Opportunities for Employee Engagement with Office 365
In today's fast-paced business world, employee engagement is more important than ever. With the introduction of the Office 365 suite of platforms, businesses around the world are being given a unique opportunity to supercharge their internal communications and collaboration efforts. In this article, we'll explore the key platforms within Office 365 that can help support your internal communications ambitions, while also touching on the cool stuff it allows you to do from a collaboration point of view.
SharePoint: A Place for Documents to Live
SharePoint has been around for a while, but with the introduction of Office 365, it has become even more powerful. As a place for documents to live, SharePoint now powers the document storage for platforms like Teams and also the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. With its sophisticated version control and collaboration tools, SharePoint is a great tool for businesses to use when it comes to internal communications and collaboration.
Teams: A Fantastic Collaboration Tool
Teams is Microsoft's answer to Slack and is a fantastic collaboration tool. It allows for easy casual communication flows between different departments and teams within a business. It's great for pulling those really smart minds in your business into a digital room to help collaborate on projects, product launches, or threats of common purpose. Teams also has a fantastic direct messaging service, making it a great platform for chatbots.
Yammer: An Enterprise Social Network
Yammer is an enterprise social network that allows your business to connect with itself across geographical silos and different departmental silos, whether they're in the office or on the move. It also allows them to post their own content, such as questions, success stories, and their own pool of knowledge that they can draw on at any time. Yammer has been around for years, but now that it's been bundled with Office 365, it really is a digital gift horse. However, internal communications professionals should be looking at the map to make sure that their Yammer strategy is in line with their internal communications goals and objectives.
Stream: YouTube for Business
Microsoft Stream is essentially YouTube for business and allows all members of the organization to share video content and empathetic narrative-driven content to the rest of the business. For internal communications, it provides a fantastic platform to start to share the story of the business. Stream also comes with its own live streaming service, making it easy to livestream town halls or other events to the rest of the business.
Sway: Rich Online Content Opportunities
Sway offers some really rich online content opportunities, although some of the design and functionality isn't quite there yet. Our own design team is keeping a close eye on it and we see it as a potential opportunity for sharing video which online magazine-like content in digital form.
Skype: Live-Video Pools and Conferencing
Skype is a platform that many of you will be familiar with and is now bundled as part of the Office 365 package. It's a fantastic way, of course, to live-video pools and conferencing and it also offers a direct messaging platform as well. However, what we've observed is that the Teams environment also allows some really rich video communication and collaboration functionality, so Skype seems a little bit unnecessary when taken together as part of the wider Office 365 suite.
Staff Hub: A Shift Swapping Platform
Staff Hub is a shift swapping platform and is really useful for employees who work shifts. However, what's interesting from an internal comms point of view is that it allows direct messaging opportunities. If you have a workforce that is traditionally quite difficult to get hold of, then maybe those direct messaging functionalities would support a lot of the internal communications that you have given the very hard-to-reach audience.
Unlocking the Potential of Office 365
Office 365 isn't your standard incremental update from Microsoft. It brings about a whole range of new tools and features that can really do some fantastic things for internal communications and employee engagement if they're simply unlocked and considered. If you think you could be making more of your Office 365 platforms, then do get in touch with us. We've done some fantastic things for clients with Teams and chatbots, used video and Stream to support employee engagement with other clients, and helped unlock the power of SharePoint Internet as well as Yammer for cross-collaboration.
Highlights
- Office 365 suite of platforms is currently being introduced to businesses around the world.
- SharePoint, Teams, Yammer, Stream, Sway, Skype, and Staff Hub are the key platforms within Office 365 that can help support your internal communications ambitions.
- SharePoint is a great tool for businesses to use when it comes to internal communications and collaboration.
- Teams is a fantastic collaboration tool that allows for easy casual communication flows between different departments and teams within a business.
- Yammer is an enterprise social network that allows your business to connect with itself across geographical silos and different departmental silos.
- Stream is essentially YouTube for business and allows all members of the organization to share video content and empathetic narrative-driven content to the rest of the business.
- Sway offers some really rich online content opportunities.
- Skype is a platform that many of you will be familiar with and is now bundled as part of the Office 365 package.
- Staff Hub is a shift swapping platform and is really useful for employees who work shifts.
- Office 365 brings about a whole range of new tools and features that can really do some fantastic things for internal communications and employee engagement if they're simply unlocked and considered.
FAQ
Q: What is Office 365?
A: Office 365 is a suite of platforms that can help support your internal communications ambitions.
Q: What are the key platforms within Office 365?
A: The key platforms within Office 365 are SharePoint, Teams, Yammer, Stream, Sway, Skype, and Staff Hub.
Q: What is SharePoint?
A: SharePoint is a great tool for businesses to use when it comes to internal communications and collaboration.
Q: What is Teams?
A: Teams is a fantastic collaboration tool that allows for easy casual communication flows between different departments and teams within a business.
Q: What is Yammer?
A: Yammer is an enterprise social network that allows your business to connect with itself across geographical silos and different departmental silos.
Q: What is Stream?
A: Stream is essentially YouTube for business and allows all members of the organization to share video content and empathetic narrative-driven content to the rest of the business.
Q: What is Sway?
A: Sway offers some really rich online content opportunities.
Q: What is Skype?
A: Skype is a platform that many of you will be familiar with and is now bundled as part of the Office 365 package.
Q: What is Staff Hub?
A: Staff Hub is a shift swapping platform and is really useful for employees who work shifts.
Q: How can I unlock the potential of Office 365?
A: If you think you could be making more of your Office 365 platforms, then do get in touch with us. We've done some fantastic things for clients with Teams and chatbots, used video and Stream to support employee engagement with other clients, and helped unlock the power of SharePoint Internet as well as Yammer for cross-collaboration.
