several of the above points.
The following are the four Viva applications:
Discover more about each feature application.
Viva Learning combines learning opportunities into everyday workflows. It allows employers to include learning and development throughout established processes.
It also allows for personalized recommendations. This means employees get a more customized experience and opportunities are based on career path goals, A personal touch can really elevate the employee experience, so try to find the best ways to leverage them.
Viva Learning also allows employers to use content from other sources. You can centralize your entire learning and development process in one hub. This leads to more efficiency and a more organizated digital workplace.
Viva Insights is focused on promoting productivity and well-being. It uses data-driven insights to make recommendations directly on the platform.
This feature also gives managers and employees a look into personal metrics. Employees can learn better and more effective ways of working with the recommendations. This capability also allows managers to improve the company culture.
It gives insights about teams that provide valuable guidance in decisions.
Viva Topics is fundamentally a knowledge base for employees, but can do so much with that information. This application organizes content and expertise across the entire company. It makes finding the answer to a question or getting help a fast and easy process.
Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify, sort, and organize content. The employee experience would benefit greatly from this information source.
Viva Connections promotes transparent communications across the organization. It consolidates news, topics, and conversations into existing technology. Open communications empower, inspire, and engage employees.
Viva Connections is especially beneficial for hybrid or remote work environments. Employees can feel disconnected from team members in a remote setting. By enabling an easy communication platform, the employee experience levels up.
An employee experience platform can connect teams virtually. This is a great solution for companies with hybrid or remote working models. This type of platform integrates many tools and activities.
Viva streamlines employee engagement and processes. The platform offers many features and benefits for employees. Those include:
Learn more about each feature below.
Streamlined communications with employees improved the digital employee experience. As discussed above, Microsoft Viva makes communicating with team members easy.
Viva offers actionable and personalized insights. It uses data about how employees work and recommends ways to do it better. This leads to more efficiency and productivity among team members.
Employees can see insight into where how they perform. And what areas need improvement. This is especially important when combined with goal tracking.
Employee experience platforms enable businesses to gain feedback from employees. This not only helps businesses create a better experience but also increases satisfaction. Stop trying to guess what employees need or want and go directly to the source with this feature.
An organization can align its goals and vision with this platform. The insights feature allows companies an inside look at how employees perform. And the relation with overarching goals.
Viva allows others to send praise about other employees. This option is through communication channels or can be sent in a private message. Sending regular praise and recognition will make employees feel more valued and appreciated.
Microsoft Viva has mindfulness features. There is an animated breathing break. This allows employees to take a brief moment to reset and refocus.
Viva also has a partnership with Headspace. Headspace offers guided meditations. When people apply mindfulness techniques, the experience will be more memorable.
Microsoft Viva enables in-app scheduling and reminders. Having lots of different applications or systems to use can impact the experience. Employees can get overwhelmed. Companies can make employee functions streamlined and more efficient with one comprehensive platform.
Viva has a feature for employees to set their status as do not disturb. This will allow them to focus without any distractions. This can be beneficial when there are many emails and chats to respond to throughout the day.
We would love to see you at our upcoming event dedicated to the Future of Employee Experience. Join us for 3 expert-led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future-proof your organization.
Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent 7 stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. While all are important, two areas many orgs underestimate how much they can influence are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.
We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.
Focusing on the employee experience can feel like a daunting task when reviewing the many different stages. This blog will help you understand how the different stages impact employee-related business outcomes and how to gain competitive advantages if actioned.
However, suppose you aren't too familiar with employee experience as a concept. In that case, we strongly suggest you read our blog that answers, "What is the employee experience, and why does it matter?"
Still with us? Excellent! Let's dive in.
The following are the 8 stages we will be reviewing. Understanding and improving these stages can lead to a positive employee experience, from beginning to post-departure.
This stage in the employee experience is often underestimated, or not enough time and effort is spent. If EX is tackled well, there will be significant benefits to the pre-recruitment or attracting step in an employee's journey. Still, if we forget to engage here, it can lead to missing out on some of the best talents the industry has to offer.
For many companies, when you think of your brand, you think of how it relates to attracting more customers or increasing customer loyalty. In this same way, we need to consider how our brand, purpose, and culture should attract more employees and increase employee loyalty. Workplaces today are highly transparent, especially as it relates to what the employee experience is like within your organization. Internal employee experiences can significantly impact your organization's external reputation and the signals for what your organization stands for make highly valuable talent interested.
In the recruitment step, the second employee experience stage, it is essential to have an excellent EX that aligns with your cultural environment.
Every hiring process should be clear, engaging, and fair for the new hire. As a result, we need to ensure that the employee experience is supported by transparency, streamlined processes, high manager and peer engagement, and uses objective evaluations that help predict fair expectations and optimal performance and balance out manager bias.
If a train is stopped, it is very easy to get on. However, jumping on a moving train can prove, well, difficult. The same scenario, minus the bumps and bruises, can be applied to organizations. Very few employees typically agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding and the reason is because moving trains are hard to board. Of course, there are ways to improve this but the following number shouldn't surprise you.
Only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organizations do a great job onboarding new employees.
Gallup
Successful onboarding employee experiences need to start before the first day of employment. At the same time, onboarding shouldn't end in the first week either. Every onboarding process should engage the employee and shouldn't be focused on one-way communication.
This engaged onboarding should be evident in the employee experience, whether it be helping employees socialize with their team, understanding how the organization functions, or learning its purpose and where their team and contributions fit in.
Engagement is how we sustain a vital connection between the employee and their workplace. Employee engagement is about more than making sure employees are satisfied with where they work. Instead, it's about ensuring they have the right conditions to give their best each day, are committed to the organization's goals and values and are motivated to contribute to its success.
This is based on a two-way commitment between the organization and the employee and can often be measured based on employee experience.
When supporting this step of the employee experience, it is important not to emphasize perks over relationships. A manager who is engaged in coaching, keeping the organization accountable, and focusing on the individual's potential and growth all matter far more than workplace perks or programs will.
So, our employee experience investments here have to foster the right outcomes as there are big mistakes companies can make here. The manipulation of an employees' commitments or emotions should be avoided at all costs, as it can lead to employees becoming cynical or disillusioned, leading to poor business performance.
Take a look at this video on how employee engagement has evolved and staying connected in a hybrid world to make sure your approach this stage responsibly.
This is about more than just an annual performance evaluation. Performance evaluation is a core part of the employee experience. It is optimal when done more regularly (at least quarterly), combined and based on informal feedback (for a complete picture), and includes significant praise and recognition. This should be driven by peers and managers.
It should be reflective of individual achievement and a comprehensive review that incorporates impact on others, the impact others have had on them, whether that be team collaboration, organizational impact, or a measure of customer and partner value.
It is easy to think of this step of employee experience being represented by the training offered by an organization. However, improving outcomes in this step of the employee experience require us to think of development more comprehensively.
Employees need to be engaged (a parallel step mentioned earlier), and they need to be able to see a path of growth in the organization. That growth might include job title changes, pay raises, new skills, doing less of what they don't like, working with new people, having more autonomy, and/or more support.
This is often heavily supported through ongoing coaching conversations and led by peers, managers, and business leaders. These ongoing coaching opportunities may take the form of short discussions measured in minutes to deeper and more structured feedback from peers, managers, or self-reviews.
Make sure your on top of corporate communication by understanding how its changed, in our video below.
This stage can be one of the most impactful events in the employee experience. More so, arguably, than any other for the employee. The departure is a great opportunity to have an exiting employee help us understand what the employee experience has been like, how it could be improved, and their perceptions of the organization.
Every exit program always works to meet the needs of an employee being heard, their feedback being actioned, being appreciated for the work they have done, and being seen for the potential they possess. The last item of potential importance, as it leads to a stronger post departure or alumni stage, is ensuring that even if it didn't feel like it was the right fit for either side, the engagement ends on the right foot.
This process can potentially lead to better chances of re-recruitment or positively supporting future recruitment efforts.
Each departed employee should be seen as a brand ambassador. They either bolster, harm, or are neutral to your organization's reputation.
Investing in a departed employee's experience is a great way to increase the long term likelihood of them returning or helping positively influence your recruitment efforts to find top talents that align with your organization's culture, purpose, and brand.
As your cultural environment, technology environment, or the physical work environment changes, finding ways to inform these alumni can be extremely valuable. An employee may depart due to one or more of those environments not meeting their needs.
Now that you understand the 8 stages of employee experience and its importance, we’re here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help improve employee satisfaction by showcasing solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s employee experience in a series of webinars that have been building to our half-day event.
3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.
Last week we explored 5 mistakes to avoid with Christian Buckley, and today, our very own Richard Harbridge is tackling another 3 #Microsoft365Management mistakes he's encountered frequently.
Microsoft RD and 10X MVP, Christian Buckley, spends most of his time as the Brand Alliance Director for AvePoint. Today, and in our upcoming webinar (link below), he joins us to review 5 Microsoft 365 management mistakes he often sees.
When managing Microsoft 365, a complex suite of apps and services is something almost every organization must tackle and is a daunting task for any Microsoft 365 admin or aspiring Microsoft 365 manager. If you are one of these people, don't worry, you aren't alone. With over 300 million paid commercial Office 365 seats, there is no shortage of peers and customers struggling with this subject.
While there is excellent material on learning how to approach Microsoft 365 management, there is not enough around the mistakes many administrators make or the essential office 365 management tools every admin should be empowered with.
So when we asked customers, researchers, Microsoft, and industry leaders what the top questions they get from active and aspiring Microsoft 365 administrators are, and there were three that stood out:
While we intend to take a deeper look at these particular questions and more in an upcoming webinar, we thought it would be interesting to share a few of the incorrect responses or assumptions we see, and highlight why answering questions like these the right way matters.
One mistake we see organizations make is assuming there can be a 'primary manager' or admin for Microsoft 365. It's important to remember that Microsoft 365 is a suite of apps and services designed and evolving to meet ever-changing business needs. The work and domain expertise involved in managing employee experiences, collaboration, communication, process automation, work management, business insights/analytics, knowledge management, digital learning, and productivity is more significant than anyone can ever manage alone.
Having an office 365 admin is necessary but insufficient if there aren't support systems, specialists, vendors, and stakeholders engaged and involved. Since the scale and breadth of Microsoft 365 is so large each application or service has its own set of governance and management considerations. While you can pattern across these apps and services such as how you plan on tackling the provisioning of digital spaces such as SharePoint sites, Microsoft Teams and Yammer communities even that becomes more complicated as Microsoft release Shared Channels and Microsoft Loop this year.
Every organization changes over time. Sometimes in significant ways, such as when mergers and acquisitions occur, and sometimes in subtle ways as customers, partners, or employees tackle problems better and more efficiently. The biggest challenge to Microsoft 365 is when we don't adapt our digital workplace implementations, the configuration of our apps and services, or change user behaviors to proactively or effectively meet the changing demands in time.
A simple example of this could be an organization with legacy technology investments holding up organizational agility and delaying the transformation to a better experience in Microsoft 365. Instead of migrating and optimizing content simultaneously (leading to significantly longer migration project durations and more risk of scope creep), it is often more cost-effective and vital to migrate as soon as possible and optimize in Microsoft 365 itself.
Better Office 365 management tools, easier ways to restructure and optimize content, richer content insights, and content automation capabilities available in Microsoft 365 accelerate the work and costs involved in improving how people work with content. By migrating first and optimizing second, we can ensure ROI is achieved faster by enabling these modern experiences for more people and more work scenarios sooner.
This one may be surprising to some, but it shouldn't be. Today more than 90% of enterprise customers have a multi-cloud strategy. But those same customers are challenged with protecting data and providing integrated experiences across clouds and platforms.
An easy mistake to avoid is assuming that Microsoft 365 isn't designed to support multi-cloud enterprise organizations. There are pathways to better multi-cloud and multi-tenant experiences for customers with significant Microsoft 365 investments across logical and differentiated business lines.
There are plenty of investments on the front-end with a wide array of connectors and connections, including Microsoft Search connectors, Microsoft Teams connectors, Power Automate connectors, and Microsoft Viva (in connections dashboards and feeds or learning and insights) to name a few.
These investments aren't limited to end-user or employee experiences. These investments include complimentary ones on the 'back end' in Azure such as Azure Arc for multi-cloud infrastructure to ones that enable you to remain in compliance with Microsoft 365 data connectors that can import third-party data to ensure that your organization's non-Microsoft data complies with the regulations standards that affect your organization.
There is so much to know and understand related to Microsoft 365 administration, but exploring the answers to questions is always valuable and can provide new perspectives.
Take a look at what Microsoft RD + MVP and Brand Alliance Director at AvePoint, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), had to briefly say about Microsoft 365 management, before our webinar.
Do you want to see Richard (@rharbridge) and Christian in an information filled webinar on Microsoft 365 Management? Watch our on-demand webinar.
92% of employers have identified that enhancing the employee experience is an important priority and plan to improve employee experiences within the next three years. So, with so many organizations prioritizing EX, it is essential to understand what is employee experience, why it matters, and how it impacts an organization.
In this blog, we will help you understand:
If you're looking for examples around the employee experience, watch our recent webinars or register for our upcoming webinar and virtual half-day event.
Employee experience relates to the impact a workplace has on an employee. The experience is made up of every touchpoint and interaction an employee has in an organization. This can range from human interactions to how a system works.
Employee experience encompasses several aspects. Some include:
Employees have more expectations of employers than ever before. An employee wants to be engaged and feel like their job makes an impact and that an organization values them. They also desire career progression and development opportunities.
The employee experience is more important than ever for employers to consider. Today, employers are competing for employees more than ever before, and employees are rethinking what they should expect from their employers.
Luckily, companies are waking up and prioritizing the employee experience more than ever.
"… we're seeing a "great EX awakening" — one that has 92% of organizations prioritizing EX enhancements over the next three years. This figure is up from 52% prior to the pandemic."
- 2021 Employee Experience Survey Highlights - WTW (wtwco.com)
So, how do you create a great employee experience? What steps are needed to adjust operations to incorporate an employee experience strategy? In his book "The Employee Experience Advantage," Jacob Morgan has led the way with great explanations for how these interwoven and reinforcing environments might be broken down, so let's use that as our foundation.
Businesses should focus on three main areas or environments that impact employee experience:
When we approach employee experience, it's important to consider what we can change and influence. At the end of the day, an organization is responsible for improving the work environment so that employees can have the best experience. These environments are interwoven and all-important, but with the continued shift towards hybrid work, the importance of a physical workplace environment has decreased, and the importance of cultural and technological advantage has become more evident.
Company culture is how connected teams feel within an organization. Culture also represents how employees feel about the company and how customers perceive a business. A great, positive culture can create a great reputation for a business.
