What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is home for all your documents on Teams. Plus, you can use it to engage and inform your employees via common resources, applications, and to transform your business process no matter what device your employee is on. This means you’ll have more productive and connected teams, fuelling a collaborative workplace.

Below are some tips on getting started to drive this productivity and engagement.

5 tips to empower a collaborative workplace with SharePoint

1.  How to set up a SharePoint

If you have already created a team within Teams, you’ll have a SharePoint site already created. Just click the dots and Open in SharePoint to access your site.

To create one from scratch, click the Create Site button on the SharePoint home page. A wizard will guide you to name the site, decide if it’s public or private, and its basic functions.

Once you’ve got the basic site, you’re ready to customise it. Choose a SharePoint theme and customise it with your logo and branding or stick to the classic styles.

You’ll get a home page, document library, OneNote notebook. You’ll be able to add pages to further customise your SharePoint for your team.

On your pages, you can add videos, news, and more using out-of-the-box web parts. These web parts help your team quickly glean and access relevant information. By providing a rich experience to your employees, they’ll be more likely to engage with your new collaborative workplace hub. Don’t forget to create a Teams for your SharePoint site if you haven’t already!

Expert SharePoint tip: IT Teams can create consistent sites using site designs and site scripts. Find out how here.

1. 1. Set up
   2. Customise
   3. Teams it!

2. Create a SharePoint hub

A hub makes it easier for your organisation to collaborate and connect. It connects and organises sites based on project, department, regions, etc. This makes it easy for your employees to discover related content and news.

Think of it as virtual ‘connective tissue’ of your intranet. This also means you can provide a consistent experience across all sites. Once sites are connected to the hub, you’ll see news and activity from all of them aggregated onto the one hub.

Once you’ve established a hub, it’s easy to associate your SharePoint site. In settings, click site information and just click the hub you want.

Expert SharePoint Tip: We know the business landscape can change. This is why SharePoint works with your business – it’s a dynamic way to match sites for projects and departments and move them around as needed. You can update or remove the hub your site is connected to anytime.

3. Keep track of projects in Planner

Planner makes task management in teams even easier. It’s a visual organiser where you can create plans, share and assign tasks, and get updates on progress. You can integrate Planner in your SharePoint site making it even easier to plan and share tasks with your team.

To add a new plan, press the + New button on your homepage. It will add Planner to your navigation pane so your whole team can easily access it in one click.

You can also add Planner as a web part to your homepage. This gives you the ability to add plan information directly on pages or news posts. You can choose between the Planner Board or Charts view to also appear on your homepage to give a handy, relevant overview for your team.

Expert SharePoint Tip: Have a project with a third-party or partner? Give them guest access to your collaborative workplace to make planning easier.

4. Sharing SharePoint sites externally

When you’re sharing documents, plans, and ideas for projects and other business information, it’s important to ensure team members have secure and easy access. However, sometimes you want to share this with vendors.

Please note that external sharing over your entire SharePoint environment is turned on by default. Global and SharePoint Admins can adjust this in their admin site.

Once you’ve chosen the organisation sharing environment and the types of access; you can also control access to select sites. This is useful if you have confidential business information that you don’t want to share past your organisation. You can store this information on sites where external sharing has been turned off. Then you can choose which sites you want to add guests to.

To do this, a Global or SharePoint Admin needs to access the SharePoint Admin Center. There, they choose the site and select its sharing option.

While this means you can allow different sharing levels for different sites, please note that if an admin changes the organisation sharing level, it will reflect in the sites. For example, if external sharing is turned off for your organisation, the shared links at site level will stop working.

Expert SharePoint Tip: While SharePoint benefits from built-in intelligence and security with Office 365, the SharePoint Admin centre makes it easy for your IT team to configure access and sharing levels.

5. Making business easier

SharePoint lists collect data, just like you might collect information in Excel. Lists can be anything from contacts, tasks, to business-critical operations. Lists let your teams  gather, track, and share information within SharePoint libraries.

Add Microsoft Flow and PowerApps to this powerful data and you can create rich digital experiences with forms, workflows and custom apps that work across devices. And best of all – these work on Teams too, making communication and collaboration even easier.

For example, you can have a list tracking important conferences and the staffing plans for these. Add in a form powered by PowerApps to make it a richer experience that easy to track.

SharePoint also lets you create automated processes to accelerate productivity and let your employees focus on business-critical work. Use the simple, visual designer Microsoft Flow to lay out the steps. It can be as simple as configuring alerts and approvals to modelling complex processes.

