Chatting, video calling, and collaborating online in documents with Microsoft Teams has become part of everyday use over the past two years. But many healthcare organisations notice that they do not use all the functionalities of Teams and get stuck in collaboration. Employees email instead of chat, send files as attachments or use shadow IT to collaborate. During the roundtable on 17 March, we discussed with Amsterdam UMC, ZorgSaam, Zuyderland and other healthcare organisations how they stimulate collaboration with Teams and what their challenges are. Below you will find the 12 key take aways.  

1. All participating healthcare organisations find it a challenge to reach and enthuse everyone in the organisation.

2. Employees have different levels of digital proficiency. Therefore, you need to start with the basics. Good e-learning (based on Microsoft Learning Pathways) is important.

3. When you roll out Teams, it is nice to do this per department instead of everyone at the same time. This way you can connect well to the work processes per department and really work smarter.

4. To work really well, you need a good technical foundation. Think Windows 10 instead of Windows 7. And that Teams works within a Citrix or other VDI environment.

5. To achieve really good adoption, you don’t have to use 2 systems side by side, such as file shares and Teams. This is difficult for large organisations because they are often in an intermediate phase in which both systems coexist for quite a long time.

6. Mobile Application Management (MAM) is a good solution for securing data on private devices. Make sure that you convince employees that you really can’t see anything other than company data.

7. The added value of Teams for healthcare organisations is safety. You can chat securely via Teams instead of whatsapping and also exchange documents securely.

8. Another big advantage of Teams for healthcare organisations is that you can do your work anywhere. This is ideal for itinerant workers.

9. One of the challenges for working with Teams is that employees don’t yet have enough digital skills.

10. Most participants in the roundtable believe that other tools can also be used, provided it is safe. Despite the fact that the management of several programs next to each other does not work pleasantly.

11. 3rd party tools remain a risk when employees leave the company because data is still in them.

12. It is important to agree when you use which tooling and make a plan of this together with your colleagues.

We will talk about the last point during the next roundtable on Tuesday 14 June from 14.30 – 16.30. Would you like to discuss this with other healthcare organisations? More information can be found via the button below.