Initial dust settles aftershock of COVID19 started actions. Most of us are already home, safe with families, and working. For some, it was a big change. For some, it was an adjustment.
One thought is with me all the time now: This will change the way we work and live and it will stick. Often, the changes we put in use today will stick with us.
How to be efficient as an organization and measure it in a remote environment?
I took part in many calls with customers last week. There is one common theme: How to be efficient as an organization and measure it in a remote environment?
Here are tips, tools, and ways of doing things we are using for years to remain efficient while being remote.
Content Summary
Scale your adoption
Know if someone is falling behind
Get extra insight – find your influencers
How to know what I need to do?
Time – what we work on, and are we doing it?
Scale your adoption
The key is adoption and communication. Good adoption pattern we know works in any organization size:
- Choose ambassadors of new tools like Teams
- Train them with your best people or external support
- Put them in front of the company to train others,
- Keep your IT resources in the background helping your ambassadors.
We know it works. Adoption Toolkit for Microsoft Teams included.
Know if someone is falling behind
With all-new tools, people can get lost. If they will, it will result in lost efficiency. There are tools at hand to measure adoption and usage.
- Office 365 usage analytics
- Microsoft Teams analytics to track cross-team and per-team communication
Built-in tools can also include company-related HR metrics to it. Benefit: spot the places in the company falling behind in adoption and usage. Use your trained ambassadors and approach those who lag with real work use cases.
Get extra insight – find your influencers
Digital tools have one advantage – you can analyze it and spot the “hubs” of your community. Use it! Get to know what are the topics and who is a communication starter? Who engages in it? With such a tool, it is easy to find blind spots in communication.
How to know what I need to do?
It is a major returning theme: How to know what people are working on when everyone is remote?
It is a huge topic on its own, but here quick tips on how to approach it:
- Focus on the outcome rather than on tracking working time.
- Use async tools for planning and tracking the delivery.
- Measure time use and categories of time people work on.
That’s about tasks.
Time – what we work on, and are we doing it?
What about efficiency and time tracking? People will work on different schedules, take care of kids and home? Who becomes overloaded? Who has less heavy load because of the shift in duties and business. There are many tools; We have built such a system using one familiar tool – calendar. People track their tasks with categories in the calendar. It is easy to gather this information and analyze using Excel or PowerBI.