Culture is grounded in shared values, visible in day-to-day practices, exemplified by words of leaders and managers, and actuated in the organization's processes and structure - the "vibe" of the workplace.
Companies should create a culture around making employees feel valued and appreciated, which will go a long way in developing a better employee experience. Employers should align the organizational vision and experience strategy with cultural values. Doing this the right way can impact motivation, performance, and satisfaction.
The problem with the cultural environment is that many see it as largely intangible, and thereby while it can influence employee experience, it can be harder to action.
Technology and tools make work easier in most industries. It's just a fact. So, companies should think of how digital enhancements will impact their employees and improve the employee experience.
Technological environments that impact the employee experience include technologies like hardware and software, but it also sometimes includes technologies represented as methodologies such as Agile.
Technological or digital advancements will streamline operations and make employees more efficient. Leveraging technology will also improve productivity. Employees can worry less about mundane tasks and more about the important, revenue-generating duties.
Tackling the technology or digital employee experience can be done by thinking about it as a set of complementary digital experiences working together. Each requires effective software, services, and systems to improve the employee experience.
When we consider the technological environment, we break this down into three key categories of digital employee experience:
As a brief example, consider how the hybrid work experience is multi-faceted with communication, collaboration and management, all having different digital tools and ways they impact or enhance culture and the physical environment.
Historically, the office environment was where organizations had the greatest degree of control. Now, for many organizations, that has now changed as work environments do not have to be in an office any longer. The COVID-19 pandemic proved many companies could easily move to a remote or hybrid model and employers and employees took note.
When companies allow employees more flexibility in working, a greater experience is created. If working at an office is a must, employers should make sure the environment is positive and allows for efficiency. Transitions into hotelling and collaborative spaces that provide an experience that complements a hybrid or remote workforce are especially important today.
Employees take note of employers who also work to improve employee home working environments or physical environments they work in. From ergonomic consulting to perk/purchase programs to provide employees the hardware, furniture, or assets they need even when working remotely, employees have their eyes open.
We elaborated on the digital employee experience the most above because today, it is where the most significant and accessible change is made possible. Cultural environments are as important as ever, and the emphasis on physical environments has transitioned towards greater emphasis on digital environments.
What's more, the marketplace has accelerated offerings and capabilities in this space tremendously over the past few years.
A great employee experience in a digital environment is empowering. Employees with positive experiences are more likely to stay loyal to a company. When an organization uses a remote or hybrid model of work, having an effective digital employee experience platform is a must if you expect engaged employees.
Remote work can leave employees feeling disconnected if not done correctly. Businesses can mitigate this with a digital workplace focused on culture and collaboration.
Employees want meaningful work with a purpose. And the impact of employee experience can make or break an organization. Those will bad experiences have higher turnover and less productivity.
A great employee experience benefits not only workers but also the organization. Engaged and satisfied employees are more productive and happier to be at work.
Key benefits include:
You can learn more about each of these benefits below.
Satisfied and happy employees tend to be more productive. And higher productivity leads to better performance. Employees are a key aspect of a successful organization, so creating a positive experience for them is vital.
When employees have the systems and tools to make their jobs easier, they will have higher engagement ratings. When employees are engaged, performance will increase and improve.
Absenteeism rates are higher when an employee really dislikes a work environment or culture. Companies can mitigate this problem by focusing the entire culture on a great employee experience.
Engaged and happy employees are satisfied. Satisfaction increases when workers don't have to struggle to do their jobs due to ineffective systems. And when the culture focuses on them as individuals, satisfaction increases.
When you add all of this together, you get higher-quality work. When employees are happy with their jobs, the quality of their work increases alongside their happiness.
Employers should consider a few different aspects of an employee's experience. To get a clear picture, companies have to look at all activities. When assessing the success of a business's initiatives, consider the following:
Are employees impacted positively in all these areas? Do they understand their purpose within the organization? That's the first step to driving success across the other areas.
Leaders should have a strong strategy and employee experience management practices. There are several ways to strengthen employee experience across an organization. Those include:
Discover the impact on employee experience for each of these components below.
A little empathy can go a long way with employees. Consider the employee experience from an employee's perspective. A lot of employees leave organizations due to management teams without empathy.
So, be authentic. Think of employees as human beings with lives outside of work. And add a personal touch when communicating with workers.
As discussed above, workers want flexibility. If possible, add this to your working model. Remote options make employees happier and more productive.
Before deciding on how to improve the employee experience, ask employees what they'd like to see changed. Going straight to the source before making changes will save time and money. And experiences will improve because you'll be resolving specific concerns.
Also discussed above, a better culture focused on valuing employees is an important step. Small changes to the company culture can go a long way in improving employee experiences.
Employees want to grow and advance in their careers. Offering more learning opportunities enables employees to strengthen their skills. This leads to a better experience.
Allow management teams to discuss career paths and give employees the time and resources needed to meet their goals is a must.
Employees want to understand their purpose in the organization. And feel like they belong. Creating a culture focused on value and collaboration will help employees feel a sense of belonging.
There are several ways to improve employee experience with a few simple tweaks to existing processes. When considering how to best approach employee experience, it is important to look at the entire employee experience cycle.
Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent seven stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. Two areas many orgs underestimate how much influence they have on are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.
We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.
The 8 stages of an employee lifecycle include:
Keep a lookout for our blogs dedicated to tips on improving the employee experience based on each stage of the journey and another dedicated to the employee experience framework.
Now that you understand digital employee experience and its importance, we're here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help you navigate to better EX by showcasing solutions for today's and tomorrow's employee experience in our webinar series that has been building to our half-day event.
3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.
Microsoft Ignite is full of incredible announcements around improvements to what Microsoft is planning to offer in the not-so-distant future. While Ignite the Tour was missed by many worldwide for another year, we did have two incredible Microsoft Ignites, packed with new and exciting innovations.
With much of the business world learning the advantages and how to optimize hybrid workplaces, it was evident that Microsoft would develop so much to provide answers and solutions to a lot of the world's questions and needs.
The desire and need for change don't only come from C-Level executives in need of adapting their business models. 58% percent of employees want to go back to the office to do more focused work and, the same percentage of individuals wish to continue to work from home for the same reason.
Our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, put together a few videos to highlight some of the more innovative and economic Ignite highlights that might allow your company to see the power of an up-to-date Microsoft 365 suite. These will make the shift to a hybrid workplace not only easier but more economical.
This blog will look at the highlights in two categories: financial & innovative wins.
If you want to understand what it would take to migrate or upgrade to Microsoft 365, register for our free webinar with our incredible partner AvePoint.
Microsoft continues to get better at understand how price Microsoft Viva, and Power Apps just became a lot more practical.
If we told you that the most exciting Power Apps news was around pricing, would you find that hard to believe?
This change means a big barrier is removed for many organizations looking to do more with Power Apps. We asked Richard about it and he shared some insights on what the change of pricing is and why it matters.
Microsoft Viva pricing has already improved, and another improvement is on the way, the Microsoft Viva bundle! Learn what that means for organizations leveraging Viva and newcomers alike.
From breaking down a huge Microsoft Teams barrier to a promise kept in the form of a new solution, the innovation was incredible this Ignite. Here are two we thought you would want to know more about.
Microsoft Teams Channels are an incredible aspect of Microsoft Teams and they are about to get even better with Shared Channels! If you haven’t heard of shared channels in Teams, be sure to watch this video where you will also get a better understanding of its potential impact on sprawl.
New apps mean new governance considerations (like Microsoft Loop) but subtle announcements like shared channels can have sweeping consequences. We asked Richard for his perspective on this and what it means for sprawl and governance.
Download our eBook to get ahead of the most common sprawl issues that plague Microsoft 365 digital workplaces everywhere.
Microsoft Ignite November 2021 was full of announcements. However, Microsoft Loop stood out from the crowd in a big way! If you need want to understand the solution, this next video is for you.
Microsoft has exploded in the past couple years with speedy and impactful innovation! If you are looking for all of the most important updates from November's Ignite, keep an eye out for a special episode of David Francoeur's ongoing M365 Digital Workplace Updates series coming out next week.
Also, don't forget to find out how to plan and execute your SharePoint upgrade and/or migration in a webinar with our incredible partner AvePoint. This webinar will help make sure that your switch or upgrade to the most recent version of Microsoft 365 goes as smoothly as possible.
Since its inception in November 2016, Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate have focused on the mandate to help organizations support business transformation. They provide a foundation that empowers the non-IT user to take their day to day activities and automate their business processes.
Let’s take a quick tour to meet the members of the Power Platform family.
Power Apps supports organizations to create responsive user interfaces to capture and present information in various devices and connect to data sources - obtaining or sending information.
There are 3 main ways to create custom apps with Power Apps:
With canvas apps, the world is your oyster! You have an empty canvas (pun intended!) to design your app just the way you want to. This may be a bit daunting at first, however, if you start from an existing data source (say, a SharePoint List for example) Power Apps is smart enough to give you a head start and create starter screens for you to browse the list, view or create/edit new items.
For model-driven apps, the focus is on the data itself and the business process around it. Instead of designing how the screen will look, you define the entities, business flows, forms, views, and/or dashboards around a specific business process. Model-Driven apps use the Common Data Service as the data repository for your entities.
Power App Portals, also part of Power Apps, is one of the (old) new kids on the block that comes to provide a fresh new take on building external-facing portals for your organization.
Portals provide the means to create low/no-code responsive websites. These websites cant can be used with any major commercial (think Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or enterprise login provider (such as your own local credentials or work accounts such as your Office 365 account) and presents the user with a simple WYSIWYG interface to create static and dynamic web site pages based on information stored in the Common Data Service.
A few highlights of Power Apps Portals include:
Power Automate on the other hand provides the ability to automate workflows that orchestrate business processes that gather data from disparate systems, make decisions and or transform the data into actionable tasks that can affect services in and out of the Office 365 or Microsoft ecosystem.
Based on actions, triggers, and conditions, you can build flows that run on a schedule or are triggered by an action (such as receiving an email, tweets from an account, a message from other systems, etc.). Once the flow is running, you can take action by reading the initial data from the trigger, manipulate it, make decisions based on it and act on other systems, for example, saving a new item into a SharePoint List, sending out an email, creating an approval task, etc.
Over 300 connectors are available for you to compose your flows in Power automate!
As you build new Power Apps or Power Automate flows there will be times where you want the power of artificial intelligence to support you in parts of the process. AI Builder provides capabilities to easily implement predictive AI capabilities that can speed up decision making based on historical data.
Currently, in preview, there are additional capabilities to explore around object detection (identifying and counting items on an image), forms processing (read and capture information in standardized forms for digitizing the content of the form) and text processing. These capabilities can support you to identify key trends and/or categorize content based on your business needs.
Let’s not forget their older but also quite powerful cousin, Power BI. A suite of tools (desktop client, web client, and the Power BI service) released in July 2011 that have grown to be a key resource for building interactive reports and dashboard experiences.
I mentioned earlier the Common Data Service, or CDS for short, is a cloud data repository that is primarily leveraged by the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of tools (and the Power Platform, of course ) which can also be used to create your own custom entities to store your company data.
CDS provides a robust security mechanism that can help you secure your data and provide appropriate access to each group that needs it. CDS is based on the Common Data Model schema and a standard set of entities that Microsoft has defined and is aligning with others such as Adobe and SAP as part of the Open Data Initiative. Another key benefit of the CDS is that it doesn’t need any infrastructure or administration, it is all managed by Microsoft.
For those at home (see what I did there?), with the use of the Data Access Gateway, organizations can also connect to local services and information stores to effectively report on data sources (local SQL Server instances, SharePoint lists, and libraries, etc.) stored on-premises as well as create/update information in them in Power Apps or Power Automate.
For a while, that’s all we had… Until now!
The main premise of Power Virtual Agents is to support subject matter experts to create, manage and optimize chatbots by providing a no-code, easy to use interface that allows users to define topics where the bot can assist by providing accurate responses and even initiate a process by integrating with a Power Automate Flow.
The interface also supports quick testing of the bot and provides a dashboard with various key metrics to assess the engagement and effectiveness of the bot’s configured topics.
This is a game-changer, as previously it required a highly specialized team of IT, Data Scientists, Developers, and AI experts to have a baseline bot experience built and released.
Once you are done testing, you can easily publish your bot to a website (for external use), Microsoft Teams, or Facebook. With a few more additional steps, you can extend the reach to other canvases by using Azure Bot Service channels, allowing you to other services such as Skype, Kik, or Slack to name a few.
Now that you are more familiar with the capabilities of the Power Platform, it will become easier to identify areas where these pieces can support your team to automate and make decisions day-to-day.
One key step towards your journey to business process improvement starts with understanding what the process actually looks like. Very few processes are accurately documented (if at all) and it is key to map out the business process, inputs, and outcomes before automation work should start. There are also various methodologies for mapping and optimizing business processes, one of which is the value stream mapping exercise, one of the tools of Lean methodology.
Would you like to learn more? Have you identified a key business process that you can automate and transform the way you work? Reach out to us, we will be happy to support you on your journey towards business improvement.
Wait... what group was that document stored in? Is this the latest information or over a year old? Hold on... they've created how many sites? Do any of those questions sound familiar? Well, you may be fighting one of Digital Workplace governance's greatest enemies, unmanaged sprawl of documents, sites and groups!
Sprawl is something that even the finest of digital workplaces have to work with - to some degree. However, the longer sprawl goes unchecked, the more difficult it becomes to remedy it. While this blog will provide a quick overview of why it is important and some of the common issues you may encounter if kept unmanaged, tomorrow we team up with our incredible solutions partner, AvePoint, for a free 1-hour webinar.
If any of the following points resonate with you, this webinar is big win for your digital workplace governance strategy.
Now, let's take a closer look at what sprawl is and why it matters.
Inside your organization, content, communities, teams, groups, and sites grow over time. This is a positive result of digital adoption. As those digital workspaces grow in usage, volume, and variety, it can be challenging to manage and understand how the technology is leveraged, by whom, and where.
Organizations often have difficulty understanding digital workspaces because they are not given high enough priority at the start. As a result, organizations often only know who created the workspace, when it was created, and what it is used for.
For many organizations, the barrier to better management and support is due to a lack of understanding. Lack of insight leads to the sprawl being classified as “unmanaged sprawl.” Transitioning to “managed sprawl” is the number one focus of effective IT Governance for the Digital Workplace.
For many organizations, the sprawl of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint sites, Yammer communities, and more is unavoidable, and potentially even something to celebrate as it indicates adoption. But unmanaged sprawl leads to many issues.
Every organization is unique, but somethings remains the same, like every organization is at risk of letting sites, teams, communities, and groups get out of hand. Fast-growing businesses are especially at risk of letting this happen because they often have new technology rolled out quickly without planning. They also often don't have enough resources and expertise to manage the new technology.
