Microsoft Teams has positioned itself as a go-to hub for communication and collaboration, combining classic software, integration and interoperability. Just at the tail end of last year, Microsoft Teams found itself in the top right of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Report for both ‘Ability to Execute’ and ‘Completeness of Vision’.

With our latest Round Table topic, “Microsoft Teams in the Hybrid Workplace”, we spoke with experts from Pure IP, Resonate, NuWave and BlueJeans to discuss the strategies and models business leaders would need to embrace Teams, what tools are shaping the hybrid work environment; how to increase productivity with in-person office work and remote, offsite work; and advice for ensuring employees don’t get overloaded or too tired.

What Microsoft Teams strategies or models would you recommend to business leaders embracing a hybrid workplace?

Joe McStravick, Managing Director, BlueJeans by Verizon (EMEA/APAC) 

Joe McStravick

BlueJeans MD McStravick cites a recent report from Technavio: “The estimation* is that the virtual event applications market will grow to $3.8 billion by 2026 @ CAGR 19.3%, and this trend is here to stay.

“People are expected to have the flexibility to connect with networks, attend events and meet customers and vendors face to face and virtually as an option to restricted travel.

“In the coming year, around 47% of employees will attend six or more virtual events. Most of these will include a hybrid participation option for attendees who can’t travel.”

Using these statistics, McStravick gives his recommendation:

“The growth of 5G and improvements in connectivity will support the trend of virtual and hybrid events.”

*Virtual Events Market 2023-2027: A Descriptive Analysis of Parent Market, Five Forces Model, Market Dynamics, and Segmentation.

Mark Bunnell, COO, NuWave Communications

Bunnell believes business leaders should consider embracing Microsoft Teams as a central hub for their communications and collaboration platform.

The NuWave COO continued by giving his reasons: “Microsoft Teams is a powerful platform providing the hybrid workforce with the ability to hold virtual meetings and events with employees, customers, and partners.

“Organisations can integrate Microsoft Teams as a project management tool and leverage Microsoft Teams Viva to build a connection and sense of community between employees. They can also Leverage Nuwave Communications fully automated iPILOT provisioning platform to enable Microsoft Teams Phone System and provide seamless PSTN voice services for the hybrid workforce anywhere on any device.”

Ian Guest, Marketing Director, Pure IP:

An estimated million-plus organisations are already using Microsoft Teams to communicate internally and externally with popular features like video conferencing and chat. Pure IP’s Marketing Director Ian Guest says: “A natural extension of this is to incorporate PSTN calling via Microsoft Teams Phone to bring collaboration and communications into a single platform to support a hybrid workplace better.

“Adding telephony to Microsoft Teams allows you to take and make calls from Teams intuitively”, Guest continues, “Fully unifying communications and streamlining workflows. This allows employees to take and make calls from anywhere, making it a crucial tool to support hybrid working.

Guest adds: “Also since Microsoft Teams is cloud-based, businesses can eliminate costs and time spent maintaining legacy, on-premise systems equipment and hardware. Microsoft offers a variety of ways to connect to the PSTN, making it a flexible phone system to suit any business requirement.”

Andy Bates, Change and Adoption Manager, Resonate

Resonate’s Andy Bates believes the promise of effective hybrid work has been around for a while: “The Covid pandemic thrust this forward with only 8%* of people in the UK saying they will work full-time in their office going forward.”

“Whilst at first it was coping with what we had, or in some cases highly rapid deployments of Microsoft Teams or other remote solutions to the company, we now need more. Technology is responding by providing us with better tools to make hybrid working a reality truly.

Bates points to the developments in and around Teams: “Applications like Microsoft Teams have constantly been evolving for more effective home working. We are now moving to the next phase, where we see Microsoft investing in the physical spaces with Team Rooms and, in 2023, Microsoft Places. We will then be ready for true hybrid working. Leadership needs to be aware of these changes and adapt quickly.”

Resonate’s Change and Adoption Manager notes that business leaders need to be aware of physical spaces and the organisation’s ability to use them effectively.

Bates says: “Spaces need to be re-defined to embrace collaborative experiences rather than just desk space. The aim is to make the office a great place to meet, collaborate and engage. Team Rooms can help create this by ensuring the space is transformed and to make the meeting experience inclusive for everyone, in the office or remote.

“The investment is the first part of the journey; making sure everyone is comfortable using the technology is key; we have all seen ‘white elephant’ meeting rooms over the years.”

Bates believes the movement on this needs to come from the top down. “Leadership has their part to play here too; they need to get involved, use the technology and lead the organisation into the future. Change and adoption come easily in this environment where people see leadership embracing technology. The companies that will be successful in the future are the ones that will have the better facilities that truly embrace hybrid working; they will bring back the joy of working in the office.”

