Effective communication and collaboration are critical to driving strong performance and productivity in a hybrid working environment. Many people are unaware they can leverage data from within Microsoft Teams to support their analysis of employee productivity.
To understand if a hybrid working model is effective, it is important to first identify what best practice looks like across roles and departments. Reviewing optimal working profiles enables organisations to identify key metrics for measurement. This is exactly what our customer Osotspa did using our application, Analytics 365 Collaboration Analytics. The Thailand-based beverage firm used Analytics 365 to review its hybrid working policy, define best practice and prove that its business did not suffer after migrating to a hybrid working model.
Supporting managers of hybrid workers
Managing people in a hybrid context can be difficult, so it is vital senior executives can understand trends and employees’ working habits. By reviewing the communication habits of the most successful individuals or teams, managers can determine and encourage the optimal balance of daily and weekly collaboration for employees in different roles.
Key indicators, such as time spent in scheduled and recurring meetings, internal versus external engagement, video usage and meeting conflicts, can be reviewed alongside optimal working profiles to provide invaluable insight to managers. Employees in different roles may use the same performance indicators in various ways. For example, it could be that using video on calls is considered critical to building relationships both internally and externally. However, using video may be less important for certain teams, such as technical developers, so managers may prioritise encouraging them to interact via chat to facilitate quick questions and answers, and continuous alignment on projects.
Empowering managers in performance reviews
Adding quantitative data to a traditionally qualitative induction review, performance review or appraisal process can be very powerful. Adding facts derived from Teams can help to identify well-being dips and spikes, while also empowering managers to open discussions in a more meaningful way. The analytics can prompt conversations by providing a deeper understanding of how an individual operates in their hybrid-working world.