Expert SharePoint Tip: Flow helps you focus on work instead of getting bogged down in tasks. Find easy-to-implement templates to help automate your work.

Conclusion

With the right tools, such as Teams and SharePoint, you can make teamwork a fun and easy process. Because they work together and you can create powerful add-ons to them, it makes online collaboration intuitive across any device no matter where employees are located, increasing employee engagement and productivity.

Find out more

See how Marks and Spencer are leveraging SharePoint to drive employee engagement

Re-think employee engagement for the modern workplace

Discover how to use Microsoft Teams to fuel the collaborative workplace

The post Using online tools to create a collaborative workplace: Part 2 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

What does a modern workplace look like? There’s lots of answers to this question, but more and more organisations are empowering employees to work when and where they feel best. There are over four million remote workers in the UK currently. To successfully stay connected with their co-workers, many teams turn to virtual workspaces such as Teams and Sharepoint to fuel communication and create a collaborative workplace.

In this first part of this series, we’ll be taking a closer look at Microsoft Teams, and some practical steps and tips to help you get the most out of it.

Fuelling a collaborative workplace

According to a recent PowWowNow survey, we spend 68 percent of our day communicating with each other. Using a social-based collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams can make this easier. It’s intuitive, works across a range of devices and makes file sharing easier, leveraging the cloud so you always have the latest version. Collaborative tasks in the workplace and made to feel more natural. As a virtual workspace, it’s great for teams based in offices and for those working remotely too. People work best when they feel they are part of a successful team, and this is possible on Microsoft Teams with chat, video calling, and meeting functionalities rolled into one.

With end-to-end security, Teams makes it easy to control user and third-party access so your employees can spend more time doing the work they love, with the knowledge that they are secure and compliant. Below are some tips to help get the best out of Teams.

5 tips to empower a collaborative workplace with Microsoft Teams

1. How to set up a Teams site

Setting up a Teams site is easy – just click Teams on the left side or the app, then ‘Join or create a team’ followed by ‘Build a new team from scratch’.

When you set up a new team it creates a new Office 365 group, a SharePoint site and document library, an Exchange Online shared mailbox and planner, a OneNote notebook, and ties into other Microsoft apps.

Then the world is your oyster! Add the members of your team and choose if you want it to be private or public. To add members, click More options > Add members on your Team. You can add individual people, or type in the name of a contact group, security group, or Office 365 group to add multiple people.

From there you can add channels. These channels can be separated by project, topic, or department. They are where you set up your apps, folders, and documents. This is where teamwork gets done, in an open, collaborative workplace.

To create a new channel, start in the team list. Find the team name and click More options > Add channel. You can also click Manage team, and add a channel in the Channels tab.

The channel is where you can hold team conversations. You can also add a document library to share team documents, link to OneNotes, calendars, even Power BI or Twitter feeds. Just press the + on the channel tab list to add the apps that are most relevant for your team.

Expert Teams tip: Cut down on inbox churn by sending an email via Teams. Go to the channel name and click More options > Get email address. The email will then be displayed in the conversations tab for all team members to view and reply. This makes the email searchable and promotes collaboration on team projects. If you have added attachments, they’re automatically uploaded to Teams, meaning you can control any versioning and make it easier to find.

2. Collaboration made easy

Because Office 365 is built into Teams, it makes it easier to collaborate on documents. There are no more confusing duplicates bouncing around in emails – you can even see the edits as they’re being made! And because documents are saved in the cloud, each member can be confident they’re working on the latest version.

Conversations about these documents can be had more quickly on Teams – no need to wait for sign off or face-to-face meetings when someone is a quick message or virtual meeting away. Plus, you can chat while you edit on screen, meaning you can quickly finalise those last-minute edits.

Expert teams tip: Add Microsoft Planner to your channel to help keep up-to-date on team tasks and projects. You can organise work visually, assign tasks, share files, and create a visible and transparent place where everyone knows who is working on what.

3. Do remote meetings better

For teams who are spread out, getting together for meetings can be time consuming and expensive. But in Teams, all you need to do is create a Channel Meeting. Everyone in that team are automatically added, and any discussion before, during, or after the meeting relating to it are saved and visible to everyone.

You can schedule private meetings in the Meetings tab on Teams. You can also organise meetings via Outlook Calendar, just click on New Teams Meeting. A Teams meeting doesn’t only have to be with co-workers, you can invite guests who don’t have access to your Team too – each meeting generates a conference ID and number for participants to join.

