About QIC

QIC is a long-term specialist manager in alternatives offering infrastructure, real estate, private capital, liquid strategies, and multi-asset investments. It is one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with A$79bn (US$54 bn) in funds under management (as of 30 June 2020). QIC has more than 110 clients and over 1400 employees. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, QIC also has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Copenhagen.

THE CHALLENGE

QIC already operated a distributed meeting and conferencing environment, based on Cisco videoconferencing equipment, utilising the Pexip interoperability platform to allow Cisco equipment to join Microsoft Skype for Business Meetings.

As part of a company-wide transformation, QIC wanted to migrate to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business, and decommission their legacy Cisco environment for both calling and meetings.

Insync Technology – a Rapid Circle company moved rapidly to build out a program of work, aligned to a refresh of the QIC Windows 10 modern operating environment – to roll out Teams globally and provide a superior meeting and calling experience to employees.

OUR SOLUTION

Insync Technology – a Rapid Circle company moved rapidly to build out a program of work, aligned to a refresh of the QIC Windows 10 modern operating environment – to roll out Teams globally and provide a superior meeting and calling experience to employees.

STAGE 1: FAMILIARISING EMPLOYEES WITH TEAMS

As part of the change to Microsoft Teams, QIC had opted for LinkedIn Learning, where employees could allocate time to progress their own skills, at their own pace. In addition to LinkedIn Learning, additional resources such as go-live support, floor walking support, and onsite pop-ups were all implemented as part of the agreed joint Teams adoption plan.

STAGE 2: ADOPTING A HYBRID WORKPLACE

When the COVID-19 lock-down commenced, all QIC offices moved to work from home immediately across the globe. Business continuity and productivity had little impact as all employees had access to Microsoft Teams and were set up for remote work.

Remote working had been working exceptionally well for QIC, however, towards the latter part of the year, as restrictions began to ease, QIC engaged us to help employees continue to improve their knowledge of Microsoft communication tools. This was due to the development of a hybrid workforce, where some QIC employees had returned to the offices in various geographies and others were still working remotely.

STAGE 3: UNDERSTANDING MICROSOFT 365 PLATFORM USAGE

QIC Modern ways of working training module examples

Our team conducted a behavioural analysis survey for QIC with over 180 employees across all departments to obtain a clear understanding of current usage, perception, and the potential misuse of the Microsoft 365 platform. The analysis identified seven problematic areas, which were consistent across all departments (though ranking of importance varied). This data was used to shape the 16 deep-dive workshops which we ran as part of the adoption program of work.

QIC had a firm grasp of Microsoft Teams’ basic skills, and as a result, the workshops focused more on upskilling QIC employees with more advanced skills around running more effective and inclusive meetings and working productively and effectively in a new hybrid environment.

We led the workshops by discussing the survey results before reviewing best practices. In having these key discussions, we were able to show how the ‘next level’ skills we were training them on would add value to their roles.

THE OUTCOME

QIC employees saw value in additional engagement to reinforce skills and success. As part of the process, a key theme was “rethinking how we communicate – in Teams and elsewhere as appropriate.”

QIC will continue to focus on upskilling their staff with a view to continuing to improve productivity and team effectiveness in a hybrid environment.