Online and hybrid collaboration with Microsoft 365 has become the standard in many manufacturing organisations over the past two years. We hear from many organisations that they do not use all functionalities and get stuck in the collaboration. Employees email instead of chat, send files as attachments or use shadow IT to collaborate. During the roundtable on Friday 25 November, we talked to Toyota, Arcadis, Inalfa roof systems and organisations in manufacturing about how they stimulate collaboration and what their challenges are. Below you will find the 8 take-aways. 

• By regularly having your employees do surveys, you can uncover pain points and steer the adoption process accordingly. This way you can determine a thorough approach based on the needs of the end users.

• IT is playing an increasingly important role in facilitating a solid employee experience. Interfaces with HR and facilities are becoming stronger and good cooperation is therefore more important.

• A good learning platform contributes to better adoption. Also take a good look at what kind of way of learning suits the different end users.

• The most important factor in implementing behavioural change is to make it clear to them per persona what it brings them. It is important to approach this from the target group, not from IT.

• To inhibit meeting culture, it is useful to have clear before each meeting what the agenda items are and what the role of the participants is. If that is not clear, you do not have to attend the meeting.

• By organising your meeting rooms in the right way, in terms of set-up but also in terms of furniture, you can ensure that remote participants also feel involved during hybrid meetings.

• Microsoft often comes up with new updates and features. Participants have difficulty keeping track of all that information and choosing what is interesting for their users. Rapid Circle can provide customers with the information that is specifically suited to their organisation.

• Many participants have difficulty efficiently organising their IP protection. By imposing as many blocks as possible, e.g. via Azure AD, a leak is less obvious.