In a Teams meeting you can record the meeting, take notes, and share files. These are automatically saved and easily available to use later, making post-collaboration easy. Participants can also blur their background to keep the focus on them.

Use the Share Tray to share your desktop, or a window or a PowerPoint. This ensures meeting participants will only see what they need to.

Also, within Share Tray is Microsoft Whiteboard. You can use whiteboard to sketch, brainstorm or collaborate together in real time.

For those in the office, they can use the Surface Hub 2S as a whole whiteboard while sharing with others online. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to easily collaborate together, and the content will be saved after.

Expert Teams Tips: Soon you’ll be able to make your Teams meeting more inclusive with live captions and subtitles. Whether you have attendees that are hard-of-hearing, have different level of language proficiency, or are connecting from a loud location, they’ll be able to contribute to the conversation easily.

4. Keep secure and safe

Because Teams is part of Office 365, you benefit from robust security and compliance. Being in the cloud means Teams is constantly updated with secure policies. It uses Azure Active Directory to manage users, multi-factor authentication, and access control. Because it is easily controlled from one directory and managed across all Office 365 apps, it makes it easier for your IT team to control. And this means sign on is done once, making it fast and easy for your employees to access on any device.

Each team can be made private, meaning you can limit control over who has access. You can even invite partners and vendors who aren’t in your organisation to Teams. Soon, you’d be able to further create secure channels within a Team. This means you don’t have to create a whole new Team to limit access to particular projects.

Conversations within those channels are public to team members, but individual chats are private. However, admin can implement data loss prevention (DLP) policies to detect, automatically protect, and screen for sensitive information in chats and channel conversations. This helps prevent sensitive information from unintentionally being shared or leaked.

Expert Teams Tip: Do a governance requirement check to ensure your meeting your requirements. We’ve created a handy checklist to start you off.

5. Teams and SharePoint

As mentioned, when you create a Team, it automatically creates a SharePoint site and document library for your team. To access your Teams’ SharePoint, click the dots on the top title bar and open in SharePoint.

In the SharePoint you’ll have access to your Teams conversations, documents, notebooks, pages, and contents. From here you can integrate your processes with Microsoft Flow, or create applications with PowerApps. Because it’s all accessible from Teams, it’s a complete virtual workspace which allows for seamless collaboration, easy communication, and faster innovation in a collaborative workplace.

Back on your Teams, you can add SharePoint pages and libraries directly to your Channel. Just press the + button on the Channel Tab and you’ll get the full SharePoint experience within Teams.

Expert Teams Tips: Have a SharePoint site and want to create a Team from it? It’s easy – just click the ‘Create a Team’ on your SharePoint site, or add the Office 365 group when setting up within Teams.

Give it a try and see for yourself how Microsoft Teams fuels the collaborative workplace and how seamless it makes communication. You won’t want to go back. Your employees will feel confident and connected no matter how far away they are from each other – 75 percent of people surveyed by PowWowNow agreed that technology helps improve productivity.

We’ve got more resources here to help drive adoption and create successful digital transformation in your organisation.

Next up, we’ll be focussing on SharePoint, and showing you the power it has to keep your organisation connected and drive your business forward.

Find out more

Create better employee experiences

Real world guide to employee engagement

The post Using online tools to create a collaborative workplace: Part 1 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

There are about 1 billion people worldwide who have a disability. In the UK, people who are disabled are twice as likely to be unemployed. But having tools and devices that are accessible by design shows that your organisation is committed to a culture of inclusion. This, in turn, will widen your talent pool as it makes it easier for your employees to be more creative and do their work.

Accessible tools and devices are good for everyone. It could be a situational, temporary, or permanent disability, these tools make it easier for everyone to work fluidly, and in their best way.

Situational disability
This is caused by the location, such as poor lighting or a a loud room. For example, if you’re trying to have a meeting in a busy office or café, but aren’t able to hear what people are saying over the background noise. Live subtitles in Teams can make it easier to keep following the meeting.

Temporary disability
A disability that is only temporary, such as a parent holding a child and only have one hand free. That parent can use Cortana to access any information they need at the time on their computer, hands free.

Permanent disability
This is a life-changing permanent disability that changes the way a person performs in their normal life, including work. The narrator functionality can help by reading out what is on your screen if you have low/impaired vision.

