Office 365 can help your business with instituting hybrid work that actually works.
You may have heard of hybrid work, which might seem like it’s a buzzword. However, it’s not. Hybrid work is many ways the future of work. In short, hybrid work is a combination of onsite and remote office work.
Hybrid Work: The Future of Work
In many ways, hybrid work has been an outgrowth of the COVID-19 pandemic, when onsite work was less palatable due to the potential for COVID spread. While businesses and localities have been opening up, we just don’t know what the long-term prognosis might be for future potential pandemics or breakouts.
Having your business set up so that it is able to handle both remote and onsite work is not just smart planning, it can actually save you money in the short and long term.
Obstacles to Hybrid Work
Despite the advancement of technology and the Internet, many businesses have resisted hybrid work and remote work for many years. The question is why? In some cases, managers might simply be too afraid that their staff wouldn’t be working as hard if the manager could not monitor them in-person.
Some of the more draconian measures to mitigate this problem have included software that can monitor whether a person is actually sitting at the computer doing their work (or off watching a movie in their living room).
However, these are rudimentary measures in some respects. They are more worthwhile if you have teams that perform rote work such as data entry that simply needs to be tracked by the hour.
When it comes to actual teamwork – encouraging your staff to work together on complex projects – programs that monitor keystrokes really aren’t going to cut it. In these cases, a manager might have preferred onsite staff because it was much easier in the past to have people in-person for meetings. If someone is remote, you cannot just pop your head into an office or cubicle to ask a question or check to see if something is done.
In short, collaboration is what is hurt the most by remote work. But if you have been one of those managers who has been concerned about remote teams collaborating well, the technology is now here to make it work.
How Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, and Office 365 Are Enabling Hybrid Work
Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall, and it’s clear that they understand that the old way of working completely on site is no longer the future. They have been retooling much of their core Microsoft Office products to enable collaboration and remote work.
You can see some of these changes in their latest version of Microsoft Office. For example, Microsoft Word now has the ability to share documents and collaborate with others in real time.
While some of these collaboration options might be available with competitors such as Google Docs, Microsoft has established itself for many years as a business solutions provider. It’s growing collection of Office 365 maps have been developed with business in mind.
Microsoft Teams is an extremely powerful collaboration app that can supercharge your business and make hybrid work not just plausible, but extremely efficient. While consumers have gotten used to using Zoom video conferencing since the pandemic started, it does have its limitations, and it’s not as easily integrated with business workflows as Microsoft Teams video conferencing is.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, has an integrated collaboration system with robust video conferencing as part of its entire package. Your teams can easily make meetings on the fly in Microsoft Teams. They don’t have to fumble around with complicated Zoom links and passwords that can be easily lost or forgotten.
So while Zoom can be a really great solution for certain things such as casual online groups and classes, Microsoft Teams is an enterprise level solution for businesses that would like to collaborate in real time and be able to hold meetings on the fly without much hassle.
Set Your Business Up for Successful Hybrid Work With Office 365
CDS Office Technologies is an expert provider of Managed IT and other technology solutions for SMBs and larger businesses. We can help establish a hybrid work system where your staff can enjoy both onsite and remote work in a collaborative fashion. Our solutions can incorporate Microsoft Office, Office 365 apps, and Microsoft Teams to ensure that your team can make the most of its day. By setting up a consultation with us, we can talk to you more about what your needs are and how to custom fit a solution.
CDS Office Technologies is a leading provider of Managed IT Services as well as other technology services for small businesses, large businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies in and around Springfield, IL. If you would like to leverage Microsoft Office for remote and hybrid work, please contact us for a consultation.