While some of these issues may seem self-evident or obvious, fast-paced technology and business landscapes do not always permit us to determine our most significant issues or where the issues originated, often due to time. Even once you identify the issues, some problems may seem simple. However, solving them may take understanding and expertise, which your organization doesn’t have, or sufficient time and attention your organization may not have due to other urgent ongoing business and technology operations.
For these reasons, we have taken the time to share insights on the top and most common issues, in our eBook on the subject. We hope that it helps your organization prioritize and highlight the importance of effectively managing sprawl.
Strong governance is an essential aspect to the strength and stability of modern digital workspaces everywhere. That is why we have multiple ways to help you improve it. Take a look at our eBook for a sprawl specific lessons or if you are looking for a greater discussion around Governance, watch out webinar with AvePoint.
Microsoft Ignite is full of incredible announcements around improvements to what Microsoft is planning to offer in the not-so-distant future. While Ignite the Tour was missed by many worldwide for another year, we did have two incredible Microsoft Ignites, packed with new and exciting innovations.
With much of the business world learning the advantages and how to optimize hybrid workplaces, it was evident that Microsoft would develop so much to provide answers and solutions to a lot of the world's questions and needs.
The desire and need for change don't only come from C-Level executives in need of adapting their business models. 58% percent of employees want to go back to the office to do more focused work and, the same percentage of individuals wish to continue to work from home for the same reason.
Our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, put together a few videos to highlight some of the more innovative and economic Ignite highlights that might allow your company to see the power of an up-to-date Microsoft 365 suite. These will make the shift to a hybrid workplace not only easier but more economical.
This blog will look at the highlights in two categories: financial & innovative wins.
If you want to understand what it would take to migrate or upgrade to Microsoft 365, register for our free webinar with our incredible partner AvePoint.
Microsoft continues to get better at understand how price Microsoft Viva, and Power Apps just became a lot more practical.
If we told you that the most exciting Power Apps news was around pricing, would you find that hard to believe?
This change means a big barrier is removed for many organizations looking to do more with Power Apps. We asked Richard about it and he shared some insights on what the change of pricing is and why it matters.
Microsoft Viva pricing has already improved, and another improvement is on the way, the Microsoft Viva bundle! Learn what that means for organizations leveraging Viva and newcomers alike.
From breaking down a huge Microsoft Teams barrier to a promise kept in the form of a new solution, the innovation was incredible this Ignite. Here are two we thought you would want to know more about.
Microsoft Teams Channels are an incredible aspect of Microsoft Teams and they are about to get even better with Shared Channels! If you haven’t heard of shared channels in Teams, be sure to watch this video where you will also get a better understanding of its potential impact on sprawl.
New apps mean new governance considerations (like Microsoft Loop) but subtle announcements like shared channels can have sweeping consequences. We asked Richard for his perspective on this and what it means for sprawl and governance.
Download our eBook to get ahead of the most common sprawl issues that plague Microsoft 365 digital workplaces everywhere.
Microsoft Ignite November 2021 was full of announcements. However, Microsoft Loop stood out from the crowd in a big way! If you need want to understand the solution, this next video is for you.
Microsoft has exploded in the past couple years with speedy and impactful innovation! If you are looking for all of the most important updates from November's Ignite, keep an eye out for a special episode of David Francoeur's ongoing M365 Digital Workplace Updates series coming out next week.
Also, don't forget to find out how to plan and execute your SharePoint upgrade and/or migration in a webinar with our incredible partner AvePoint. This webinar will help make sure that your switch or upgrade to the most recent version of Microsoft 365 goes as smoothly as possible.
Microsoft Teams is a leading product in business communication, collaboration and video conferencing. We have gone over the basics of managing a Team, you'll also need to know how to manage Microsoft Teams Channels.
The article below will provide step-by-step instructions on managing Microsoft Teams channels permissions, user capabilities, and team ownership. It will also walk through commonly used processes and troubleshooting.
If you think of Microsoft Teams as an office building, the different Teams would be the various companies, and the Channels would be the departments in each company.
A Channel is a section within a Team. It's used to organize conversations, files and can link to other applications and URLs.
Now that you are familiar with managing teams, members, and settings in Microsoft Teams, let's review Teams Channel permissions. There are two basic types of channels for Microsoft Teams. You can create private channels or a standard channels.
Standard channels in Teams or Private channels are accessible to a smaller group. Each Channel has a topic to help you stay organized with conversations, files, and Microsoft Teams meetings.
Manage your channels further by using the tabs at the top - files, apps, and services. Keep reading to learn about adding tabs, pinning channels, guests permissions, and moderator roles.
Tabs transform a Team from a simple, dedicated chat and file storage area to an entire digital workplace specific to the Channel.
To add channels, locate and select the plus sign next to your existing tabs. You can add tabs like Planner, Document, and Forms.
Are you having trouble keeping track of all your channels? You can pin your most frequently used channels for convenience.
To pin a channel select More channels, Pin.
To unpin the Channel, select More channels, Unpin.
To add a guest to your Teams page confirm that the individual has a Microsoft 365 account. If they don't, they can sign up for one for free using a valid email address.
Start by selecting Teams, More options, and Add Member. Enter the guest's email address. From there, you can edit guest information. Once you click Add, the guest will get an email with details about joining Microsoft Teams.
Before adjusting guest permissions, make sure that the person has been added to the team as a guest. Team owners set guest permissions for channels.
To see guest permissions in your Teams' Channel, select More options, Manage team, Settings, Guest permissions.
From there, you will see a list of potential guest permissions (i.e., enable channel creation). Check or uncheck permissions for guests.
Standard channels are not moderated, so any member or guest can post and reply. The team owner can add moderator(s) if they wish. The moderators can post, respond, react, as well as add and remove team members as moderators.
The team owner can turn on moderation to add a moderator or include existing team members as moderators. Click More options, Manage Channel. Locate Channel moderation and toggle to On. Once moderation is on, only moderators can begin new posts.
If you want to add or remove moderators select More options, Manage Channel. You will see Who are the moderators?, click Manage to add or remove moderators.
Missing owners can lead to several team issues, including abandoned teams, unmanaged teams, lack of accountability, and overall poor team support.
To make the most out of Teams and get the support you need from IT, every team should have an owner (preferably two). Owners of private channels within a team may not be members of the team, which prevents them from managing the Channel.
Within your organization, you can create policies for missing owners using Microsoft 365. Admin users can check team owners and view teams without owners. For more information on missing owners and Microsoft 365 features, check out these resources.
This article covered useful information regarding managing Microsoft Teams channel permissions, team settings, and user capabilities. If you are looking for tips on creating compelling Teams Channels, read our blog, but if you want to make sure you are getting the most out of your Microsoft team or you want more Teams examples, check out the user adoption resources we have on our website.
Microsoft Teams has seen usage grow exponentially over recent years, with around 250 million active users using the service. On top of recent exponential increases in active users, Microsoft Teams is proven to increase worker satisfaction by around 88%, when used correctly.
With every powerful solution comes the need to properly govern its workspaces and files. Microsoft Teams is no exception. If you want to make sure you are using it correctly, you are going to want to gain a greater understand of the lifecycle of a team!
While understanding the lifecycle of a team is an important start, there are many ways things can sprawl out of control. This article will overview the 4 stages of team lifecycle management but to understand the most common sprawl issues and how to solve them, you can download our eBook.
The lifecycle of a team can broken down into 4 stages.
Understanding how each of these stages work is crucial to proper Microsoft Teams governance.
Before a team is created, the first step on our journey is to request your team. There is plenty to do before you even add the members. Creating an engaging Microsoft team requires some research.
First things first: you have to set your goal. Determining the purpose of your team will guide you through every single stage of its lifecycle. Whatever the goal is, make sure to take note of it so that you can optimize towards it.
Once you know the goal, you can start compiling a list of who needs to be made a member. Anybody who's involved in the office 365 group or project will need to be added. A great tip for setting up your team is to try to make sure there are at least two team owners.
Below we have listed key elements you want to hit in the requesting stage.
You might choose to design your team from scratch. If you prefer not to do that or want your team format to match that of other projects, you can use an existing team as a template. Or, for an existing Microsoft 365 group, you can set up a team that will automatically include all of the members.
Whichever way you choose to do it, you have to know how you're going to undertake 'team' management from this point onwards. Keep in mind that there are over 20 ways to create a Microsoft 365 group and since any Microsoft 365 group could be 'teamified' this leads to challenges around how, when, and who creates teams. So often the use of a request, approval, and teams provisioning automation solution might be best (see more on this in our Sprawl eBook).
Once you have established your team add a few relevant channels to start with. These will grow over time but less is more and be strategic at the start.
Below we have listed key elements you want to hit in the provisioning stage.
This usage and optimization stage of the teams' lifecycle begins almost immediately after the setup. It describes the whole period in which the team is functioning at its optimum, helping your members work together.
During this stage is when most of the overseeing will be done. Managing a team in the usage and optimization stage primarily focuses on making sure that it is a positive contribution to the organization and work culture. This means exploring and experimenting as well as monitoring.
The most important thing a team manager can do during the usage and optimization stage of the team's life is to ensure it keeps helping progress rather than starting to hinder it. It can be hard to let go of a tool that has worked successfully but eventually, you may reach a natural endpoint for the team.
Below we have listed key elements you want to hit in the usage and optimization stage.
A vital part of closing a team is to give the members time to save important files and store the information they may need to contact one another for future work. There are several options available as to how you deal with a team that is at the end of its lifecycle.
Some important factors come into play concerning data and security. It is recommended that teams and channels that are no longer needed should be deleted if they contain sensitive or redundant information. There is no need for this to induce anxiety as that process for deletion could be multi-staged.
Once you have passed the notice period you gave to the members, you can delete the team or channel (or archive it in place via permissions or migrate it).
Forget something? For both a team and channel, no problem, at least for the first 30 days after the initial soft delete. This should be enough time to determine that you have all of the necessary information saved elsewhere and the team can be fully erased.
Be aware that deleting a channel does not necessarily remove folders or contents from other areas of the Microsoft 365 suite: this may have to be done separately. If necessary, you can choose to employ expiration or retention policies - more information about when these might be useful can be found here. Keep in mind that while these are a great starting point many organizations go beyond these with their own disposition processes for more escalation control, additional approvals, more steps for the disposition, and more.
Below we have listed key elements you want to hit in the closure, expiration and disposition stage.
Looking for more help with lifecycle management? Watch the video below from our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, and/or find additional ways to stay on top of your digital workplace by downloading our eBook from the link in the section below.
When groups, sites, teams, files and documents continue to grow, there are many ways your digital workplace can easily sprawl out of control. In fact, Digital Workplace sprawl is a common issue that many organizations face.
To help you understand its impact on your digital workplace, we have compiled 8 of the most common issues we have encountered and provided insight into how to solve them.
Industry | Law |
Org Size | 500 + |
Technologies | Microsoft 365 Azur SharePoint Microsoft Teams OneDrive |
2toLead recently worked with one of Atlantic Canada's largest regional law firms. They reached out to us for guidance on using SharePoint Online to share information with external users, primarily their clients.
They were curious to explore the use of SharePoint Online for their clients and ensure they had easy and secure access while experiencing the platform. The team was particularly interested in the key areas that would help them secure access, ensure sensitive information was protected, and learn how to guarantee the configuration needed for Extranet sites was repeatable to keep compliant and maintain consistency.
The law firm was looking for a team that had the same philosophies around innovating and customer excellence. 2toLead was a great choice given our extensive experience building Intranet and Extranet portals as well as our breadth and depth of knowledge in the Microsoft 365 platform. The client's primary need was to move towards building an extranet service based on SharePoint Online that integrates with other systems for a more cohesive client experience. Join us in taking a look at the journey we took to better governed and more secure sharing.
To determine the team's specific needs, we began our journey by holding a series of discovery sessions. These interactive discussions centered on governance, security, and compliance. The team was highly engaged and keen to learn what is possible in the platform, so we peeled back the various layers of Microsoft 365. We did this to ensure we had a common understanding of the platform's possibilities and gain user needs and insights that would drive our recommendations towards what specific areas needed to be defined and configured.
While the storefront for an extranet based on Office 365 is traditionally a SharePoint Extranet, we reviewed the different areas where the platform is malleable to configure a safe and secure collaboration experience. Along the way, we dove in to discuss Azure Active Directory, Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint, and OneDrive external sharing. We also looked at relevant policies and settings in Microsoft Teams to ensure proper coverage of the many ways one can collaborate and share with others.
The team was particularly interested in the platform's federation and single sign-on capabilities (as they were using a third-party solution to accomplish this goal. A more extensive and organization-specific analysis was done to identify the level of support and effort to migrate the SSO capability from the third-party platform to Azure Active Directory.
In isolation, these capabilities allow us to configure the main pieces. However, we took special consideration in managing the container's lifecycle, site provisioning, and guest management.
Our findings raised important considerations for managing and automating these crucial processes to establish a repeatable and auditable process that balances business agility and security.
Our compliance discussions highlighted the need for defining a set of policies and labeling that can support users on day one of using their extranet and prevents leakage of sensitive information. On the other hand, the need to define retention based on key document types, locations, automated or manual led to raising awareness and establishing an information governance strategy to support internal and external users as they adopt the new system.
On the security front, we also evaluated the need for defining a clear set of policies to ensure the right people have the proper access to data. Azure Active Directory played a vital role in these discussions. Capabilities such as Multi-Factor Authentication, Conditional Access, Terms of Use, and advanced group management provided the team with the right pieces to strengthen their security posture. These essential pieces would help provide peace of mind, even as they bring guest users into the Extranet environment.
Another important consideration for security was the ability to audit user activity. The unified audit logging capabilities of the platform complement their existing investments on security.
These capabilities support the team by being alerted of critical risks associated with external sharing and other administration related tasks, ensuring prompt detection and mitigation should the need arise.
By performing access reviews using the Azure Active Directory capabilities, the team can ensure the right people have access to resources by periodically triggering reviews and providing the information to the owners of the content to attest to the access granted.
While the journey continues for the law firm, the team now has a roadmap that sets out a clear path to follow based on business needs and prioritized next steps. Key milestones include defining their governance and information architecture needs towards automation of extranet site creation. In parallel, the team works with relevant parties to refine integration points with other systems to further enhance their clients' experience.
For many organizations, the world of Microsoft 365 is uncharted territory. If you are unsure about what you need for your digital transformation journey, reach out to us. Our strategy services can help you identify the key pieces to consider and set you up for success. Better yet, if you need a team of experts and passionate consultants to walk the path with you, let us tag along and bring the umbrella to protect you from rainy days.
Solve for tomorrow's #hybridwork & #remotework challenges by looking at today's #EmployeeExperience and Digital Workplace! Need help? Join us on Thursday at 1:00 PM ET for 3 sessions, each tackling a key area of EX with industry leading experts.