Here are three ways modern technology can help foster an inclusive culture, no matter what type of disability you’re facing – be that permanent, temporary, or situational:

1. Built-in accessibility

Using a light, portable, and flexible device makes it easy for everyone to work anywhere they want. Surface devices are built with accessibility in mind. They’re also equipped with Windows 10 and Office 365 which have a set of built-in and third-party accessibility features to empower your employees to work in a way that suits them best. For example, Windows Hello lets you sign in with just a look or touch – no password needed.

There’s a range of visual, hearing, and mobility tools in the Ease of Access Center which lets employees customise their device experience. For example, you can customise the colour, font, and icon size and colours. Narration reads out your screen, while Dictation lets you talk to your device, which is helpful for those who are vision impaired or have light sensitivity.

2. Collaborative working

We are all now working more collaboratively with the rise of remote working. And this equals a rise of virtual collaboration spaces, such as Microsoft Teams.

Teams makes it easy for each employee to collaborate no matter what device they’re on or where they are. As an Office Application, it also benefits from a range of accessibility options, such as screen reader compatibility, colour theme, and notification options.

Communication is made easy – with chat, voice calls, video calls, and even meetings. This allows your team to communicate individually, or together as they see best.

Because Teams is your online hub, it’s easy to collaborate on all your documents without worrying about versioning. Customise your workspace with the apps your teams use, such as Planner, SharePoint, and more.

3. Inclusive presentations and meetings

Presentations are made even easier on PowerPoint. Not only can you ensure your presentation is accessible for everyone with the Accessibility Checker but includes live subtitles and captions. With support for 12 spoken languages, plus 60+ on-screen subtitles, it ensures everyone is included no matter where in the world they are.

Any recorded meetings on Teams and live events on Stream, and Yammer already support captions and subtitles. Soon, live Teams meetings will include live captions and subtitles for attendees who are deaf, hard of hearing, different levels of language proficiency, or are connecting from a busy location.

Why technology can help foster and inclusive culture

An organisation that includes everyone is a more innovative place. Because everyone has a chance to have their voices heard, they are happier, more productive, and more collaborative.

When you have the tools and devices that work for everyone, you’re opening up your organisation to a wider talent pool. You’ll not only attract new employees as a result but you’ll be more likely to retain existing employees too.

Find out more

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For small and medium businesses, having a remote workforce can make a lot of sense. You’ll widen your talent pool as you’ll be able to hire for skills over proximity. You’ll save money on paying for office space and all the trimmings. And if you or your employees work with customers or partners offsite, it’s easier for them to access the information they need when they need it.

But how can you easily ensure your remote workforce has the same dynamic and trust as an in-house team would? By making use of technology to build trust, connections, and empower them to work in the best way. We take a look at our top 10 tips to managing a remote workforce.

1. Do more in the cloud

To be able to be flexible and access documents anywhere, the first step is become a cloud-first organisation. By moving to the cloud, not only does it mean your employees can easily access documents, data, and information from anywhere, but it also lets you use new cloud-only tech such as AI.

With Azure, you pay only for the cloud services you use, it means you save money on your operation costs, and scale as your business grows. Plus, Azure is built on a secure foundation, with built-in controls to customise your user and data management. But more on that later!

2. Modern devices

It’s great to give your employees laptops to make it easier to work flexibly/remotely. But what will really make their workday even easier? By giving them devices that encourage them to work naturally.

Modern devices that are built with accessibility in mind, such as the Surface, encourage the best work and creativity out of your employees. By making it easier to work, your employees will be more productive and innovative. When you add the Surface and other Microsoft tools and apps such as Windows 10 and Office 365 together, you’ll get a powerful future-ready workforce.

3. Stay secure

It can be a fine balance between making sure your business is secure and compliant and the productivity and flexibility of your workforce, right? But it’s possible to be secure while letting your employees get on with business – you can even increase productivity!

With built-in security built into devices and apps, cybersecurity will become so seamless your employees won’t even realise they’re being protected. And it’s easier for your IT team to manage, protect, detect, and respond. For example, signing into a Surface is linked to an employee’s work account, so they can then instantly access their documents, email, or other apps.

Azure helps protect your data with built-in intelligence, controls, and services that work across identity, data, networking, and apps. The Azure Security Center helps further strengthen your security posture, giving you the ability to detect and protect against threats.

4. Bring your own device (BYOD) policy

We’re all about making work easier for employees. We want them to be able to access what they need, when they need it. And sometimes their phone is going to be quicker than pulling out their work device. That’s why you need to ensure you have a sufficient BYOD policy that let’s your employees use their phones without comprising on security.

