To work together in a modern welfare environment, you need a good digital skill level. But welfare workers want to do their work, not spend their time in classrooms learning about Microsoft Teams. We solved this by setting clear standards and making learning fun. 

ContourdeTwern, a Dutch welfare organization, faced significant challenges in adoption of collaboration software and improving digital skills among employees. The goal of the project was to develop a way for ContourdeTwern employees to empower themselves by developing their digital skills at their own level and pace. In addition, collaboration had to be made easier by standardizing, and possibly automating, the way people at ContourdeTwern work together. 

A few highlights:

• Standardized structures for collaborations: Rapid Circle implemented standard work agreements and procedures across all teams, drastically reducing the effort needed to onboard workers and maintain digital documents. 

• Enhanced digital skills: Rapid Circle developed a comprehensive online and on-site training program. This improved digital competencies and knowledge of work agreements and lead to empowered, enthusiastic employees. 

• Improved communication and collaboration. Deploying Microsoft Teams as the central collaboration platform, we centralized and standardized all communication and collaboration, reducing shadow IT and setting a clear norm for how to use the system. 

• Positive feedback. Employees appreciated the training and support, because they were designed to meet their specific needs. 

• Digital leadership. Leaders within the organization were shown how to digitally empower their team members and keep the development of digital skills and knowledge going after the project ended. 

A challenge and an opportunity

People that spend their working day with clients and not behind a desk, tend to get less opportunities to develop their digital skills. On an organizational level, this can make adopting new technologies challenging. We see organizations struggle with this across all sectors of our market. This is a problem now, but it will be a much greater problem when AI really hits home, as it will in every industry sooner or later. The potential of AI and data to positively transform the work of professionals in welfare is huge, but making it a reality requires that everyone in the organization has the skills to use the technology. 

ContourdeTwern recognized the opportunity and decided to meet the challenges head on. 

Learning how it works, learning how to use it 

Many of the employees at ContourdeTwern were struggling to effectively use the digital systems that were in place. This was partly due to the lack of digital skills, but it also stemmed from lack of clarity on how the systems were to be used. In Microsoft Teams, for example, there were several teams that had found a good and efficient way of working. But there was no structure that could be used to collect these best practices and elevate them to an organization-wide standard. So, for most teams, digital communication and collaboration were suboptimal because people lacked both knowledge of how systems worked and clear rules on how to use them. 

Marcella Marsé, who is a Microsoft 365 Advisor at ContourdeTwern and worked closely with our consultant on the project, describes the situation: “During the pandemic, we had already transitioned to the cloud. That was great because everyone could start working in Teams. However, there wasn’t really any significant adoption, which I think was the case for many organizations. So, we really needed a structured way of working, along with some formal policies.” 

Top priorities: collaboration and communications 

We started the project by talking to a 30-person panel group from all function groups within ContourdeTwern. This resulted in a list of important obstacles and areas for improvement. We then prioritized this list, selecting the following as having the highest priority: 

• Team communications. There was no central communication platform and team members were using WhatsApp to communicate. Not only did this make communications chaotic and inefficient, it also poses security and privacy risks and caused workers stress, because it mixed work and private communications. 

• Collaboration. Most collaboration on documents and data was unstructured. 

• Information policy. There were no comprehensive rules for working with digital documents. Organizing and archiving them was done ad-hoc. 

• Lack of digital skills. Many of the people we spoke to indicated that they wanted to learn how to use digital tools, but lacked a way of learning them that suited their skill level while also fitting their hectic work schedule. 

The first thing we did was draft an information policy. This established clear standards on how ContourdeTwern wanted to work with information and provided a base for detailed work arrangements that could be taught to all employees through a new online learning environment. We didn’t develop this from scratch, since we found a team manager that had their digital operation in order and decided to implement that approach organization-wide. Because, why change something that already works? We introduced this person to the higher management and made them a hero in the project. 

“Within our organization, it just wasn’t clear: which task do you do where? Where do I find my documents? There were so many documents circulating, and there was just no structure. Now, everyone is aware of the work agreements.” – Marcella Marsé, Microsoft 365 Advisor at ContourdeTwern

Digital learning environment and digital digicoach 

To start employees off on their journey towards more digital skills and empowerment, we built a learning portal that assumes no prior knowledge. Learning there starts with a self-assessment that assigned a learner profile to the employee: starter, skeptic, enthusiast or innovator. In addition, it tailors the learning materials to the function profile of the employee. At all times, the friendly ‘digital digicoach’ Sam is available to provide tips, tricks and advice. 

Whenever the learning environment recommended an in-person training course, booking this was made easy by an integration with Microsoft Bookings. Previously, team managers would usually book courses for their team members. Convenient, maybe, for a welfare worker that isn’t digitally skilled. But it also deprives people of a chance to learn and feel empowered. 

The learning environment used SharePoint, Power Apps, Bookings and Microsoft Learning Pathways as a technical base. 

Digital leadership and organizational changes 

Beyond the initial project and beyond the learning program, the organization needed additional changes to improve digital work. This involved training specialized digicoaches and schooling team managers to empower their people and stimulate them to develop digital skills. The main challenge here, of course, is time. Welfare workers are on tight schedules and fitting digital development into project and work planning requires a conscious and continuous effort from team leaders. 

According to Marcella, the organizational changes generated an energy of their own, to great effect: 

“During the training sessions for the digicoaches, it’s always clear that these people also have a lot of ideas. So, something’s really happening. There’s a buzz. Everyone wants to keep it going. The digicoaches, along with the team leader and the team, are driving this. And it’s working. Someone from a location told me: we’re not going to let go of the name ‘Samen Digitaal’ (‘Digital Together’) after the project. Anything to do with technology or change will be ‘Samen Digitaal’ from now on. That really shows how committed everyone is and what energy the project has triggered in the organization.” 

This underlines that the development of digital skills is not a project: we need to keep it going and offer everyone, of all function profiles and skill levels, a fertile environment for sharing knowledge, helping each other and spreading enthusiasm. 

As a result of our efforts together with ContourdeTwern, knowledge of digital tools has greatly increased across all function profiles in the organization. Document storage is now much more structured, drastically reducing time wasted looking for things or trying to find the most recent version of a document. 

The rules of work communication and collaboration are now clear to everyone and WhatsApp has all but disappeared as a work communication tool. 

But the most important result is that employees themselves are now taking the initiative to learn new skills. Since everybody is in the program, everybody is a learner now. There is no shame anymore in admitting you don’t know something. 

Recommendations and lessons learned

The project at ContourdeTwern was a great source of inspiration for other organizations facing similar challenges. These are our main recommendations: 

1. Conduct a thorough needs assessment. Engage employees in identifying challenges and needs. Prioritize these issues to focus on the most critical areas first. 

2. Develop clear information policies and translate these into practical work agreements. Provide concrete guidelines and procedures that employees can follow and ensure these work agreements are standardized across all teams and locations to maintain consistency. 

3. Leverage and standardize collaboration tools. Implement a central collaboration platform like Microsoft Teams to improve communication and teamwork and ensure that all teams use the same structure and processes on the platform. 

4. Use what’s already working. Rigid adherence to a design or plan can be counterproductive. Instead, find digital leaders within the organization that have already solved some of the challenges you’re facing and scale up their solutions. 
5. Personalize your training programs. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to digital skills training. Assess employees’ digital skill levels and tailor training programs to meet their specific needs and provide a mix of online, on-site training sessions, on-the-job support and digital leadership.