It's no use being sour that hybrid and remote work have stepped into the limelight. After realizing the comfort level that comes with remote work life, employees have put their foot down. While many found and continue to find satisfaction working remotely, a recent report from Buffer stated that 24% of people feel lonely & 17% of people have difficulties collaborating and communicating when working remotely - both signs of struggling employee experience (EX).
Despite the previously stated data from Buffer, employees seem pretty torn on whether they prefer remote or hybrid work. In a separate report from Microsoft, the numbers show that 57% of remote employees want to switch to hybrid, while 51% of hybrid workers want to switch to remote.
Whether your organization is moving toward one or the other, your greatest asset will be a positive employee experience.
This blog aims to reason with the doubters and inform those thirsty for firm numbers on why they should prioritize EX, and how our upcoming event can help guide your efforts.
While every organization can have various reasons to prioritize EX, here are five shared reasons we think stand out for many organizations.
Our five reasons are:
Here are a few facts to provide some perspective on the five reasons.
52% of people in North America are more likely to choose their health and wellbeing after the pandemic.
People spend about 1 hour a day searching for or recreating information.
Strong workplace relationships improve overall employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention by roughly 20%!
50% of surveyed employees with thriving relationships were more productive at work year-over-year, compared to 36% of employees with struggling relationships.
However, only 27% of companies have created new hybrid meeting etiquette to ensure engaged employees that feel included. Better inclusion and engagement combined with wellbeing are essential to improve employee satisfaction.
CNBC reported that "44% of employees are "job seekers," according to Willis Towers Watson's 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Of them, 33% are active job hunters who looked for new work in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 11% planned to look in the first quarter of 2022."
Need help translating the different stages of the employee experience into strong employee communication, collaboration, and management that's adapted for the new norm? Please register for our virtual event happening this Thursday.
The rest of this blog is to help you determine precisely why you should be there.
We could list several reasons to attend our event, but we'd like to respect your time and focus on the following three.
Hear from industry leading experts! Our event has three guest speakers we are thrilled to have join us.
Suzie Robinson (@SuzieRobinson42) and James Robertson (@James_steptwo) are behind various top-tier awards and reports on the digital workplace and employee experience at their respective companies, StepTwo & ClearBox Consulting, leveraged by organizations globally.
We also have two incredible Microsoft MVPs, our CTO, Richard Harbridge, and Visual SP CEO and Founder, Asif Rehmani (@asifrehmani). Asif's company has been helping managers improve the EX with their application for years
Our virtual event is divided into three sessions:
Whatever area you need to understand better, we're sure to cover it in one of the three sessions. However, we highly recommend watching all three for the complete picture.
Have you ever wanted to ask leading industry experts a particular question you don't feel ever gets answered? Each session has a block of time dedicated to Q&A, so get your questions ready!
We hope to see you at the event! Register here.
Our CEO and Microsoft MVP, Kanwal Khipple, is back for Episode 8 of M365 Digital Workplace Updates! Take a look at all the amazing Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace Updates that have been released since our last update.
The Digital Employee Experience is all about going above and beyond to treat your employees like people, not numbers, and leveraging technology to help amplify and facilitate that objective. Since hybrid or fully remote workplaces emphasize the digital environment and de-emphasize the physical environment, there's never been a more important time to invest in digital employee experiences.
Maybe you think looking at the Employee Experience as a people-first experience is intuitively obvious. Or maybe it’s the first time you’re taking a step back from the important distractions that come with managing and maintaining these processes and solutions, to realize and look at the human element. Regardless, helping the humans behind the machines is at the core of a great employee experience and doing right by that is crucial in today’s extremely competitive job market.
Luckily, companies are waking up to the importance of improving employee experience (EX). Why have company alarms started ringing? The people, of course!
52% of people in North America are now more likely to choose their health and wellbeing overwork after the pandemic. Before this, organizations have had to ramp up on a trend that was already gaining momentum pre-pandemic.
In this blog, we will look at the employee experience through the lens of the people and how Microsoft has reacted to the change and can help.
However, if you’re also looking for insight into where EX is headed and how to keep up effectively, join us for our virtual event with 4 internationally recognized expert-led sessions on employee communication, collaboration, and management.
It can be easy to focus on strategy but that sometimes accidentally leads to tactics that don’t leave you focusing on the employees you're supposed to enable. And if we look at the image below, we see that there are several points to consider.
We dive deep into modern Employee Experience in our recent blog “What Is Employee Experience & Why It Matters?” which looks at a lot more than what it is, in addition to answering the question.
At the end of that blog, and in our dedicated blog on the Stage of Employee Experience, we map out the path employees take along their journey at an organization.
Make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your employees across all of the 8 various stages of the Employee Experience.
Here are some questions for your internal EX think tank:
Those were just some quick questions we hope will help get you started on your path to more unique questions, people in your organization might be experiencing.
We promise that all this work is worth it! Having people at the forefront of your Employee Experience plans is not only beneficial for your employees but for the organization itself. Research from Microsoft’s Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work proves that there are clear benefits to thriving relations within and outside your direct team.
Strong relationships lead to a more optimistic and happier workforce. Now, it’s up to your organization to deliver. Here to help you do that is Microsoft Viva. But first a couple of short paragraphs on why this matters to Microsoft.
Back in 2017, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, released his book titled, “Hit Refresh.” In his book, he discussed increasing synergy between the different departments and solutions at Microsoft. In addition, and among many other things, he discussed his aspirations to improve the future of digital business communication and collaboration.
Last year, on February 4th, after accomplishing many of his goals, Satya took another step forward toward his long-term aspirations. On that day, he said,
"Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we are ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and to help them thrive in this new era of flexible work."
Satya Nadella @satyanadella
This statement was part of the Microsoft Viva announcement. The new, growing suite of applications is dedicated to improving the future of the employee experience through a more robust digital workplace.
Microsoft offers several ways for employers to increase collaboration across the organization. There are several components to an improved employee experience.
Here are a few are examples:
Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps employers improve several of the above points.
The following are the four Viva applications:
Discover more about each feature application.
Viva Learning combines learning opportunities into everyday workflows. It allows employers to include learning and development throughout established processes.
It also allows for personalized recommendations. This means employees get a more customized experience and opportunities are based on career path goals, A personal touch can really elevate the employee experience, so try to find the best ways to leverage them.
Viva Learning also allows employers to use content from other sources. You can centralize your entire learning and development process in one hub. This leads to more efficiency and a more organizated digital workplace.
Viva Insights is focused on promoting productivity and well-being. It uses data-driven insights to make recommendations directly on the platform.
This feature also gives managers and employees a look into personal metrics. Employees can learn better and more effective ways of working with the recommendations. This capability also allows managers to improve the company culture.
It gives insights about teams that provide valuable guidance in decisions.
Viva Topics is fundamentally a knowledge base for employees, but can do so much with that information. This application organizes content and expertise across the entire company. It makes finding the answer to a question or getting help a fast and easy process.
Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify, sort, and organize content. The employee experience would benefit greatly from this information source.
Viva Connections promotes transparent communications across the organization. It consolidates news, topics, and conversations into existing technology. Open communications empower, inspire, and engage employees.
Viva Connections is especially beneficial for hybrid or remote work environments. Employees can feel disconnected from team members in a remote setting. By enabling an easy communication platform, the employee experience levels up.
An employee experience platform can connect teams virtually. This is a great solution for companies with hybrid or remote working models. This type of platform integrates many tools and activities.
Viva streamlines employee engagement and processes. The platform offers many features and benefits for employees. Those include:
Learn more about each feature below.
Streamlined communications with employees improved the digital employee experience. As discussed above, Microsoft Viva makes communicating with team members easy.
Viva offers actionable and personalized insights. It uses data about how employees work and recommends ways to do it better. This leads to more efficiency and productivity among team members.
Employees can see insight into where how they perform. And what areas need improvement. This is especially important when combined with goal tracking.
Employee experience platforms enable businesses to gain feedback from employees. This not only helps businesses create a better experience but also increases satisfaction. Stop trying to guess what employees need or want and go directly to the source with this feature.
An organization can align its goals and vision with this platform. The insights feature allows companies an inside look at how employees perform. And the relation with overarching goals.
Viva allows others to send praise about other employees. This option is through communication channels or can be sent in a private message. Sending regular praise and recognition will make employees feel more valued and appreciated.
Microsoft Viva has mindfulness features. There is an animated breathing break. This allows employees to take a brief moment to reset and refocus.
Viva also has a partnership with Headspace. Headspace offers guided meditations. When people apply mindfulness techniques, the experience will be more memorable.
Microsoft Viva enables in-app scheduling and reminders. Having lots of different applications or systems to use can impact the experience. Employees can get overwhelmed. Companies can make employee functions streamlined and more efficient with one comprehensive platform.
Viva has a feature for employees to set their status as do not disturb. This will allow them to focus without any distractions. This can be beneficial when there are many emails and chats to respond to throughout the day.
We would love to see you at our upcoming event dedicated to the Future of Employee Experience. Join us for 3 expert-led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future-proof your organization.
Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent 7 stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. While all are important, two areas many orgs underestimate how much they can influence are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.
We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.
Focusing on the employee experience can feel like a daunting task when reviewing the many different stages. This blog will help you understand how the different stages impact employee-related business outcomes and how to gain competitive advantages if actioned.
However, suppose you aren't too familiar with employee experience as a concept. In that case, we strongly suggest you read our blog that answers, "What is the employee experience, and why does it matter?"
Still with us? Excellent! Let's dive in.
The following are the 8 stages we will be reviewing. Understanding and improving these stages can lead to a positive employee experience, from beginning to post-departure.
This stage in the employee experience is often underestimated, or not enough time and effort is spent. If EX is tackled well, there will be significant benefits to the pre-recruitment or attracting step in an employee's journey. Still, if we forget to engage here, it can lead to missing out on some of the best talents the industry has to offer.
For many companies, when you think of your brand, you think of how it relates to attracting more customers or increasing customer loyalty. In this same way, we need to consider how our brand, purpose, and culture should attract more employees and increase employee loyalty. Workplaces today are highly transparent, especially as it relates to what the employee experience is like within your organization. Internal employee experiences can significantly impact your organization's external reputation and the signals for what your organization stands for make highly valuable talent interested.
In the recruitment step, the second employee experience stage, it is essential to have an excellent EX that aligns with your cultural environment.
Every hiring process should be clear, engaging, and fair for the new hire. As a result, we need to ensure that the employee experience is supported by transparency, streamlined processes, high manager and peer engagement, and uses objective evaluations that help predict fair expectations and optimal performance and balance out manager bias.
If a train is stopped, it is very easy to get on. However, jumping on a moving train can prove, well, difficult. The same scenario, minus the bumps and bruises, can be applied to organizations. Very few employees typically agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding and the reason is because moving trains are hard to board. Of course, there are ways to improve this but the following number shouldn't surprise you.
Only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organizations do a great job onboarding new employees.
Gallup
Successful onboarding employee experiences need to start before the first day of employment. At the same time, onboarding shouldn't end in the first week either. Every onboarding process should engage the employee and shouldn't be focused on one-way communication.
This engaged onboarding should be evident in the employee experience, whether it be helping employees socialize with their team, understanding how the organization functions, or learning its purpose and where their team and contributions fit in.
Engagement is how we sustain a vital connection between the employee and their workplace. Employee engagement is about more than making sure employees are satisfied with where they work. Instead, it's about ensuring they have the right conditions to give their best each day, are committed to the organization's goals and values and are motivated to contribute to its success.
This is based on a two-way commitment between the organization and the employee and can often be measured based on employee experience.
When supporting this step of the employee experience, it is important not to emphasize perks over relationships. A manager who is engaged in coaching, keeping the organization accountable, and focusing on the individual's potential and growth all matter far more than workplace perks or programs will.
So, our employee experience investments here have to foster the right outcomes as there are big mistakes companies can make here. The manipulation of an employees' commitments or emotions should be avoided at all costs, as it can lead to employees becoming cynical or disillusioned, leading to poor business performance.
Take a look at this video on how employee engagement has evolved and staying connected in a hybrid world to make sure your approach this stage responsibly.
This is about more than just an annual performance evaluation. Performance evaluation is a core part of the employee experience. It is optimal when done more regularly (at least quarterly), combined and based on informal feedback (for a complete picture), and includes significant praise and recognition. This should be driven by peers and managers.
It should be reflective of individual achievement and a comprehensive review that incorporates impact on others, the impact others have had on them, whether that be team collaboration, organizational impact, or a measure of customer and partner value.
It is easy to think of this step of employee experience being represented by the training offered by an organization. However, improving outcomes in this step of the employee experience require us to think of development more comprehensively.
Employees need to be engaged (a parallel step mentioned earlier), and they need to be able to see a path of growth in the organization. That growth might include job title changes, pay raises, new skills, doing less of what they don't like, working with new people, having more autonomy, and/or more support.
This is often heavily supported through ongoing coaching conversations and led by peers, managers, and business leaders. These ongoing coaching opportunities may take the form of short discussions measured in minutes to deeper and more structured feedback from peers, managers, or self-reviews.
Make sure your on top of corporate communication by understanding how its changed, in our video below.
This stage can be one of the most impactful events in the employee experience. More so, arguably, than any other for the employee. The departure is a great opportunity to have an exiting employee help us understand what the employee experience has been like, how it could be improved, and their perceptions of the organization.
Every exit program always works to meet the needs of an employee being heard, their feedback being actioned, being appreciated for the work they have done, and being seen for the potential they possess. The last item of potential importance, as it leads to a stronger post departure or alumni stage, is ensuring that even if it didn't feel like it was the right fit for either side, the engagement ends on the right foot.
This process can potentially lead to better chances of re-recruitment or positively supporting future recruitment efforts.
Each departed employee should be seen as a brand ambassador. They either bolster, harm, or are neutral to your organization's reputation.
Investing in a departed employee's experience is a great way to increase the long term likelihood of them returning or helping positively influence your recruitment efforts to find top talents that align with your organization's culture, purpose, and brand.
As your cultural environment, technology environment, or the physical work environment changes, finding ways to inform these alumni can be extremely valuable. An employee may depart due to one or more of those environments not meeting their needs.
Now that you understand the 8 stages of employee experience and its importance, we’re here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help improve employee satisfaction by showcasing solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s employee experience in a series of webinars that have been building to our half-day event.
3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.
Last week we explored 5 mistakes to avoid with Christian Buckley, and today, our very own Richard Harbridge is tackling another 3 #Microsoft365Management mistakes he's encountered frequently.
Microsoft RD and 10X MVP, Christian Buckley, spends most of his time as the Brand Alliance Director for AvePoint. Today, and in our upcoming webinar (link below), he joins us to review 5 Microsoft 365 management mistakes he often sees.
