Microsoft Teams is indispensable in our work. That was different 1.5 years ago. Many healthcare organisations rolled out Teams faster so that online communication and collaboration continued. Due to the speed, little or no attention has often been paid to the design and adoption of Teams. For example, how do you ensure that Teams is not only used for chatting and meetings, but also for collaborating in documents? And that employees won’t start emailing again?

In short: how do you ensure that everyone uses Teams even better? During the digital skills week, we discussed with healthcare organisations how they stimulate the use of Teams and what their challenges are. Below are the 11 takeaways:

1. All participating organisations indicate that they do not (yet) pay enough attention to digital skills.

2. Working with primary systems, such as the EPD/ECD, receives much more attention from other corners of the organisations. Think of HR or a Learning House, but also communication. The focus is not on ‘office automation’ skills.

3. Video consultations via Teams linked to HiX is now the first step in which ‘office automation’ also affects the primary process.

4. The complexity of continuously changing ICT is increasing, but digital skills are not growing at the same rate. This creates a gap.

5. Hospitals/healthcare institutions are increasingly confronted with platforms that are constantly changing (based on SaaS). This is now happening for the first time in these types of organisations. That not only takes getting used to for the employees, but also for the organisation itself.

6. Awareness must grow that everyone, not only ICT, has a (part) own responsibility in digital transformation. The organisation should do more in this, both management and employees. This requires a completely different mindset!

7. It was clear during the Corona crisis that online meetings via Teams had added value. The big challenge now is to expand the platform. Especially on the care side. How do you make the added value of this tangible for everyone?

8. Now that the first crisis rollout has succeeded, there is now also time to think about issues such as privacy, which do not get priority 1 in a crisis.

9. Foundations for a successful workplace are:

a. Technology – it has to work.

b. Processes – these must be in order and adapted (so no longer as during the crisis, but now good) also think of management.

c. Policy – for example security, what is allowed and what is not allowed.

d. Digital proficiency – a foundation of this is needed before you can really get the most out of it.

10. Organisations really want to help everyone, but ultimately you have to as an organisation. Employees also have to come along. This is still often from ICT (and not yet HR, for example).

11. There is a big difference in required skills between ‘use (=You are about)’ and ‘good use (=added value). In order to stimulate good use, it is important to offer detailed ‘work patterns’ per target group.

Would you also like to talk to other healthcare organisations? Then sign up for the next roundtable. It will take place on Thursday 17 March from 14.30 to 16.30.