Everyone has a different smartphone – whether it’s iOS or Andriod. But what should stay the same is their ability to access what they need and how secure it is.

Azure Active Directory works to create a seamless secure access across a range of devices, cloud, and mobile apps. This means your IT team is in control of your business information while your employees have smooth, instant access to their documents wherever they are. And if that device is missing, stolen, or compromised – your IT team can quickly solve that issue.

5. A powerful intranet

SharePoint empowers your organisation to collaborate, share information, and use applications to help make your employees more productive and transform business process.

You’ll have the ability to make sites for every project, team, or department. On these sites your teams can share documents, data, resources, and news securely and efficiently. It also has powerful search and intelligent ways to discover information and insights to guide action. Using SharePoint lists and libraries alongside Microsoft Flow and PowerApps, you can easily create rich experiences with forms, workflows and customise apps. This means you can simplify and transform processes, helping accelerate productivity.

And when you create a SharePoint and document library, you can immediately make a space for it on Teams (and vice versa), making it even easier and quicker to collaborate.

6.       A virtual workspace

Teams makes it easy to communicate and collaborate on work. It works across all devices and with group chat, online meetings, calling, and web conferencing, you can stay in touch easier than ever. And it’s not just for work, create channels for general water cooler chat and make use of the gif function!

Customise your workspace with the tools you and your team use daily. Add a SharePoint page, or library, Microsoft apps, or even your third-party favourites. With built in Office 365, it makes it easier to collaborate, share documents, and edit. Plus, you benefit from end-to-end security, admin control, and compliance.

7.      Planner

Keeping up to date on projects can seem chaotic when your team is spread out across the country. Luckily, there are online tools to help you with that. Planner makes it easy to create new plans, organise and assign tasks, and share files.

Best of all, it makes all tasks visible and transparent. You can see a comprehensive view over employee’s tasks so you can see what stage a project is at and who is on hand to complete it. You can even see the number of tasks each employee has. This makes it easier to improve workloads and help make sure employees don’t feel too stressed or overburdened.

Planner can link into SharePoint and Teams and works across devices so makes it easy for you to see the progress of projects.

8.      Analytics

Analytics are used for everything these days. Even tracking workloads.

MyAnalytics gives you a personal overview of your work patterns and suggests ways to work smarter. Powered by AI, you’ll get insights to improve your productivity, collaboration, and wellbeing. MyAnalytics is private by design, so each employee will only be able to see their personal insights and take action.

However, viewing a complete overview of your workplace analytics can give you insight into daily collaboration patterns. Insights from these will help your business be more agile, improve employee experience, and help you identify where to focus to create value.

9.      Online learning

Re- and upskilling is a vital part of employee engagement. Not only are skilled employees 8.4 percent more productive, but 70 percent of employees are more likely to stay at their workplace if they have training and development opportunities.

For remote teams it can be hard to organise training, but online learning is a great option for on-demand training and development.

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7.      Make time to meet

While we have all the tools at our disposal to communicate and collaborate online, including video calling, sometimes we have to go old-school. Organise team meetings a few times a year where everyone can get together in-person. Use this time to discuss the organisation’s future, strategy, or as a chance for team building and skill development.

Using technology to empower

These tips will help SMBs empower their remote workforce. By using the power of technology, you can create seamless across-device experiences that encourage communication and collaboration.

Teams that work together well, stay together and achieve great results. These tools are there for your team to find their path to success.

Find out more

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Millennials, those people born in the 1980s-90s, grew up surrounded by technology. They are also becoming the largest generational cohort in the workplace. And as they move further into their careers, and as other generations come up through the ranks, we must ensure that we are able to meet their expectations for a modern workplace.

Meeting the expectations of millennials

Because they grew up alongside technology, millennials expect digital to be a large part of their work. And they expect to be given the tools to make them more efficient. Having flexible devices, tools and apps ­– which make it easy to collaborate anywhere and anytime – also addresses other key expectations that millennials will expect: flexibility and work-life balance.

Flexibility and mobility

Studies have shown that the higher the flexibility, the better the employee productivity, performance, and retention. The way one person works may not be the same as another. And according to FlexJobs’ annual work flexibility survey, 65 percent of respondents said they’d be much more productive if they could work at home.

By using cloud-based apps like Microsoft Teams to collaborate, you can keep employees productive no matter where they are. Employees can access their work from any device securely, allowing barrier-free collaboration.

