EP91: Supporting the Back-to-Office policy

Office 365 Distilled

In an age where the employee is such a corporate asset and often the centre of the innovation process from tweaking a policy to defining the R&D of the company... the employee is feeling the power. Many companies are starting to feel the pain of not having folks on-site when they need them. Employees find working from home suits them, but there are times when the team need to be on-site and collaborate face to face.

There is a revisit of the pandemic 2 years ago and forced a change in the company working from home meant somehow equipment from chairs to monitors all had to be purchased from home.

Today the Way of Working needs to find a way to minimise the changes from home working to Office working and the key attributes of meetings need to be transparent to all employees. Even if it is just about equivalency during the meeting.

Change is so important and the K from ADKAR becomes important as we need to help users gain the knowledge and change their perspective during meetings to understand that not everyone is sitting by their side... how many people point to their screen during a meeting and assume everyone else can see their windows

As IT we can help the company design their infrastructure to support how the company will deliver a Digital 1st environment.

Steve points out that if everyone is equal then unless the company is going to invest heavily not everyone will have the best monitor and camera at home and at the office. So finding the common denominator as the online meeting policy and documenting the expectations and associated training is one way for IT to support the home working policy.

Of course, one way to encourage back to work is to ensure the Office experience is better than the home experience. However, that needs to be balanced against the quality of the meeting to ensure it is getting the greatest value for the business. For example, ensuring that people have access to the right knowledge to be most effective.

Tool knowledge is key but also a personal understanding goes the differences between Collaboration, Presenting, Brainstorming, and ensuring that everyone knows and understands how to encourage innovation during meetings. In fact, the reality is that the Meeting owners need to plan and ensure the right tools are available for everyone and they know how to use them.

AI and Cortana could be a big player using insights to identify who will be in the office and set up meetings to support active projects

Martijn drops his golden nugget by stating his perception is that for Hybrid work you need Hardware, policy, the right application and ensure people have digital literacy and understand the technology to move forward. Meeting owners have responsibility for the success of Hybrid meetings.

A great Digital First meeting experience is achievable.

For this company, we need a digital-first definition to drive policy and delivery of the right hardware.