When managing Microsoft 365, a complex suite of apps and services is something almost every organization must tackle and is a daunting task for any Microsoft 365 admin or aspiring Microsoft 365 manager. If you are one of these people, don't worry, you aren't alone. With over 300 million paid commercial Office 365 seats, there is no shortage of peers and customers struggling with this subject.
While there is excellent material on learning how to approach Microsoft 365 management, there is not enough around the mistakes many administrators make or the essential office 365 management tools every admin should be empowered with.
So when we asked customers, researchers, Microsoft, and industry leaders what the top questions they get from active and aspiring Microsoft 365 administrators are, and there were three that stood out:
While we intend to take a deeper look at these particular questions and more in an upcoming webinar, we thought it would be interesting to share a few of the incorrect responses or assumptions we see, and highlight why answering questions like these the right way matters.
One mistake we see organizations make is assuming there can be a 'primary manager' or admin for Microsoft 365. It's important to remember that Microsoft 365 is a suite of apps and services designed and evolving to meet ever-changing business needs. The work and domain expertise involved in managing employee experiences, collaboration, communication, process automation, work management, business insights/analytics, knowledge management, digital learning, and productivity is more significant than anyone can ever manage alone.
Having an office 365 admin is necessary but insufficient if there aren't support systems, specialists, vendors, and stakeholders engaged and involved. Since the scale and breadth of Microsoft 365 is so large each application or service has its own set of governance and management considerations. While you can pattern across these apps and services such as how you plan on tackling the provisioning of digital spaces such as SharePoint sites, Microsoft Teams and Yammer communities even that becomes more complicated as Microsoft release Shared Channels and Microsoft Loop this year.
Every organization changes over time. Sometimes in significant ways, such as when mergers and acquisitions occur, and sometimes in subtle ways as customers, partners, or employees tackle problems better and more efficiently. The biggest challenge to Microsoft 365 is when we don't adapt our digital workplace implementations, the configuration of our apps and services, or change user behaviors to proactively or effectively meet the changing demands in time.
A simple example of this could be an organization with legacy technology investments holding up organizational agility and delaying the transformation to a better experience in Microsoft 365. Instead of migrating and optimizing content simultaneously (leading to significantly longer migration project durations and more risk of scope creep), it is often more cost-effective and vital to migrate as soon as possible and optimize in Microsoft 365 itself.
Better Office 365 management tools, easier ways to restructure and optimize content, richer content insights, and content automation capabilities available in Microsoft 365 accelerate the work and costs involved in improving how people work with content. By migrating first and optimizing second, we can ensure ROI is achieved faster by enabling these modern experiences for more people and more work scenarios sooner.
This one may be surprising to some, but it shouldn't be. Today more than 90% of enterprise customers have a multi-cloud strategy. But those same customers are challenged with protecting data and providing integrated experiences across clouds and platforms.
An easy mistake to avoid is assuming that Microsoft 365 isn't designed to support multi-cloud enterprise organizations. There are pathways to better multi-cloud and multi-tenant experiences for customers with significant Microsoft 365 investments across logical and differentiated business lines.
There are plenty of investments on the front-end with a wide array of connectors and connections, including Microsoft Search connectors, Microsoft Teams connectors, Power Automate connectors, and Microsoft Viva (in connections dashboards and feeds or learning and insights) to name a few.
These investments aren't limited to end-user or employee experiences. These investments include complimentary ones on the 'back end' in Azure such as Azure Arc for multi-cloud infrastructure to ones that enable you to remain in compliance with Microsoft 365 data connectors that can import third-party data to ensure that your organization's non-Microsoft data complies with the regulations standards that affect your organization.
There is so much to know and understand related to Microsoft 365 administration, but exploring the answers to questions is always valuable and can provide new perspectives.
Take a look at what Microsoft RD + MVP and Brand Alliance Director at AvePoint, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), had to briefly say about Microsoft 365 management, before our webinar.
Do you want to see Richard (@rharbridge) and Christian in an information filled webinar on Microsoft 365 Management? Watch our on-demand webinar.
92% of employers have identified that enhancing the employee experience is an important priority and plan to improve employee experiences within the next three years. So, with so many organizations prioritizing EX, it is essential to understand what is employee experience, why it matters, and how it impacts an organization.
In this blog, we will help you understand:
If you're looking for examples around the employee experience, watch our recent webinars or register for our upcoming webinar and virtual half-day event.
Employee experience relates to the impact a workplace has on an employee. The experience is made up of every touchpoint and interaction an employee has in an organization. This can range from human interactions to how a system works.
Employee experience encompasses several aspects. Some include:
Employees have more expectations of employers than ever before. An employee wants to be engaged and feel like their job makes an impact and that an organization values them. They also desire career progression and development opportunities.
The employee experience is more important than ever for employers to consider. Today, employers are competing for employees more than ever before, and employees are rethinking what they should expect from their employers.
Luckily, companies are waking up and prioritizing the employee experience more than ever.
"… we're seeing a "great EX awakening" — one that has 92% of organizations prioritizing EX enhancements over the next three years. This figure is up from 52% prior to the pandemic."
- 2021 Employee Experience Survey Highlights - WTW (wtwco.com)
So, how do you create a great employee experience? What steps are needed to adjust operations to incorporate an employee experience strategy? In his book "The Employee Experience Advantage," Jacob Morgan has led the way with great explanations for how these interwoven and reinforcing environments might be broken down, so let's use that as our foundation.
Businesses should focus on three main areas or environments that impact employee experience:
When we approach employee experience, it's important to consider what we can change and influence. At the end of the day, an organization is responsible for improving the work environment so that employees can have the best experience. These environments are interwoven and all-important, but with the continued shift towards hybrid work, the importance of a physical workplace environment has decreased, and the importance of cultural and technological advantage has become more evident.
Company culture is how connected teams feel within an organization. Culture also represents how employees feel about the company and how customers perceive a business. A great, positive culture can create a great reputation for a business.
Culture is grounded in shared values, visible in day-to-day practices, exemplified by words of leaders and managers, and actuated in the organization's processes and structure - the "vibe" of the workplace.
Companies should create a culture around making employees feel valued and appreciated, which will go a long way in developing a better employee experience. Employers should align the organizational vision and experience strategy with cultural values. Doing this the right way can impact motivation, performance, and satisfaction.
The problem with the cultural environment is that many see it as largely intangible, and thereby while it can influence employee experience, it can be harder to action.
Technology and tools make work easier in most industries. It's just a fact. So, companies should think of how digital enhancements will impact their employees and improve the employee experience.
Technological environments that impact the employee experience include technologies like hardware and software, but it also sometimes includes technologies represented as methodologies such as Agile.
Technological or digital advancements will streamline operations and make employees more efficient. Leveraging technology will also improve productivity. Employees can worry less about mundane tasks and more about the important, revenue-generating duties.
Tackling the technology or digital employee experience can be done by thinking about it as a set of complementary digital experiences working together. Each requires effective software, services, and systems to improve the employee experience.
When we consider the technological environment, we break this down into three key categories of digital employee experience:
As a brief example, consider how the hybrid work experience is multi-faceted with communication, collaboration and management, all having different digital tools and ways they impact or enhance culture and the physical environment.
Historically, the office environment was where organizations had the greatest degree of control. Now, for many organizations, that has now changed as work environments do not have to be in an office any longer. The COVID-19 pandemic proved many companies could easily move to a remote or hybrid model and employers and employees took note.
When companies allow employees more flexibility in working, a greater experience is created. If working at an office is a must, employers should make sure the environment is positive and allows for efficiency. Transitions into hotelling and collaborative spaces that provide an experience that complements a hybrid or remote workforce are especially important today.
Employees take note of employers who also work to improve employee home working environments or physical environments they work in. From ergonomic consulting to perk/purchase programs to provide employees the hardware, furniture, or assets they need even when working remotely, employees have their eyes open.
We elaborated on the digital employee experience the most above because today, it is where the most significant and accessible change is made possible. Cultural environments are as important as ever, and the emphasis on physical environments has transitioned towards greater emphasis on digital environments.
What's more, the marketplace has accelerated offerings and capabilities in this space tremendously over the past few years.
A great employee experience in a digital environment is empowering. Employees with positive experiences are more likely to stay loyal to a company. When an organization uses a remote or hybrid model of work, having an effective digital employee experience platform is a must if you expect engaged employees.
Remote work can leave employees feeling disconnected if not done correctly. Businesses can mitigate this with a digital workplace focused on culture and collaboration.
Employees want meaningful work with a purpose. And the impact of employee experience can make or break an organization. Those will bad experiences have higher turnover and less productivity.
A great employee experience benefits not only workers but also the organization. Engaged and satisfied employees are more productive and happier to be at work.
Key benefits include:
You can learn more about each of these benefits below.
Satisfied and happy employees tend to be more productive. And higher productivity leads to better performance. Employees are a key aspect of a successful organization, so creating a positive experience for them is vital.
When employees have the systems and tools to make their jobs easier, they will have higher engagement ratings. When employees are engaged, performance will increase and improve.
Absenteeism rates are higher when an employee really dislikes a work environment or culture. Companies can mitigate this problem by focusing the entire culture on a great employee experience.
Engaged and happy employees are satisfied. Satisfaction increases when workers don't have to struggle to do their jobs due to ineffective systems. And when the culture focuses on them as individuals, satisfaction increases.
When you add all of this together, you get higher-quality work. When employees are happy with their jobs, the quality of their work increases alongside their happiness.
Employers should consider a few different aspects of an employee's experience. To get a clear picture, companies have to look at all activities. When assessing the success of a business's initiatives, consider the following:
Are employees impacted positively in all these areas? Do they understand their purpose within the organization? That's the first step to driving success across the other areas.
Leaders should have a strong strategy and employee experience management practices. There are several ways to strengthen employee experience across an organization. Those include:
Discover the impact on employee experience for each of these components below.
A little empathy can go a long way with employees. Consider the employee experience from an employee's perspective. A lot of employees leave organizations due to management teams without empathy.
So, be authentic. Think of employees as human beings with lives outside of work. And add a personal touch when communicating with workers.
As discussed above, workers want flexibility. If possible, add this to your working model. Remote options make employees happier and more productive.
Before deciding on how to improve the employee experience, ask employees what they'd like to see changed. Going straight to the source before making changes will save time and money. And experiences will improve because you'll be resolving specific concerns.
Also discussed above, a better culture focused on valuing employees is an important step. Small changes to the company culture can go a long way in improving employee experiences.
Employees want to grow and advance in their careers. Offering more learning opportunities enables employees to strengthen their skills. This leads to a better experience.
Allow management teams to discuss career paths and give employees the time and resources needed to meet their goals is a must.
Employees want to understand their purpose in the organization. And feel like they belong. Creating a culture focused on value and collaboration will help employees feel a sense of belonging.
There are several ways to improve employee experience with a few simple tweaks to existing processes. When considering how to best approach employee experience, it is important to look at the entire employee experience cycle.
Most methodologies frame the cycle needing to represent seven stages of recruitment, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure. Two areas many orgs underestimate how much influence they have on are the pre-recruitment and post-departure phases of an employee's journey.
We see it as an 8-stage journey based on the importance of those additional or extended stages.
The 8 stages of an employee lifecycle include:
Keep a lookout for our blogs dedicated to tips on improving the employee experience based on each stage of the journey and another dedicated to the employee experience framework.
Now that you understand digital employee experience and its importance, we're here to help guide you to a better experience. We can help you navigate to better EX by showcasing solutions for today's and tomorrow's employee experience in our webinar series that has been building to our half-day event.
3 expert led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future proof your organization.
When migrating to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint online, the approach taken will often be very similar across organizations in that there are phases full of tactical activities for any migration from assessment to post-migration. This is also true for most SharePoint Server migrations. Often, the upgrade supported process is not used to avoid paying for additional hardware configuration and setup to hop from older versions of SharePoint Server to newer ones (as each supports an upgrade from the last).
As an example, what follows is a simple diagram depicting the typical flow of most SharePoint Online migrations.
As you can see, the entire migration process goes beyond simply transferring files and spaces. In order to ensure a smooth and effective migration it is imperative to have the right plan in place. This blog will help you ensure you effectively plan and prepare for your migration.
However, if you are looking for a greater understanding of an upgrade or migration plan, its components, and its importance, we highly recommend you watch the free on-demand webinar with our incredible partner AvePoint.
If you are also interested in avoiding and solving top Microsoft 365 management mistakes, register for our upcoming webinar with AvePoint on the biggest mistakes made and how to solve them.
While our whitepaper or recent webinar dive deep into the topic, a migration plan is essentially used to define the path and strategy to migrate important documents, spaces (sites and groups), and other buckets of information to your new environment.
However, before planning, you’re going to need to assess the situation appropriately. While this blog is not about the assessment phase of the process, it is an essential step.
For more information on this step, download our free whitepaper.
After assessing the content and environment you will be moving to, it is critical to prepare for what content will be migrated where, how, and when. This is made easier by cleaning up, reducing the total targeted content, or clearly defining what content should change. In some situations, like when moving to SharePoint Online, you may be better served by pre-creating the target structure before the migration as well.
The sites need to be created in the new environment based on the site structure assessment outcome. If the new structure differs from the existing structure, the new structure needs to be built based on the mapping table as explained in the associated section. If a new site structure is used, the new site structure is likely following Microsoft's recommendation regarding Site Collections in SharePoint. To be able to implement a logical structure, specific sites need to be turned into Hub Sites, and related sites need to be associated with their hub sites.
Before a new site structure is implemented, the new structure needs to be reviewed. This review should be performed by members of different (if not all) departments or corporate entities.
Based on the outcome of the content assessment, a clean-up process needs to be initiated. Clean-up means that the list of identified documents is reviewed to find documents that should not be migrated to the new environment – these can be temporary documents, outdated documents, or documents that are not relevant anymore. As most documents belong to a specific corporate entity (like a department), the content owners or members of the associated corporate entity should be tasked with cleaning up their documents.
If documents from a file-share should be migrated to SharePoint, it is likely, that multiple versions of a document are existing. As a file-share is not providing any support for document versions, editors usually append the version number to the title of documents. These "title-versioned" documents need to be identified before they are migrated to SharePoint because SharePoint document libraries can handle multiple versions of a document. The identified "title-versioned" documents need to be transferred into the versioning mechanism of SharePoint document libraries.
If the new environment's site structure is different from the old environment's site structure, documents will likely be saved to a different location as well. If there is a site mapping table, the list of documents needs to be updated to reflect the new site for each document. It makes sense to update the list of documents after the clean-up.
This mapping should also consider the desired future state if you intend to modernize during the migration process. This isn't unique to just SharePoint migrations but is also relevant for file share migrations.