Training and up-skilling

According to a Deloitte survey, 51 percent of millennials believe they will need to retrain as the use of AI increases. So invest in ongoing re- and up-skilling, particularly with new technology. To unlock the potential of AI, Microsoft has created the AI Academy, aimed at helping employees develop their AI skills. And as the research shows, businesses already on their AI journey are delivering 5 percent better outcomes than those that aren’t.

By providing employees with the tools to increase their knowledge, you’ll be on the path to better productivity, performance, and customer engagement.

Ensuring diversity

Millennials are also the most diverse generation we’ve seen in the UK. Due to this, they expect their workplace to reflect that. 83 percent of millennials are actively engaged when they believe their organisation fosters an inclusive culture. Millennials also have a positive opinion about the next generation entering the workforce, with 61 percent agreeing that Generation Z will have a positive impact, thanks to their digital skills and creativity.

Born from the late 1990s-2010s, Generation Z will be the first to make their steps into the workplace after millennials. Gen Z is even more digital-savvy, many having no memory of a pre-internet world. And because they have greater access to digital tools and devices, Gen Z consider themselves more creative than previous generations.

Preparing for future roles

By 2025, 65 percent of people will be doing jobs that don’t exist yet. Job responsibilities and skills will change. AI, automation, and IoT will disrupt jobs. But it will also create new and exciting roles. Creativity will become a higher-value skill, alongside digital proficiency, as future roles are shaped by new technologies.

To ensure we have talented people in our organisations, Microsoft has created a digital skills programme, to help everyone grow their technical skill set and gain digital proficiency. By committing to encourage your employee’s skills growth you will attract a diverse talent pool and have higher numbers of retention.

The value of apprenticeships

As Gen Z enter the workplace, apprenticeships are a great way for work-ready students to gain the technical and soft skills they need – not just now, but in the future. It provides real-world, on-the-job experiences that classrooms can’t. And it provides a passionate and loyal workforce, with 92 percent of apprentices staying  with the company they trained with.

As our world embraces new technology, we need to do all we can to ensure our future generations have access to the tools they need to succeed. This means fostering a culture of learning and collaboration. Making sure people can do their jobs creatively and flexibly, no matter where they are. By supporting the needs and expectations of your employees, you will have a more productive, innovative, and happier organisation.

Find out more

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Empower your students with modern Windows 10 devices from leading PC manufacturers like HP, Dell, and Lenovo. It not only equips students with the skills for the future but also helps them increase their learning potential. However, when you have budgets to stick to, it can be hard to ensure all students have 1:1 access to these devices.

The Parental Contribution Programme by Freedom Tech helps schools realise their student’s digital potential in a cost neutral way, by passing the costs onto parents.

This programme enables all students to have access to the same modern devices. It aims to be as inclusive as possible with no credit checks for parents. And with an optional payment plan, the costs can be spread over time. Best of all, it includes GAP, Extended Warranty and Accident Damage & Theft cover for the duration of the programme. This ensures the programme stays cost effective to parents who get to keep the devices at the end of the payment period.

Students can increase their learning potential with 24/7 access to a modern learning device. This means they can keep learning outside of the classroom, arming them with the right tools for an ever-evolving technical world and inspiring a new generation of workplace ready whizz-kids. As part of the programme, students get Microsoft Specialists vouchers to further their digital skill set.

For schools, this programme means there is no extra costs that supplying devices would have. Plus, you have IT admin access on the devices which helps you ensure the devices are secure and compliant.

Perins School giving students the opportunity to develop

Perins School is an academy in Alresford for 11 to 16-year-olds. They are committed to providing a rich and educational experience. Their focus is on ensuring every student has the opportunity to progress and develop at their own pace. Therefore, they decided to become a 1:1 school.

Caroline Cleaver, IT administrator explains their journey with Freedom Technology: “Freedom Tech genuinely collaborate with Perins. They are happy to attend our parents evening to ensure that parents and guardians were fully informed about the programme and how to use the portal. They are fully involved in all aspects of the programme. Not every school will have someone like me who is an internal point of contact for the programme. Freedom Tech can help all schools put in place a programme that runs in an efficient and compliant way – regardless of what internal resources they have.”

Students not only use the devices to increase their digital skills. Perins School use it as an opportunity for them to develop accountability and responsibility over their devices.

“We position it to pupils that this is a learning tool which needs respecting and looking after. We set out the school’s expectation that devices need to be brought into school every day, fully charged. When it breaks, they need to bring it in for a repair straight away,” Caroline says.

