The world of work has evolved drastically over the last couple of years, impacting every industry. Everywhere we look, we see the rise of new trends like hybrid, remote, and flexible work. Employees are becoming more globally distributed, and businesses are growing more reliant on the cloud to ensure continued productivity and efficiency.
Staying ahead of the competition and optimizing your employees in this new landscape requires a focus on the implementation of the right tools and platforms. Unfortunately, we’re currently living in a world where 29% of employees don’t have the technology they need to work efficiently, and 59% feel the tools are available, but not easily accessible.
The good news is leveraging the right technology for the digital workforce doesn’t have to be as complex as it seems. With an all-in-one, flexible, and extensible platform like Microsoft Teams, every company can empower their workforce.
Microsoft Teams, originally introduced as an intuitive communication and collaboration tool, has evolved to become perhaps the ultimate digital work hub for modern companies. The innovative ecosystem provides staff with easy ways to stay connected through video, audio, and messaging, while simultaneously integrating with common productivity and workplace tools.
What’s more, Teams also offers businesses a highly flexible environment, where they can add their own integrations, implement their preferred communication providers, and even build apps and automations from scratch.
Let’s look at some of the primary ways Microsoft Teams empowers your employees.
Teams brings employees together through a multitude of communication and collaboration tools, conveniently arranged into an intuitive app. Employees can engage in one-on-one asynchronous messaging conversations with colleagues, or chat with entire groups in a channel. Your staff can share files, GIFs, videos, and images at the click of a button, and work in real-time on shared documents with other employees around the globe.
Not only does Microsoft Teams integrate natively with other tools in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem like Word and PowerPoint, but you can also align it with the other tools your teams already use. This means it’s easy to collect data and features from ERP, CRM, and other digital systems.
Teams also delivers powerful audio and video communication opportunities. You can launch comprehensive video conferencing experiences for staff members located around the world, and issue a call in a matter of seconds. It’s even possible to bring your existing communications provider into your Teams environment through direct routing or Operator Connect.
With a single-pane-of-glass solution for all forms of communication and knowledge sharing, it’s easier to keep employees aligned, even in the age of hybrid and remote work.
Microsoft recognises every business is home to a wide range of different employees, all with their own specific needs and work strategies. As such, it allows companies to customise the productivity experience for every segment of the workforce.
For field-based employees, you can access walkie-talkie functionality, “Updates”, for submitting requests and tracking projects, and even tools for scheduling and staff management. For remote workers, there are project management tools to help keep everyone on track towards the same deadline, and “Together Mode” video conferences to improve engagement.
Supervisors and managers can access in-depth reporting and analytical tools to gather valuable information about their employees, wherever they are. You can track insights from your calling system and learn more about how employees are using apps. It’s also possible to use polls and surveys to collect information from your team members directly.
Microsoft Teams’ integration with the “Viva” landscape also makes it possible for employees to maintain more control over their work experience. Teams can even schedule times in their calendar when they need to focus on work, so other employees don’t invite them to calls and meetings.
Even as the workplace continues to evolve, it’s fair to say voice has remained a consistent part of how we connect, communicate, and stay productive. Part of digitally empowering your workforce is making sure they have the right solutions in place to communicate not only with their colleagues but also with customers and partners too.
A direct routing platform like Resonate Voice for Teams gives business leaders the freedom to build the ultimate voice solution for their business needs. You can deploy analogue gateways to bring legacy endpoints into Teams through SIP trunking, and issue numbers to every employee. It’s also possible to create a contact centre solution within the Teams landscape.
Companies like Resonate can work within the Microsoft ecosystem to bring native contact centre routing solutions to your omnichannel environment. For compliance, training, and analytics purposes, you can also implement compliant call recording solutions.
With embedded solutions designed specifically for the Teams landscape, it’s easy to rapidly upgrade your communications solution so employees have access to all of the tools they need in one place.
Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft Teams has the flexibility to adapt to suit virtually any kind of business. The flexible ecosystem comes with specialist tools for every industry, whether you’re running a healthcare organisation or a manufacturing business.
There are shift and task management solutions built into the ecosystem for workforce management and organization. Plus, the Microsoft AppSource environment makes it easy to rapidly implement new apps into your environment to prevent your employees from having to jump between different tabs to access all the functionality they need.
With Power Platform for Microsoft Teams, companies can even use no-code and low-code solutions to rapidly integrate new automations and workflows into their environment. This makes it easy to keep track of data and simplify repetitive tasks with minimal effort.
If you’d like to learn more about how Microsoft Teams can empower and optimise your team, you can discover everything you need to know about the Teams ecosystem here. Alternatively, if you’re ready to start discovering the benefits of Teams for yourself, book a discovery call with the experts at Resonate to start preparing your plan.