Based on the workflow assessment outcome, a migration path needs to be created for each identified workflow. The type of workflow is pivotal for deciding on the migration path. The first decision to be made is whether the workflow should be updated/modernized functionality-wise. If a workflow is being updated or modernized, it is likely, that the workflow needs to be rebuilt using modern technology (like Power Automate).
If you would like to start with creating a migration path, the following bullet-point list might be helpful:
Based on the evaluated upgrade path, estimates and timelines need to be created for all workflows, which can't be migrated as-is. For each affected workflow, the efforts needed to prepare it for the migration (including recreating/recoding) need to be evaluated. A corresponding timeline shows how long the overall process of preparing the new environment's workflows will take. There should be a detailed list with all workflows, migration efforts, and timelines with durations for each workflow at the end of the workflow preparation phase.
Very similar to the workflow preparation phase, the custom solution preparation phase is all about preparing custom solutions for migration. The type of custom solution is pivotal for deciding on the migration path. As with workflows, the first decision is whether a custom solution should be updated/modernized in terms of functionality and/or user experience. If a custom solution is being updated or modernized, it is likely, that the custom solution needs to be rebuilt using modern technologies or modern platforms (like Microsoft Azure).
As mentioned before, the migration path for custom solutions depends on how the custom solution has been created. The following bullet-point list might be helpful:
Like most plans, this phase of the migration process consists of a stage where you define and then evaluate the steps needed before finalizing.
With so many things to consider and plan for, a detailed migration plan needs to be created and the following is what you should include.
Do you want to make sure the approach and structure for your SharePoint migration is strong, watch our video below.
If you are looking for help with migration, watch our webinar with AvePoint on-demand. In the webinar, our CTO and Microsoft MVP, Richard Harbridge, will discuss what important considerations should be understood and planned before an upgrade/migration, what approaches have successfully worked for other companies, and practical guidance on how best to succeed with your modernization or migration project.
With Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online, Microsoft provides a modern platform that allows organizations to build their own tailored Digital Workplace. The applications and the rich set of features that Microsoft 365 provides can be leveraged together to build an environment customized to organizations’ needs and requirements, their corporate entities, and their staff.
As many new and exciting features are not available with older versions of SharePoint, many organizations migrate from their old environment to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online. Those who want or need to host SharePoint within their own hosted environment can migrate to SharePoint 2019.
Regardless of the designated target environment, migrating an existing environment is never an easy endeavor and requires a lot of planning and preparation. Based on our staff’s long-time experience with SharePoint migrations for various organizations, we know that thorough and comprehensive planning is a crucial step to success. This Whitepaper provides guidance and best practices regarding migrations from previous versions of SharePoint to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2019 as well.
This whitepaper is over 50+ pages long and looks extensively at migrating to SharePoint Online and 2019. The following are the topics discussed in the whitepaper.
Read more about each section topic below or dive into the entire whitepaper by clicking on the image.
Everyone upgrades eventually (or they move away from the platform), so we think it's always good to talk about why businesses are accelerating their upgrades or where (in terms of workload) they are considering an 'early' upgrade/migration for SharePoint.
So why do people upgrade or migrate? It's worth noting that there are internal and external pressures on IT to upgrade their technology. In this section of the whitepaper, we look at the internal and external factors as well as creating a better user experience, improving business process support and collaboration support, reducing hardware maintenance costs, and improving security.
Once the planning is done and plans have been verified multiple times, your organization will proceed with migration activities and migration execution. Migrating content from one environment to another environment isn't as easy as migrating files from one folder to another folder.
When planning to migrate data in a professional environment, we need to think about how to best migrate data with the least disruption to the business. The section of the whitepaper provides an overview of the most common migration considerations.
The upgrade supported process is often not used to avoid paying for additional hardware configuration and setup to hop from older versions of SharePoint Server to newer ones (as each supports an upgrade from the last).
For example, a simple diagram depicting the typical flow of most SharePoint Online migrations follows.
In this section of the whitepaper, we detail all of the different phases seen in the illustration above.
Several factors can impact the perceived success of the content migration effort by the project team and external stakeholders.
We go into detail on the listed risks in our SharePoint Migration Whitepaper.
Successful migrations leverage the best practices listed in this white paper - before, during, and after - the migration process. As with any migration, you need to do proper planning and analysis of the legacy system and how it will map to SharePoint. You need to prepare the target environment for the new content and usage. You need to ensure the migration results in as little user disruption as possible. Finally, you need to ensure that the new SharePoint architecture ensures a better experience today and in the future.
It isn't always easy, and that's why we tried our best to share some guidance that might help you. Download our Whitepaper to take advantages of our combined experience!
Need a little extra help? Whether your organization is looking for quick or incremental migration project to Online or the latest version of SharePoint On-Premises, our organization is ready to help with a strong history of successful migrations. It was and is very typical in the process of the over 100+ intranets we have implemented.
We are ready and happy to support your migration efforts with our Microsoft MVPs and extensive knowledge and experience with migrating to SharePoint sites, files and folders from various document libraries and platforms.
Industry | Insurance |
Org Size | 15,000+ |
Technologies | Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online Outlook OneDrive |
This large insurance organization of 17,000 employees was looking to improve the impact and success of Microsoft 365 throughout the organization. While there was some usage of Microsoft 365 in the organization, there were many opportunities to improve usage, deploy new capabilities, and help users get more out of Office 365.
2toLead worked with them to deliver a set of services and activities that helped their organization get more out of Office 365 and achieve greater levels of digital workplace success.
Historically, they were an IBM shop. However, they had been in the process of migrating to Microsoft's suite of applications. Educating and bringing champions as well as experienced users along the journey to embrace Microsoft technologies was critical to achieving high performance across the organization.
With 17,000 employees, speaking 6 languages, and an extensive international footprint, it was critical for staff to have the ability to coordinate and work more effectively together. Over two-thirds of all employees needed to learn new Microsoft technologies and new ways of working.
Their Center Of Excellence for collaboration and communities was inexperienced around Microsoft technologies. While they had experts for aspects of the technology, they weren't experts on strategy, when to use what, or how to effectively drive awareness and adoption.
The insurance organization emphasized an investment into digital skills and digital technologies as a differentiator and advantage that they saw as critical for continued marketplace dominance/success. They needed to improve their current skills while also developing a strategy and approach that would allow them to continue investing, leading, and differentiating.
The organization received a tailored questionnaire to help accelerate our shared understanding of the current state of Microsoft 365 within the organization as it relates to technology governance and adoption planning.
Together we evaluated key roles and role readiness. This large insurance organization scored exceptionally well. We then assessed existing guidance/policies. Together we found gaps and opportunities to improve these guidance and policy documents.
Based on our gap analysis, we provided an immense amount of detailed recommendations on Governance, policies, roles, and responsibilities. Including some samples to help accelerate the development of key policies.
Our team of technology and business experts developed, facilitated, and recorded multiple tailored training sessions based on four modules to audiences like internal champions, coaches, help desk, and more. These training sessions included 'ask the expert' style questions and answers as well as tips and techniques for more experienced users on how to get more out of the technology.
We provided Microsoft 365 metric guidance for how to best measure, track and evaluate the success of Microsoft 365 in the organization. Going beyond basic usage statistics, we recommended additional reports to assess and even provided samples of the reports to accelerate creation.
As leaders in the adoption space, we shared considerable guidance to help accelerate and support the development of campaigns.
We often go above and beyond in our work with customers (it's why we have been named generous), and this organization was no exception.
We did several things pro-actively and at no additional cost to this customer that immensely helped them be more successful with Microsoft 365:
The organization has a clear strategy for Governance, adoption, and the tools to enable them to successfully lead their large user base in this transition as they grow their digital skills with Microsoft 365 and transform business processes.
The adoption and center of excellence approach based on our work will scale and be leveraged. This approach is not limited to Microsoft 365 but for all digital skills, including a sizable and important set of non-Microsoft technologies like Quickr and Confluence Wiki, and others.
In the process of supporting users on this change management journey to Microsoft 365, the organization updated Microsoft 365 for all users, transitioned to Outlook from Lotus, prepared and deployed OneDrive for Business, encouraged and rolled out Delve, leveraged Intune for more protection/control, and deployed SharePoint Online for their Intranet, and a considerable number of team sites.
Some other benefits that were realized include:
We hope our Microsoft Office 365 case study has provided you with insight into the capabilities of the application suite and our team. If you are looking for more insights into Microsoft 365 and your digital workplace but aren't ready to contact us, feel free to download our free resources, packed with our knowledge and expertise.
Industry | Non-Profit Social Services |
Org Size | 100+ |
Technologies | Microsoft 365 Teams SharePoint Power Platform |
Non-profit community organization funded by the Government, legally mandated to protect children and youth from abuse and neglect.
When the organization was looking to transform how they communicate and collaborate with staff and social workers, they partnered with 2toLead to ensure success. Their team used a legacy Intranet platform for sharing essential links and day-to-day relevant information. Another integral repository was the file server, which also needed to migrate to SharePoint Online. After an initial step in the right direction, moving from a Lotus Notes environment to Microsoft 365, they stayed committed to supporting their workforce during the transition.
As a non-profit organization, agility and efficiency are paramount to empower their team to reach as many people who need them as possible. The organization had the vision to provide the right tools, proper training and communication to support its staff. 2toLead was there to make it happen by leveraging their team of Microsoft 365 champions.
Our journey began in October 2019 by meeting with their IT and Administrative Services team. We focused on creating the foundational pieces and a new tool or channel that compelled users to visit, interact, and get information. Their staff looks at the Intranet as the source of critical information, raising the stakes of its importance.
At the time, Microsoft Teams was being piloted by their IT department to evaluate its capabilities and to identify how both Teams and SharePoint would complement each other. A question that's on the minds of many organizations today.
Our first release focused on providing the foundation for an Intranet that supported the central communication and collaboration functions of their team. As the organization had recently embraced the Microsoft 365 platform for email, leveraging SharePoint Online to build the foundation for their Intranet was a natural choice due to the strengths of a connected digital workplace.
With an agile set of workshops to cover our information architecture, navigation, and search capabilities, we confirmed our requirements for the new Intranet.
As part of our discussions, we reviewed the governance and life cycle planning aspects relevant to creating new communities using the platform. The use of wireframes and mockups were essential to iterate and confirm our requirements for visual impact faster.
With the foundation in place and the Intranet platform built, we rolled up our sleeves and dug into the file shares.
The team assessed the various file shares provided to staff for individual use (home drives), department level, and global use. The team used the gathered information to ensure the right documents were migrated.
Personal files: the team documented clear instructions for employees to move their data to OneDrive for Business.
More extensive data repositories: our migration consultants supported the team and migrated their information from their shared drives to SharePoint Online.
During our journey, the Coronavirus pandemic brought additional challenges that compelled the non-profit to act fast and accelerate their plans for adoption, particularly for Microsoft Teams. Rolling out Microsoft Teams was vital to uphold their principles of service excellence and collaboration in the face of an unprecedented change to how work happens.
The Microsoft Teams rollout took priority, and from a technical perspective, it was simple to deploy. However, employees struggled to adapt to the new environment and needed additional support to remain productive. Internally, the staff received initial training and supporting resources, but they wanted to take it a step further.
Their team decided to provide more targeted training. With the help and information provided by them, 2toLead delivered a tailored training program focused on best practices and collaboration boosters. This empowered employees to use Microsoft 365 and Teams to their fullest potential. Additionally, given their recent transition to a new email and calendaring system, we emphasized tips and best practices for managing email, scheduling meetings, and organizing calendar events.
Accelerated by the new normal, and to facilitate critical business processes, we identified areas that needed automation. The Power Platform was a solid choice as the technology to underpin the efforts. The team had just begun their business transformation journey and needed a partner to walk the path and not only implement the critical business processes, but also acquire the knowledge internally by being part of the process.
To meet this goal, they partnered with 2toLead to automate a process for distributing vouchers to families in need.
The voucher administration process is a critical process that involved various departments, automation, and data sources within and outside the realm of Microsoft 365 and Power Platform.
With the actors, their actions, and the flow of the system documented, the team joined forces and proceeded to build three Power Apps to meet the needs of the various actors, ranging from social workers, supervisors, administrators, and delivery drivers.
Along the way, our 2toLead consultants and their Administrative Services Team participated in the design and development sessions to create each app. This approach allowed for training the team as we developed the Power Apps and Power Automate Flows needed for each step of the process.
A critical business need derived from the analysis was to read client data and present it using Power Apps. This data resided on-premises. Given the nature of its sensitivity, we needed a secure and efficient solution that allowed this data to be exposed to our Power App users while ensuring it would remain available at any time.
To meet this need, our architect team proposed a Hybrid Data Architecture model. This model leverages Common Data Service to store client information and update it regularly. The scenario called for using an on-premises data access gateway to connect to the SQL Server Instance on-premises. With the information now stored in a cloud entity, it was ready to be leveraged by Power Apps, or Power Automate flows that required it.
To complement the architecture, we also considered the use of Power BI to report on data from cloud sources such as our data entities and on-premises data residing in SQL Server.
With a solid foundation in place to communicate and collaborate with modern tools, and the resources to train new and existing employees, their team is well-positioned to invest further in making the operation more secure, efficient and adaptable to the needs of the organization.
The knowledge gained from building their first apps in the Power Platform will boost their confidence in the platform to continue optimizing and automating business processes and simplifying their reporting solutions to bring data and actions to the front lines. This experience, in turn, will contribute to supporting the organization in continuing to fulfill its mission to protect children and youth from abuse and neglect.
For many organizations, the world of Microsoft 365 is uncharted territory. Experiencing business transformation takes an intentional partnership with the business's knowledge and the expertise to optimize and implement technology in a way that meets your business outcomes. Our team is passionate and strives to work together to make the journey much more comfortable to walk along. Let us join your organization's journey towards digital transformation and business process optimization together.
Industry | Law |
Org Size | 500 + |
Technologies | Microsoft 365 Azur SharePoint Microsoft Teams OneDrive |
2toLead recently worked with one of Atlantic Canada's largest regional law firms. They reached out to us for guidance on using SharePoint Online to share information with external users, primarily their clients.
They were curious to explore the use of SharePoint Online for their clients and ensure they had easy and secure access while experiencing the platform. The team was particularly interested in the key areas that would help them secure access, ensure sensitive information was protected, and learn how to guarantee the configuration needed for Extranet sites was repeatable to keep compliant and maintain consistency.
The law firm was looking for a team that had the same philosophies around innovating and customer excellence. 2toLead was a great choice given our extensive experience building Intranet and Extranet portals as well as our breadth and depth of knowledge in the Microsoft 365 platform. The client's primary need was to move towards building an extranet service based on SharePoint Online that integrates with other systems for a more cohesive client experience. Join us in taking a look at the journey we took to better governed and more secure sharing.