Perins School’s ability to evolve the programme each year to ensure they best meet the needs of their students has meant that parental take up of the programme was 100 percent for the September 2018 intake.

“We were one of the first schools to run it as a donation model. Many other schools run this type of programme in a more in a traditional payment model, but we are steadfast on making sure that our programme is fully inclusive for all of our pupils,” says Caroline.

Ribblesdale School committing to futureproofing students

Ribblesdale School is a community-focussed school in Clitheroe, Lancashire. Their aim is to equip students with the skills, knowledge and resilience to be successful in adult life in the 21st Century, which lead them to take part in a 1:1 scheme. In fact, their first year of a parental contribution programme saw an 80 percent uptake of parents taking part.

“You only have to take a good look around our school to see, it’s not all flashing lights and technology. We must operate a blended learning approach to do right by our young people and their respective futures. Religious Education and English lessons have been able to use Minecraft Education Edition to cement the learning and drive interaction and engagement in lots of interesting and exciting ways.”*

Paul Edge, Deputy Head Teacher.

Teachers are the key to helping students reach their digital potential. By having modern devices, teachers have access to collaboration tools such as Teams and OneNote. The IT department at Ribblesdale School help set up OneNote and Teams sites to help drive uptake. They also showed teachers how these tools would make the classroom more inclusive and empowering for students.

“We overcame this by challenging our teachers to think creatively about how such functionality could be used through a curriculum lens and how it might empower all students to find their voice through an inclusion lens,” says Paul. “We’re not radical. We just use the tools effectively.”

Find out more

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Please note: All offers are subject to credit approval. Tier 1 manufacturer hardware only. Terms and conditions of the rental contract will apply. £196 documentation setup fee will apply to all contracts. Equipment is provided via the reseller whose terms and conditions apply to all sales. winAbility is provided by Freedom Tech Ltd. Freedom Tech Ltd is the trading style of CSI Leasing UK Limited and its subsidiaries.

* Minecraft: Education Edition offers an engaging platform for computer science education, with features designed to help students learn to code, and apply coding across STEM subjects. This flexible curriculum based on CSTA standards is now available for educators to teach foundational Computer Science concepts and help students build computational thinking skills.

The post Students equipped to unlock their learning potential with the latest Windows devices appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Women have had a long and proud history in STEM. Female programmers were instrumental in our mission to the moon. Code breaking women were essential to the Bletchley Park war effort. Ada Lovelace is remembered as the world’s first computer programmer. Katie Bouman developed the algorithm that enabled us to see a black hole for the first time. And, much closer to home, Microsoft’s own Jennifer Chayes directs three Research labs, helping the company shape its vision for technologies such as AI and cloud computing.

However, despite this long history, and the amazing work done by #WomenInTech, only 17 percent of the tech industry in the UK is female, with just five percent in leadership roles.

We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, and the very nature of work is changing as we implement AI, IoT, and more into our daily lives. But the UK is facing a digital skills gap. And to stay economically competitive, we need to ensure we have a stream of talented people to fill these roles.

The only way we can do this is to encourage more women to consider a career in STEM.

Gain interest from a young age

Microsoft research shows that girls disengage with STEM careers at around the age 11, stating a lack of ‘role models’ and ‘practical, hands-on experience’ as the main factors. So we need to do a better job of encouraging girls to consider a career in STEM and the tech industry.

“The research reveals that we can’t afford to wait until girls are thinking about university courses to foster their interest in STEM,” said Cindy Rose, Chief Executive of Microsoft UK. “To stop the drop-off in interest in STEM, we’re working with governments, teachers and non-profits to modernise the curriculum and provide better access to mentors.”

It’s important to be involved in programmes that encourage STEM and digital skills from a young age. For example, Microsoft employees get involved with DigiGirlz, a programme designed to inspire girls to consider STEM careers.

We also need to share and celebrate the role models who paved the way for technology, especially those we might know, work with, or interact with online. By sharing the stories of how these inspirational women how have helped shape our future, we can inspire more girls to do the same.

Ways to diversify your talent pool

By putting equality at the heart of your hiring process, you are not only be promoting mental health and well-being, but also making yourself more appealing to the most talented women in tech. (60 percent of girls said they’d be confident in pursuing a digital career with a company that promoted equality.) And according to the European Commission, if we had as many women as men in the digital jobs market, the EU GDP would be boosted by €9 billion.

We want more women from a range of diverse backgrounds and abilities to be inspired by a potential career in technology. And this requires an understanding that not only is it open to them but it can help them achieve their goals, whatever they may be.

