One of the presiding return-to-work approaches is the hybrid work model where businesses are considering a blend of in-office and remote working. This model requires a dynamic and cloud-based solution to ensure a secure modern workplace. Microsoft Office 365 is one such solution.
The pandemic has fundamentally changed our workplaces forever. The hybrid workplace is gaining popularity for all the right reasons. Now as companies reimagine workspaces, employees having tasted the benefits of remote working, are not willing to stuff the genie back into the bottle right away.
According to a 2021 survey by Gartner, among 258 leaders, only 1% of HR leaders expected all their employees to work full-time in the office. This is a big shift bringing new opportunities and challenges for businesses. While the model offers many benefits such as flexibility and easy collaboration, it also requires a fair amount of planning and the right technology.
Microsoft is diving deeper into building tools that support the hybrid workplace. Focusing on its efforts to facilitate a hybrid work model, the company has launched many updates to Microsoft Office 365 to reduce the gap between in-office and remote work.
Here are some of the key features to enhance productivity, accessibility, and security in Microsoft Office 365.
Improved Collaboration Tools with Microsoft Loop
Designed for hybrid workers, Microsoft Loop provides employees with a more fluid way to collaborate on projects. This new app enables several components to work together in sync making teamwork easier and more engaging.
Here are some of the benefits of Microsoft Loop:
- Real-time synchronization: The tool is easy to use and facilitates progress tracking and development materials through tagging, notifications, and task lists.
- Cooperation: The tool helps users develop and take benefit of ideas of team members, reinventing the way of collaborating in a team.
- Easy accessibility: Loop helps users organize all the elements required for a project such as links, files, or data from different apps on the same platform.
This blend of communication and creation is much suited to a hybrid workplace, where not all employees are located in the same place.
Better Presentation Features with Microsoft Office 365
Thanks to PowerPoint's Designer tool, Microsoft can now assist you in designing engaging presentations. And you don't need to have an eye for design for that. The tool will give you options on how to present your slide to make it more compelling.
Have you ever tried adding multiple images to a single slide? It always ends up looking cluttered and like a kid's scrapbook. However, with the new update, the designer will give you automatic suggestions on how to incorporate multiple images in a single slide.
Microsoft has also added another feature for improved flexibility for the hybrid workforce. The writing application of Microsoft, Word, can now convert a document into a PPT presentation in just a few clicks with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Next, users can also opt for an AI-suggested theme for their presentation and Export.
Microsoft Viva – Be Connected and Informed
The pandemic has forced us to stop thinking about work as a place, and start considering how to ensure smooth collaboration and tap into human ingenuity. Designed for this new digital era of the workplace, Microsoft Viva helps organizations deliver a great employee experience irrespective of their location.
Microsoft Viva includes four modules:
- Viva connections: Viva connection is a personalized way for users to stay informed and engaged with their team members. As it is fully integrated with teams and Microsoft Office 365, you don’t need to use different communication channels at the same time.
- Viva Insights: The hybrid culture may blur the lines between work and leisure. Insights collects data related to the efficiency and productivity of the employees. It helps employers to have a finger on the pulse of the staff challenges and positive results. This way employers can get valuable feedback to help everyone develop a better routine and get a grip on challenges put forth by a work-from-home lifestyle.
- Viva Learning: Serving a hub, Viva Learning brings together an organization's knowledge, communication, insights, and resources. It helps employees incorporate learning into their daily lives. The tool also includes AI-powered guidance designed to automatically detect the skills relevant to a user and offer educational tools to learn these skills.
- Viva Topics: We process and absorb information or recreate that information daily. This takes up a lot of valuable time and energy. Viva topics is out to deal with this issue. Viva uses AI to surface expertise in the apps being used regularly.
Microsoft Planner to Boost Productivity
Managing tasks can be difficult in a hybrid workplace. And it becomes even more tricky if email is the primary source of planning and communication, as information can easily be lost in a sea of emails. Microsoft Planner helps you create a plan, add tasks and also assign these tasks to your team members.
As these tasks can be synced to emails, your team would spend less time searching for information and more time doing them. Considering the hybrid mode, these plans can be accessed from anywhere and from any device. To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, Planner can be integrated with all other Microsoft Office 356 applications.
Keep it in the Cloud!
The future is expected to witness an acceleration in adoption of a hybrid work environment. To accomplish this, technological solution integration is essential. That's where the cloud has exploded in popularity in the hybrid workplace. Cloud allows reliable connectivity irrespective of your time zone.
Effective collaboration on different documents in a hybrid workplace requires businesses to be even more precise about keeping things in the cloud. Cloud ensures that everyone is working on the correct version.
Employees need to develop new skills to adapt to this new way of working. With the right tools and technology, a hybrid workplace can unlock the potential that works well for everyone. Microsoft Office 365 hosting brings you a working environment that brings together all the programs used by the organizations and uses all the benefits in a hybrid environment.