To determine the team's specific needs, we began our journey by holding a series of discovery sessions. These interactive discussions centered on governance, security, and compliance. The team was highly engaged and keen to learn what is possible in the platform, so we peeled back the various layers of Microsoft 365. We did this to ensure we had a common understanding of the platform's possibilities and gain user needs and insights that would drive our recommendations towards what specific areas needed to be defined and configured.
While the storefront for an extranet based on Office 365 is traditionally a SharePoint Extranet, we reviewed the different areas where the platform is malleable to configure a safe and secure collaboration experience. Along the way, we dove in to discuss Azure Active Directory, Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint, and OneDrive external sharing. We also looked at relevant policies and settings in Microsoft Teams to ensure proper coverage of the many ways one can collaborate and share with others.
The team was particularly interested in the platform's federation and single sign-on capabilities (as they were using a third-party solution to accomplish this goal. A more extensive and organization-specific analysis was done to identify the level of support and effort to migrate the SSO capability from the third-party platform to Azure Active Directory.
In isolation, these capabilities allow us to configure the main pieces. However, we took special consideration in managing the container's lifecycle, site provisioning, and guest management.
Our findings raised important considerations for managing and automating these crucial processes to establish a repeatable and auditable process that balances business agility and security.
Our compliance discussions highlighted the need for defining a set of policies and labeling that can support users on day one of using their extranet and prevents leakage of sensitive information. On the other hand, the need to define retention based on key document types, locations, automated or manual led to raising awareness and establishing an information governance strategy to support internal and external users as they adopt the new system.
On the security front, we also evaluated the need for defining a clear set of policies to ensure the right people have the proper access to data. Azure Active Directory played a vital role in these discussions. Capabilities such as Multi-Factor Authentication, Conditional Access, Terms of Use, and advanced group management provided the team with the right pieces to strengthen their security posture. These essential pieces would help provide peace of mind, even as they bring guest users into the Extranet environment.
Another important consideration for security was the ability to audit user activity. The unified audit logging capabilities of the platform complement their existing investments on security.
These capabilities support the team by being alerted of critical risks associated with external sharing and other administration related tasks, ensuring prompt detection and mitigation should the need arise.
By performing access reviews using the Azure Active Directory capabilities, the team can ensure the right people have access to resources by periodically triggering reviews and providing the information to the owners of the content to attest to the access granted.
While the journey continues for the law firm, the team now has a roadmap that sets out a clear path to follow based on business needs and prioritized next steps. Key milestones include defining their governance and information architecture needs towards automation of extranet site creation. In parallel, the team works with relevant parties to refine integration points with other systems to further enhance their clients' experience.
For many organizations, the world of Microsoft 365 is uncharted territory. If you are unsure about what you need for your digital transformation journey, reach out to us. Our strategy services can help you identify the key pieces to consider and set you up for success. Better yet, if you need a team of experts and passionate consultants to walk the path with you, let us tag along and bring the umbrella to protect you from rainy days.
Industry | Manufacturing & Automotive |
Org Size | 150,000+ |
Technologies | Microsoft 365 SharePoint Azure |
Magna International is a $40B Canadian-based, leading global automotive supplier. It employs roughly 158,000 people from 342 manufacturing facilities (Divisions) and 91 product development, engineering, and sales centres, operating within 7 product-based Groups, across 27 countries. This diversity is a massive strength for the company, but it needed to be supported in the right way to ensure employees find the information they need, when they need it.
In today’s world, we are all overloaded with information. From social media, to news, to chat groups with your friends, to new and interesting podcasts. There is a lot of content coming at us. It is hard to follow, and it is even harder to identify what is important.
This problem is just as true at companies as it is within our personal lives. There are documents everywhere. Notifications everywhere. Company news in your email, on your intranet, in the media, and, likely, in many places you wish it wasn’t.
Employees and managers wrestle with this daily. The objective is to provide the most relevant information to employees, at the right time, in the right way, and ultimately increase productivity. This is not easy. It is difficult and a challenge that can be daunting for any business.
Organizations invest a lot of time and resources into creating ways to automate this challenge. Often, algorithms are made to suggest content that may be relevant to employees. This can be based on which documents employees work on, teammates they collaborate with often, or information that might be trending from across the company.
Algorithms like these can be highly effective. One example is Google Search. We all use Google Search, it works great. These algorithms do have problems though. They are biased. They can lead to people getting stuck in a tunnel of self-reinforcing recommendations. This is not good for discoverability.
In addition to these recommendation engines, we must explore other ways of surfacing content to employees, ways that encourage discoverability. One such method is through matching the types of content created for employees to their place within the organization. This allows for a constant stream of content that is relevant to the user but broader than their immediate use case.
Our team has been fortunate in being able to support Magna with the growth of their Digital Workplace. We have had a long-lasting partnership and have developed many content discoverability solutions together.
One of those solutions was the Content Stream, a multi-faceted content personalization and content targeting aggregator that provides relevant information to employees on their intranet, MagNET. The Content Stream became a true beacon of increased information flow for Magna employees, but creating it required a deep understanding of the needs and pain points of their employees.
Large, global organizations have a very broad range of employee profiles. A key feature of the Content Stream is its ability to target content to employees based on their unique profile. This was a critical feature for Magna, as they were focused on surfacing relevant information to their employees as soon as they landed on the intranet.
One of the first challenges that we had to overcome was a lack of information architecture consistency across their intranet. We worked closely with Magna’s Corporate Communications teams to identify consistent metadata that could be used to classify information on the intranet. This metadata was coded into SharePoint site templates to make it easy to apply it consistently every time a new intranet site was created. Essentially, creating 'information anchors' to streamline information findability across the intranet.
Our second major challenge was developing a content experience that was powerful enough to roll up relevant content for employees from across hundreds of SharePoint sites that make up the intranet. Through user interviews, personas, pain point and needs analysis, as well as deep design thinking exercises with the team, we created a Content Stream experience that surfaced news from across the Intranet into a single, branded stream of publications.
This stream has many targeting settings that work off our information architecture foundations. Importantly, we enabled a setting that when selected, presents news to employees that align with their Group, Function, and Region within the organization.
Our final major challenge was ensuring the intranet had the information that it needed to make a match between an employee’s profile and the metadata pattern of news articles. Through a close partnership with Magna’s IT team, we worked out the infrastructure and integrations required to sync their on-premises Active Directory information with Azure Active Directory and SharePoint’s user profile service. Schemas were designed, integrations coded, and data began to flow from a single source of truth to where it could be referenceable and matched to news published on the intranet.
Through a user-first, cross-platform, cross-team effort, working with various functions across the organization, we designed an integrated and personalized news experience for Magna employees. When they open their intranet, they see news that is both relevant to them, but also news that encourages discoverability. Employees are now more productive in being able to find relevant announcements and have a much-improved news experience.
However, this is not the end of our journey. In addition to building many other content discoverability features with Magna, we are continuing to work together to enhance their digital workplace experience. From personalized communications newsletters to news analytics that track engagement and employee sentiment, we are just getting started.
Building experiences that amplify the user experience and allow employees to discover relevant content when they need it most is a difficult challenge. Organizations need to embrace internal communication and collaboration challenges if they seek to empower their staff to be the most productive version of themselves.
We have been fortunate to develop deep expertise in creating employee digital experiences that lead to real change in organizations. It is our passion. We also have various whitepapers and if this whitepaper rings for your, then you may find our intranet and adoption whitepapers particularly interested and topical.
If you are interested in working together to build a similar experience, as seen in this intranet case study, for your company, talk to us. We would love to help you with your journey.
Explore the benefits of an Microsoft 365 Intranet, why you should consider migrating your existing Intranet to Office 365 today, and how and when to best use Office 365 capabilities with your Intranet.
Explore the benefits of an Microsoft 365 Intranet, why you should consider migrating your existing Intranet to Office 365 today, and how and when to best use Office 365 capabilities with your Intranet.
Find out how to identify and measure the business value Microsoft 365 provides with examples and advice on Microsoft 365 reporting and metrics.
Learn migration best practices, and how to best plan and execute a SharePoint upgrade or migration to SharePoint Online from file shares, legacy systems, older versions of SharePoint, and more.
Download this whitepaper now to discover guidance and insights based on our experience improving external sharing and collaboration with hundreds of customers in a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.
Download this whitepaper to find guidance, insights, and recommendations that are based on our experience working with hundreds of customers in a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.
Today, the digital employee experience matters more than ever. Download our eBook for 40 ideas that can help you maximize resources, efficiency and effectiveness in your organization.
While navigation is the #1 use case for an Intranet and its most crucial purpose, many fail to deliver dynamic and personalized navigation. We are happy to help you improve your Intranet and Digital Workplace navigation with this eBook.
eBook | Learn about the most common SharePoint and Microsoft Teams Sprawl issues and how to solve them. Also, gain insight into how Sprawl impacts both the end-user and IT.
Our Microsoft 365 Communication and Collaboration Advantages eBook focuses in on the direct and related advantages of choosing Microsoft 365.
We have worked extensively with Office 365 and in an effort to be generous with our guidance we have shared many templates, samples and resources.
Today, the digital employee experience matters more than ever. Download our eBook for 40 ideas that can help you maximize resources, efficiency and effectiveness in your organization.
Join Richard & Asif, two Microsoft MVPs and internationally recognized experts on Microsoft 365, as they share insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee management.
Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Digital Workplace, as he shares insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee collaboration.
Join James Robertson, from Step Two author on digital employee experience, Suzie Robinson, author of the ClearBox report, and Richard Harbridge, as they share insight on how to better understand, and leverage the future of employee communications.
Solve for tomorrow's #hybridwork & #remotework challenges by looking at today's #EmployeeExperience and Digital Workplace! Need help? Join us on Thursday at 1:00 PM ET for 3 sessions, each tackling a key area of EX with industry leading experts.
It's no use being sour that hybrid and remote work have stepped into the limelight. After realizing the comfort level that comes with remote work life, employees have put their foot down. While many found and continue to find satisfaction working remotely, a recent report from Buffer stated that 24% of people feel lonely & 17% of people have difficulties collaborating and communicating when working remotely - both signs of struggling employee experience (EX).
Despite the previously stated data from Buffer, employees seem pretty torn on whether they prefer remote or hybrid work. In a separate report from Microsoft, the numbers show that 57% of remote employees want to switch to hybrid, while 51% of hybrid workers want to switch to remote.
Whether your organization is moving toward one or the other, your greatest asset will be a positive employee experience.
This blog aims to reason with the doubters and inform those thirsty for firm numbers on why they should prioritize EX, and how our upcoming event can help guide your efforts.
While every organization can have various reasons to prioritize EX, here are five shared reasons we think stand out for many organizations.
Our five reasons are:
Here are a few facts to provide some perspective on the five reasons.
52% of people in North America are more likely to choose their health and wellbeing after the pandemic.
People spend about 1 hour a day searching for or recreating information.
Strong workplace relationships improve overall employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention by roughly 20%!
50% of surveyed employees with thriving relationships were more productive at work year-over-year, compared to 36% of employees with struggling relationships.
However, only 27% of companies have created new hybrid meeting etiquette to ensure engaged employees that feel included. Better inclusion and engagement combined with wellbeing are essential to improve employee satisfaction.
CNBC reported that "44% of employees are "job seekers," according to Willis Towers Watson's 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Of them, 33% are active job hunters who looked for new work in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 11% planned to look in the first quarter of 2022."
Need help translating the different stages of the employee experience into strong employee communication, collaboration, and management that's adapted for the new norm? Please register for our virtual event happening this Thursday.
The rest of this blog is to help you determine precisely why you should be there.
We could list several reasons to attend our event, but we'd like to respect your time and focus on the following three.
Hear from industry leading experts! Our event has three guest speakers we are thrilled to have join us.
Suzie Robinson (@SuzieRobinson42) and James Robertson (@James_steptwo) are behind various top-tier awards and reports on the digital workplace and employee experience at their respective companies, StepTwo & ClearBox Consulting, leveraged by organizations globally.
We also have two incredible Microsoft MVPs, our CTO, Richard Harbridge, and Visual SP CEO and Founder, Asif Rehmani (@asifrehmani). Asif's company has been helping managers improve the EX with their application for years
Our virtual event is divided into three sessions:
Whatever area you need to understand better, we're sure to cover it in one of the three sessions. However, we highly recommend watching all three for the complete picture.
Have you ever wanted to ask leading industry experts a particular question you don't feel ever gets answered? Each session has a block of time dedicated to Q&A, so get your questions ready!
We hope to see you at the event! Register here.
Our CEO and Microsoft MVP, Kanwal Khipple, is back for Episode 8 of M365 Digital Workplace Updates! Take a look at all the amazing Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace Updates that have been released since our last update.
The Digital Employee Experience is all about going above and beyond to treat your employees like people, not numbers, and leveraging technology to help amplify and facilitate that objective. Since hybrid or fully remote workplaces emphasize the digital environment and de-emphasize the physical environment, there's never been a more important time to invest in digital employee experiences.
Maybe you think looking at the Employee Experience as a people-first experience is intuitively obvious. Or maybe it’s the first time you’re taking a step back from the important distractions that come with managing and maintaining these processes and solutions, to realize and look at the human element. Regardless, helping the humans behind the machines is at the core of a great employee experience and doing right by that is crucial in today’s extremely competitive job market.
Luckily, companies are waking up to the importance of improving employee experience (EX). Why have company alarms started ringing? The people, of course!
52% of people in North America are now more likely to choose their health and wellbeing overwork after the pandemic. Before this, organizations have had to ramp up on a trend that was already gaining momentum pre-pandemic.
In this blog, we will look at the employee experience through the lens of the people and how Microsoft has reacted to the change and can help.
However, if you’re also looking for insight into where EX is headed and how to keep up effectively, join us for our virtual event with 4 internationally recognized expert-led sessions on employee communication, collaboration, and management.
It can be easy to focus on strategy but that sometimes accidentally leads to tactics that don’t leave you focusing on the employees you're supposed to enable. And if we look at the image below, we see that there are several points to consider.
We dive deep into modern Employee Experience in our recent blog “What Is Employee Experience & Why It Matters?” which looks at a lot more than what it is, in addition to answering the question.
At the end of that blog, and in our dedicated blog on the Stage of Employee Experience, we map out the path employees take along their journey at an organization.
Make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your employees across all of the 8 various stages of the Employee Experience.
Here are some questions for your internal EX think tank:
Those were just some quick questions we hope will help get you started on your path to more unique questions, people in your organization might be experiencing.
We promise that all this work is worth it! Having people at the forefront of your Employee Experience plans is not only beneficial for your employees but for the organization itself. Research from Microsoft’s Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work proves that there are clear benefits to thriving relations within and outside your direct team.