What Teams-related integration, app, or tool do you think is reshaping or supporting the hybrid workplace the most …and why? (Examples: Viva Platform, Whiteboard, live collaboration integrations with, say, PowerPoint)

Mark Bunnell

Mark Bunnell, COO, NuWave Communications

Nuwave Communications believes there are two worth noting in reshaping the hybrid workplace: Dynamics 365 and Teams Whiteboard.

COO Bunnell clarifies: “Dynamics 365, when used within Microsoft Teams, provides a range of tools for customer relationship management, sales, marketing, and customer service.

“Teams Whiteboard enables organisations to collectively design and brainstorm within a collaboration space as if they’re all in the same room. These tools can help streamline business processes, improve communication and collaboration among hybrid teams, and ultimately lead to increased productivity.”

Andy Bates, Change and Adoption Manager, Resonate

Bates believes Teams Meetings is a classic video conferencing solution since 2019, doing everything you expect: video, audio and screen share.

Bates continues: “We have seen this tool rapidly evolve over the past few years, and we will see continued enhancements. Whilst there are third-party add-ons that can create a better experience, let’s ensure that we take full advantage of what we already have: whiteboard enhancements. Two years ago, it was primitive and useless unless you had to. Now whiteboards are files that we can share, move, and pre-create. We can now drop in so many other content types. The mouse experience isn’t too bad, while touch screen is always better.  What’s more, everyone can contribute no matter where they are.

Bates describes other tools he recommends to expand his answer and adds: “Did you know you can use ‘content from camera’ to share an actual physical whiteboard into a Teams meeting? What’s more, the people at home can see straight through the scribe who always seems to be standing in the way!

“Split Screen: this feature has only recently come in, but it has been on other platforms for years. With a large screen in your meeting room, why not place the webcams of everyone at home up there rather than the content? Even better, a meeting room with two screens, content on one and the people at home on the other.

“Together Mode: A gimmick, or does it have credit?  Using the split screen above, give it a go on the big screen.  With assigned seats and custom scenes, it can also be effectively used for Town Halls quiet.

“Live Translated Captions: Yes, I know this has been moved to Teams Premium, but for global organisations, this made hybrid meetings even better than a physical meetings.  It allows everyone at home to have captions in their preferred language in real-time. Several features have been built directly into the Teams Meeting interface to address the hybrid experience. Are you using them all?”

Ian Guest, Marketing Director, Pure IP

Guest points to one of the Teams’ trump cards:

“One of the superpowers of Teams is tight integration with a line of business apps. Microsoft apps and apps like Salesforce, Monday.com, and Trello can be integrated to streamline workflows.”

Guest adds: “Organisations can take it further by developing their apps and workflows with Power Platform and using those within Teams. But we have also seen apps like Viva being incorporated into business processes effectively to support and help manage hybrid working from both a user and business perspective.”

Joe McStravick, Managing Director, BlueJeans by Verizon (EMEA/APAC)

BlueJeans’ integrations mean users can “join a BlueJeans Meeting directly from a Microsoft Teams chat with a single command”. McStravick raves about the many product updates coming to support BlueJeans’ existing customers and prospects.

He explains: “Verizon Business to Launch Multi-Session, Multi-Day Events with BlueJeans Expo that will help to deliver a revolutionary experience for transforming virtual events into a community hub. BlueJeans Expo is an immersive virtual environment that combines live and on-demand video, event management and content hosting into one powerful yet easy-to-manage platform.

He says about new events and studio platform: “Another great offering is BlueJeans Studio which enables TV-grade event management and production. It can simultaneously be used for virtual and hybrid events and live-streamed and multi-streamed to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, RTMP destinations, and other streaming platforms.

He adds: “You can also embed the live stream or pre-recorded event into a website. These new features support the convenience and efficiency expected in hybrid and virtual worlds.”

How can a business leader best use Teams to increase productivity when their employees are engaged with in-person office work and remote, offsite work?

Ian Guest

Ian Guest, Marketing Director, Pure IP

Guest believes Teams’ real-time collaboration features of meetings and calls are well understood. Still, the most significant productivity unlock for hybrid teams is using the async collaboration aspects of Teams.

He explains: “Having a team for a specific project and having all the objectives, documents, chat, meeting recordings and meeting notes all in one place helps everyone communicate better and deliver a better result regardless of their location.”

Joe McStravick, Managing Director, BlueJeans by Verizon (EMEA/APAC)

With integration for Teams, BlueJeans Meetings is a video conferencing solution supporting business leaders and employees.

McStravick continues: “It’s a flexible platform that can be used in a web browser or via a mobile app, providing essential flexibility for various devices. It can cater to 3,000 participants and enables high-definition video and audio quality. Being a cloud-based platform, BlueJeans doesn’t need any installation and saves infrastructure running costs.”

