Approximately 83% of respondents to an Accenture study said they felt a “hybrid work” model would be best for productivity going forward. Since the pandemic, companies have widely shared the consensus that fantastic work practices require a combination of in-person, and remote work. As a result, technology vendors have begun building hybrid solutions.
While there are many tech brands investing in hybrid work today, few have achieved the same reputation for innovation as Microsoft. Since the pandemic, Microsoft has released a slew of guides and insights into the management of the hybrid workforce.
At the same time, the Microsoft Teams environment has begun to emerge as a central destination or productivity and collaboration for the hybrid team.
Here’s how Microsoft and Microsoft Teams are empowering the hybrid workplace.
Microsoft’s Vision for Hybrid Work
Since the pandemic, Microsoft revealed people were spending around 148% more time in Microsoft Teams meetings each week. What’s more, 66% of business decision-makers began exploring strategies for “redesigning” physical spaces to suit hybrid work. These findings prompted Microsoft to begin building its own vision for hybrid work – one centred on multiple pillars of inclusion.
Microsoft recommends taking a multi-faceted approach to the hybrid workplace, starting with physical office spaces designed to enable everyone, not just in-person meeting attendees. Some of the most essential pillars of hybrid work according to Microsoft are:
The Meeting Room:
Physical office spaces should be designed to bridge the gaps between in-person and remote employees, with comprehensive tools to get everyone involved in the meeting.
Microsoft Teams Rooms, for instance, come with features like intelligent cameras offering AI-powered speaker tracking, and even people recognition. People recognition immediately identifies the person in a meeting and displays their profile name for better meeting context. Meeting rooms can be designed to be as large or small as needed, with access to endless forms of intelligence and customisation.
Better Meeting software:
Meeting rooms can also be enhanced by use of the right meeting software. Microsoft’s Teams environment is designed to deliver more meaningful connections between team members, with features like “Dynamic View” for attendees, which allows Teams to automatically adjust various elements of the meeting so remote and in-office parents see each other and shared content more effectively.
Microsoft Teams provides all employees with a comprehensive environment for setting up meetings and sharing information during crucial collaborative conversations – inside and outside of a conference.
Improved collaborative planning:
Better hybrid work begins with making sure people in the remote landscape and the office can collaborate efficiently according to various different schedules. Microsoft Teams comes with access to a range of tools which synchronize the modern team, including new features in Outlook which show when teammates are working and how they’re available to join meetings.
There’s even an RSVP feature in Microsoft Teams to allow people to confirm whether they’re going to be attending in-person or virtually. Plus, employees can get advice on when to set up a meeting based on shared calendars.
Enhanced content sharing:
To work efficiently together, people in the remote world need to be able to access the same content as the people in a physical office. Microsoft Teams is already enabling content sharing via things like file and screen sharing tools. However, the Microsoft group has also invested in additional tools to make knowledge sharing more efficient lately.