Strong relationships lead to a more optimistic and happier workforce. Now, it’s up to your organization to deliver. Here to help you do that is Microsoft Viva. But first a couple of short paragraphs on why this matters to Microsoft.
Back in 2017, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, released his book titled, “Hit Refresh.” In his book, he discussed increasing synergy between the different departments and solutions at Microsoft. In addition, and among many other things, he discussed his aspirations to improve the future of digital business communication and collaboration.
Last year, on February 4th, after accomplishing many of his goals, Satya took another step forward toward his long-term aspirations. On that day, he said,
"Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we are ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and to help them thrive in this new era of flexible work."
Satya Nadella @satyanadella
This statement was part of the Microsoft Viva announcement. The new, growing suite of applications is dedicated to improving the future of the employee experience through a more robust digital workplace.
Microsoft offers several ways for employers to increase collaboration across the organization. There are several components to an improved employee experience.
Here are a few are examples:
Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps employers improve several of the above points.
The following are the four Viva applications:
Discover more about each feature application.
Viva Learning combines learning opportunities into everyday workflows. It allows employers to include learning and development throughout established processes.
It also allows for personalized recommendations. This means employees get a more customized experience and opportunities are based on career path goals, A personal touch can really elevate the employee experience, so try to find the best ways to leverage them.
Viva Learning also allows employers to use content from other sources. You can centralize your entire learning and development process in one hub. This leads to more efficiency and a more organizated digital workplace.
Viva Insights is focused on promoting productivity and well-being. It uses data-driven insights to make recommendations directly on the platform.
This feature also gives managers and employees a look into personal metrics. Employees can learn better and more effective ways of working with the recommendations. This capability also allows managers to improve the company culture.
It gives insights about teams that provide valuable guidance in decisions.
Viva Topics is fundamentally a knowledge base for employees, but can do so much with that information. This application organizes content and expertise across the entire company. It makes finding the answer to a question or getting help a fast and easy process.
Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify, sort, and organize content. The employee experience would benefit greatly from this information source.
Viva Connections promotes transparent communications across the organization. It consolidates news, topics, and conversations into existing technology. Open communications empower, inspire, and engage employees.
Viva Connections is especially beneficial for hybrid or remote work environments. Employees can feel disconnected from team members in a remote setting. By enabling an easy communication platform, the employee experience levels up.
An employee experience platform can connect teams virtually. This is a great solution for companies with hybrid or remote working models. This type of platform integrates many tools and activities.
Viva streamlines employee engagement and processes. The platform offers many features and benefits for employees. Those include:
Learn more about each feature below.
Streamlined communications with employees improved the digital employee experience. As discussed above, Microsoft Viva makes communicating with team members easy.
Viva offers actionable and personalized insights. It uses data about how employees work and recommends ways to do it better. This leads to more efficiency and productivity among team members.
Employees can see insight into where how they perform. And what areas need improvement. This is especially important when combined with goal tracking.
Employee experience platforms enable businesses to gain feedback from employees. This not only helps businesses create a better experience but also increases satisfaction. Stop trying to guess what employees need or want and go directly to the source with this feature.
An organization can align its goals and vision with this platform. The insights feature allows companies an inside look at how employees perform. And the relation with overarching goals.
Viva allows others to send praise about other employees. This option is through communication channels or can be sent in a private message. Sending regular praise and recognition will make employees feel more valued and appreciated.
Microsoft Viva has mindfulness features. There is an animated breathing break. This allows employees to take a brief moment to reset and refocus.
Viva also has a partnership with Headspace. Headspace offers guided meditations. When people apply mindfulness techniques, the experience will be more memorable.
Microsoft Viva enables in-app scheduling and reminders. Having lots of different applications or systems to use can impact the experience. Employees can get overwhelmed. Companies can make employee functions streamlined and more efficient with one comprehensive platform.
Viva has a feature for employees to set their status as do not disturb. This will allow them to focus without any distractions. This can be beneficial when there are many emails and chats to respond to throughout the day.
We would love to see you at our upcoming event dedicated to the Future of Employee Experience. Join us for 3 expert-led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future-proof your organization.
Do you want to make sure you aren't making any major mistakes when managing Microsoft 365? Join two Microsoft MVPs, Richard and Christian as they help!
Today, the digital employee experience matters more than ever. Download our eBook for 40 ideas that can help you maximize resources, efficiency and effectiveness in your organization.
Join Richard & Asif, two Microsoft MVPs and internationally recognized experts on Microsoft 365, as they share insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee management.
Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Digital Workplace, as he shares insight on how to better plan for, prepare for and benefit from the future of employee collaboration.
Join James Robertson, from Step Two author on digital employee experience, Suzie Robinson, author of the ClearBox report, and Richard Harbridge, as they share insight on how to better understand, and leverage the future of employee communications.
Solve for tomorrow's #hybridwork & #remotework challenges by looking at today's #EmployeeExperience and Digital Workplace! Need help? Join us on Thursday at 1:00 PM ET for 3 sessions, each tackling a key area of EX with industry leading experts.
It's no use being sour that hybrid and remote work have stepped into the limelight. After realizing the comfort level that comes with remote work life, employees have put their foot down. While many found and continue to find satisfaction working remotely, a recent report from Buffer stated that 24% of people feel lonely & 17% of people have difficulties collaborating and communicating when working remotely - both signs of struggling employee experience (EX).
Despite the previously stated data from Buffer, employees seem pretty torn on whether they prefer remote or hybrid work. In a separate report from Microsoft, the numbers show that 57% of remote employees want to switch to hybrid, while 51% of hybrid workers want to switch to remote.
Whether your organization is moving toward one or the other, your greatest asset will be a positive employee experience.
This blog aims to reason with the doubters and inform those thirsty for firm numbers on why they should prioritize EX, and how our upcoming event can help guide your efforts.
While every organization can have various reasons to prioritize EX, here are five shared reasons we think stand out for many organizations.
Our five reasons are:
Here are a few facts to provide some perspective on the five reasons.
52% of people in North America are more likely to choose their health and wellbeing after the pandemic.
People spend about 1 hour a day searching for or recreating information.
Strong workplace relationships improve overall employee wellbeing, productivity, and retention by roughly 20%!
50% of surveyed employees with thriving relationships were more productive at work year-over-year, compared to 36% of employees with struggling relationships.
However, only 27% of companies have created new hybrid meeting etiquette to ensure engaged employees that feel included. Better inclusion and engagement combined with wellbeing are essential to improve employee satisfaction.
CNBC reported that "44% of employees are "job seekers," according to Willis Towers Watson's 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Of them, 33% are active job hunters who looked for new work in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 11% planned to look in the first quarter of 2022."
Need help translating the different stages of the employee experience into strong employee communication, collaboration, and management that's adapted for the new norm? Please register for our virtual event happening this Thursday.
The rest of this blog is to help you determine precisely why you should be there.
We could list several reasons to attend our event, but we'd like to respect your time and focus on the following three.
Hear from industry leading experts! Our event has three guest speakers we are thrilled to have join us.
Suzie Robinson (@SuzieRobinson42) and James Robertson (@James_steptwo) are behind various top-tier awards and reports on the digital workplace and employee experience at their respective companies, StepTwo & ClearBox Consulting, leveraged by organizations globally.
We also have two incredible Microsoft MVPs, our CTO, Richard Harbridge, and Visual SP CEO and Founder, Asif Rehmani (@asifrehmani). Asif's company has been helping managers improve the EX with their application for years
Our virtual event is divided into three sessions:
Whatever area you need to understand better, we're sure to cover it in one of the three sessions. However, we highly recommend watching all three for the complete picture.
Have you ever wanted to ask leading industry experts a particular question you don't feel ever gets answered? Each session has a block of time dedicated to Q&A, so get your questions ready!
We hope to see you at the event! Register here.
Our CEO and Microsoft MVP, Kanwal Khipple, is back for Episode 8 of M365 Digital Workplace Updates! Take a look at all the amazing Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace Updates that have been released since our last update.
The Digital Employee Experience is all about going above and beyond to treat your employees like people, not numbers, and leveraging technology to help amplify and facilitate that objective. Since hybrid or fully remote workplaces emphasize the digital environment and de-emphasize the physical environment, there's never been a more important time to invest in digital employee experiences.
Maybe you think looking at the Employee Experience as a people-first experience is intuitively obvious. Or maybe it’s the first time you’re taking a step back from the important distractions that come with managing and maintaining these processes and solutions, to realize and look at the human element. Regardless, helping the humans behind the machines is at the core of a great employee experience and doing right by that is crucial in today’s extremely competitive job market.
Luckily, companies are waking up to the importance of improving employee experience (EX). Why have company alarms started ringing? The people, of course!
52% of people in North America are now more likely to choose their health and wellbeing overwork after the pandemic. Before this, organizations have had to ramp up on a trend that was already gaining momentum pre-pandemic.
In this blog, we will look at the employee experience through the lens of the people and how Microsoft has reacted to the change and can help.
However, if you’re also looking for insight into where EX is headed and how to keep up effectively, join us for our virtual event with 4 internationally recognized expert-led sessions on employee communication, collaboration, and management.
It can be easy to focus on strategy but that sometimes accidentally leads to tactics that don’t leave you focusing on the employees you're supposed to enable. And if we look at the image below, we see that there are several points to consider.
We dive deep into modern Employee Experience in our recent blog “What Is Employee Experience & Why It Matters?” which looks at a lot more than what it is, in addition to answering the question.
At the end of that blog, and in our dedicated blog on the Stage of Employee Experience, we map out the path employees take along their journey at an organization.
Make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your employees across all of the 8 various stages of the Employee Experience.
Here are some questions for your internal EX think tank:
Those were just some quick questions we hope will help get you started on your path to more unique questions, people in your organization might be experiencing.
We promise that all this work is worth it! Having people at the forefront of your Employee Experience plans is not only beneficial for your employees but for the organization itself. Research from Microsoft’s Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work proves that there are clear benefits to thriving relations within and outside your direct team.
Strong relationships lead to a more optimistic and happier workforce. Now, it’s up to your organization to deliver. Here to help you do that is Microsoft Viva. But first a couple of short paragraphs on why this matters to Microsoft.
Back in 2017, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, released his book titled, “Hit Refresh.” In his book, he discussed increasing synergy between the different departments and solutions at Microsoft. In addition, and among many other things, he discussed his aspirations to improve the future of digital business communication and collaboration.
Last year, on February 4th, after accomplishing many of his goals, Satya took another step forward toward his long-term aspirations. On that day, he said,
"Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we are ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and to help them thrive in this new era of flexible work."
Satya Nadella @satyanadella
This statement was part of the Microsoft Viva announcement. The new, growing suite of applications is dedicated to improving the future of the employee experience through a more robust digital workplace.
Microsoft offers several ways for employers to increase collaboration across the organization. There are several components to an improved employee experience.
Here are a few are examples:
Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that helps employers improve several of the above points.
The following are the four Viva applications:
Discover more about each feature application.
Viva Learning combines learning opportunities into everyday workflows. It allows employers to include learning and development throughout established processes.
It also allows for personalized recommendations. This means employees get a more customized experience and opportunities are based on career path goals, A personal touch can really elevate the employee experience, so try to find the best ways to leverage them.
Viva Learning also allows employers to use content from other sources. You can centralize your entire learning and development process in one hub. This leads to more efficiency and a more organizated digital workplace.
Viva Insights is focused on promoting productivity and well-being. It uses data-driven insights to make recommendations directly on the platform.
This feature also gives managers and employees a look into personal metrics. Employees can learn better and more effective ways of working with the recommendations. This capability also allows managers to improve the company culture.
It gives insights about teams that provide valuable guidance in decisions.
Viva Topics is fundamentally a knowledge base for employees, but can do so much with that information. This application organizes content and expertise across the entire company. It makes finding the answer to a question or getting help a fast and easy process.
Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify, sort, and organize content. The employee experience would benefit greatly from this information source.
Viva Connections promotes transparent communications across the organization. It consolidates news, topics, and conversations into existing technology. Open communications empower, inspire, and engage employees.
Viva Connections is especially beneficial for hybrid or remote work environments. Employees can feel disconnected from team members in a remote setting. By enabling an easy communication platform, the employee experience levels up.
An employee experience platform can connect teams virtually. This is a great solution for companies with hybrid or remote working models. This type of platform integrates many tools and activities.
Viva streamlines employee engagement and processes. The platform offers many features and benefits for employees. Those include:
Learn more about each feature below.
Streamlined communications with employees improved the digital employee experience. As discussed above, Microsoft Viva makes communicating with team members easy.
Viva offers actionable and personalized insights. It uses data about how employees work and recommends ways to do it better. This leads to more efficiency and productivity among team members.
Employees can see insight into where how they perform. And what areas need improvement. This is especially important when combined with goal tracking.
Employee experience platforms enable businesses to gain feedback from employees. This not only helps businesses create a better experience but also increases satisfaction. Stop trying to guess what employees need or want and go directly to the source with this feature.
An organization can align its goals and vision with this platform. The insights feature allows companies an inside look at how employees perform. And the relation with overarching goals.
Viva allows others to send praise about other employees. This option is through communication channels or can be sent in a private message. Sending regular praise and recognition will make employees feel more valued and appreciated.
Microsoft Viva has mindfulness features. There is an animated breathing break. This allows employees to take a brief moment to reset and refocus.
Viva also has a partnership with Headspace. Headspace offers guided meditations. When people apply mindfulness techniques, the experience will be more memorable.
Microsoft Viva enables in-app scheduling and reminders. Having lots of different applications or systems to use can impact the experience. Employees can get overwhelmed. Companies can make employee functions streamlined and more efficient with one comprehensive platform.
Viva has a feature for employees to set their status as do not disturb. This will allow them to focus without any distractions. This can be beneficial when there are many emails and chats to respond to throughout the day.
We would love to see you at our upcoming event dedicated to the Future of Employee Experience. Join us for 3 expert-led sessions on the future of employee communication, collaboration, and management. Find out what you need to know and how to future-proof your organization.
Do you want to make sure you aren't making any major mistakes when managing Microsoft 365? Join two Microsoft MVPs, Richard and Christian as they help!
Microsoft 365 Proactive Governance & Adoption: What You Need To Know Richard Harbridge will share proven approaches to getting started and succeeding in establishing and improving...
It is rare to find deep product domain knowledge for SharePoint outside of Microsoft product groups. Richard attacks understanding product capabilities and client implications with relentless drive.
- Brian Z, Microsoft
Kanwal has an interesting blend of technology savvy and marketing skills that make him a very flexible person to work with…a great addition to any SharePoint team with proven leadership skills.
- David B, The Real Content Network
Kanwal is an enormous value to any organization or client he is servicing as his commitment to their end goal, quest for new knowledge and unwavering dedication is unmatched by many. skills
- Camille M., Dun and Bradstreet