MD McStravick champions his firm: “BlueJeans is dedicated to providing innovative collaboration solutions to meet the challenges of the hybrid and virtual world. The new features are added to address the trends and demands of the business world — today and into the future. He concludes:

“BlueJeans Gateway solution for Microsoft Teams Room supports seamless video collaboration and conferencing integration.”

Mark Bunnell, COO, NuWave Communications

Bunnell points out that: “Business leaders can leverage Planner within Microsoft Teams to organise tasks by team channels”.

He adds: “Tasks can be assigned to employees within Planner to improve productivity. This would enable employees to stay organised, collaborate effectively, and be productive within a mixed hybrid work environment.”

Andy Bates, Change and Adoption Manager, Resonate

For Bates, it’s about the combination. He says:

“Everyone working in the office, easy.  Everyone works from home quite easily.  A mixture of the two seems quite a challenge. The automatic position is that everyone in the physical room plugs their headsets in and joins the meeting as if they were at home. The question then gets asked, why to be in the office in the first place?!”

Bates elaborates: “Meeting rooms need to do more than ever before. It needs to be where natural conversation and interactions can occur in the physical room and simultaneously include the remote workers. Each room needs to be adequately fitted with four pieces of hardware that suites the size of the room as a minimum: audio with microphone(s)/speakers; and visual – screen(s)/webcam(s).”

Bates claims such setups need not be expensive: “For a small huddle room, I often use the TV as my screen and speakers using the HDMI cable.  Users can mount a webcam on top with a USB extension and use that as their webcam and microphone.  This works perfectly well for 3-4 people.”

“When the room gets more extensive, the equipment needs to suit the space. This is where Teams Rooms come into play. Having reliable and easy-to-use systems across the estate will give your employees a reason to visit the office. With your Teams Rooms in place, you can look forward to the launch of Microsoft Places in 2023. ”

What more can Teams do for the hybrid workplace to facilitate employees not getting overloaded or exhausted?

Andy Bates

Andy Bates, Change and Adoption Manager, Resonate

Bates explains that Microsoft Teams is on a journey, adapting quickly to a changing world.

He points out that overload can happen with too many meetings. He asks: “Do we need them? I would approximate that half my meetings could be removed from my schedule if we were working asynchronously and collaboratively with the tools we already have.”

Bates believes working in Teams and channels is a revolutionary way of working, but there is also significant resistance to this within every business. He continues: “It feels exposed, too open and very different to email and instant messaging. Create smaller teams, take advantage of shared channels and have a ‘No email day’!”

Bates is not without criticism: “Microsoft does need to improve the experience; whilst it is relatively simple to use, a lot of things need to be corrected. Changes are coming soon that will address some of these. That said, meetings do play an essential part in working life. We all know agendas, minutes, and actions are necessary for any forum, yet we all need help to do it.  Why can’t an agenda template be added to every meeting?

He adds: “Teams Premium will have minutes automatically created along with actions using ‘Intelligent Recap’; this should already be a part of the everyday experience. Then finally, use ‘Focus Time’ from Viva Insights; if you do not schedule ‘matrix 2’ of the Eisenhower Matrix, ‘not urgent and important’, you will always be fighting a losing battle.”

Ian Guest, Marketing Director, Pure IP

Pure IP’s Guest believes overload, exhaustion and burnout at work are real problems.

However, he clarifies that there is an answer, Viva Insights: “Teams and Microsoft 365 can be part of the solution, and Viva Insights is Microsoft’s Teams integrated employee experience platform. It gives you data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations to help employees and managers improve productivity and wellbeing and build better work habits.”

Mark Bunnell, COO, NuWave Communications

“Teams has several applications and tools such as Viva Insights, Viva Connections, Viva Goals, and Viva Learning to assist employees from being overloaded or exhausted”, says NuWave COO Bunnell.

“Viva Insights provides personalised recommendations through workplace analytics and employee feedback. Using Viva Insights, employees can stay connected, protect their time, reflect, prioritise tasks, and take a break as needed.”

Bunnell continues: “Viva Connections creates spaces for conversations, company news, and shared interests, fostering a more inclusive work culture. Viva Goals connects everyday work to strategic priorities through goal setting. Viva Learning provides knowledge and learning tools to help employees be more successful at work.”

Joe McStravick, Managing Director, BlueJeans by Verizon (EMEA/APAC)

McStravick quotes the Microsoft statistic that 79% of employees feel that they could be more productive with fewer meetings and the increasing number of discussions lead to decreased focus. He believes his firm can support organisations and says: “BlueJeans Studio can efficiently help deliver important information post-event with quality videos, insights and more.”

He concludes: “Finally, team cooperation is very important, and thanks to BlueJeans Collab Board, it’s possible to bring team members’ ideas and content together and co-create on a blank canvas, enabling seamless collaboration for up to 25 individuals.”

 

 



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