ABOUT HUNTER WATER

Hunter Water is a State-Owned Corporation (SOC) providing drinking water, wastewater, and recycled water services to a population approaching 600,000 people in homes and businesses across the Lower Hunter region.

The challenge

In March 2020, Hunter Water joined many companies that fast-tracked from the office to a remote working environment due to the outbreak of COVID19. Given the complexity and new challenges of a work from home culture their current collaboration program, Cisco WebEx no longer met their business needs.

Our solution

To ensure a smooth transition and high user adoption rate of 650 users, Hunter Water partnered with Rapid Circle to implement Microsoft Teams and an effective training and change management plan that supported the successful transition to work from home.

STAGE 1: DETERMINING THE MOST EFFECTIVE TRAINING MODEL

Microsoft Teams was the first Microsoft 365 product to be implemented at Hunter Water, which meant building a complete knowledge base across the company. Insync worked with Hunter Water to develop a tailored adoption plan, where the first phase used a pilot group of 100 people with the intent to progressively roll it out across the business. The ICT department was nominated as the pilot group as they had the skills to evaluate the program’s technical capabilities, as well as building internal knowledge and capability to support the platform.

From there, the adoption plan was re-evaluated, and focus testing was conducted to determine the most effective training method and level of skills needed throughout the organisation.

STAGE 2: TRAINING AND UPSKILLING EMPLOYEES

As part of the adoption process, a broad communication channel was created and monitored by Insync where employees could ask any questions they had about Teams.

In addition to the broad communication channel, ‘drop-in’ training sessions were run by Insync where employees would have the opportunity to raise any issues, be it functionality, awareness or usability.

This approach drove the content of the session and help develop skills in those problem areas, additional training material was also provided to address these scenarios for future staff. The training sessions were very successful with approximately 50 people attending each session.

THE OUTCOME

The combination of flexible support and drip-feeding information helped to reinforce Microsoft Teams’ skills and create a consistent level of knowledge across the organisation.

Hunter Water has begun the process of returning to the office, with many of the meeting spaces optimised for WebEx, the organisation is working with Insync on how they can transition the remaining employees and meeting spaces to Teams. There is also a focus on ongoing support and skill development as more employees are interested in how they can leverage other Microsoft 365 tools to create more efficiencies within their job roles.

In December 2020, Hunter Water subscribed to our M365 Update Subscription Service which helps organisations combat information overload by panning through over 500 Microsoft updates monthly to deliver relevant and actionable updates to each company.

“Staying on top of Microsoft updates is a job in itself – Insync – a Rapid Circle company work out what’s relevant to us and the practical application for Hunter Water and then we implement this into our change plan”

– Amber Mitchell, Digital Change Lead, Hunter Water