– Cindy Rose

By having inclusive hiring programmes you can ensure you get a diverse group of applicants. This can be as simple as the wording on your job description, or supporting women-focussed initiatives and organisations. Offering flexible working will also attract more diverse range of talent – 81 percent of people say a flexible job is more attractive to them. And flexible working and post-maternity support will help women looking to return to work, too. In fact, 70 percent of women returning to the tech sector after a career break believe programmes that include training and mentorships are key to overcoming re-entry challenges.

Creating an environment that welcomes and treats everyone equally is vital to ensure your organisation’s future success. By being the drivers of change, you will enrich the lives of your employees. And you will create an empowering future, where everyone can achieve more.

Find out more

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Technology is fundamentally changing the world around us. New generations who have grown up in our digital world have new expectations of their work environment. There’s a widening digital skills gap, and a shortfall of 900,000 skilled ICT jobs across Europe by 2020. Therefore, attracting good people is only going to get more difficult. But by being inclusive, we can start filling these gaps.

Access more talent by being inclusive

How can we attract and retain the right talent to fill this skills gap? A good place to start is with inclusivity. Having a diverse and inclusive approach to recruitment means you’ll gain access into untapped pool of talent. And as a bonus, diverse companies have happier employees and are more innovative.

Far from being an existential threat, the skills shortage is very real, and 79 percent of UK CEOs say that a lack of skills is one of their top business concerns. One way you can strive to fill this skills gap is to widen your talent pool by looking at untapped sources. And with 73 percent of employers saying diversity encourages creativity and innovation, it’s no wonder why they count increasing diversity as a workplace priority.

Inclusive recruitment

One way you can encourage inclusive hiring is to work with you employee resource groups within the organisation. They’ll help create hiring programmes or advocacy. They will be able to give you feedback on their experiences and how you can improve your organisation.

And another great way to raise awareness is to work directly with non-profits, and schools, to create scholarships, events, and training opportunities. (For example, at Microsoft we have an inclusive hiring program that includes an Autism Programme, ability hiring events, and supported employment. We also run networking and community events, apprenticeships, and more, to ensure we employ diverse talents who can help us innovate.)

Make your organisation accountable

It’s important to tie your diversity and inclusion commitments into your organisation’s values. This will help drive change from the inside out. And whilst attracting diverse talent is important, you also need to ensure that you provide opportunities for everyone in your workplace to do their best work. (For example, by making these commitments a core priority at Microsoft, we have introduced expanded parental leave and training and education.)

Most importantly, we’ve made inclusion a ‘core priority’ for leaders and employees. Leaders are held accountable, by tying a portion of their compensation directly to diversity progress. Diversity and inclusion is also part of an employee’s performance review and growth process, and they are able to deepen their learning about diversity, and make inclusion a daily part of their roles.

Encouraging a culture where everyone is heard, valued and included is vital. This includes having employee programs that help advance inclusion and having partners with shared values. Also, empower employees with flexible work opportunities, and provide them with technology that is built with inclusion in mind.

A long-term commitment to being inclusive

By engaging in different perspectives, you will challenge and stretch your thinking. You will enrich your employee experience. And you will ultimately empower the community around your organisation and the world.

But it’s important to remember: change won’t happen overnight. Diversity and inclusion is a long-term commitment, and it takes effort. But by making it a core priority, tying it into business and leadership KPIs, you’ll increase your organisation’s worth. And your workplace will become an even more creative, attractive, and exciting environment to be in.

Find out more

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Now businesses are focused on adopting a cloud-first strategy, moving beyond the compute, storage, and network benefits. Cloud-native is where you build and run applications completely in the cloud – no on-premise infrastructure required.

Having your applications and systems in the cloud lets you take advantage of new technology easier. By being completely serverless, your employees can operate faster and more flexibly. It’s easy to as scale your business grows and it also makes adapting to changing market environments easier. By not relying on on-premises infrastructure, your organisation also becomes more resilient while reducing spend on IT.

Businesses are also increasingly looking to cloud-native applications to take advantage of technologies such as serverless computing, machine learning, and IoT.

But how do you know if this approach is right for you and your organisation?

1. Effective people

Willis Towers Watson moved to the cloud so they could become more resilient and make employees more effective. They were using more than 80 on-premise servers to store and process data to provide analytic capabilities that help insurers calculate reserves and prices accurately.

By becoming cloud-native, employees are more efficient meaning they now can do the types of jobs they couldn’t when they were using on-premise systems, such as delivering services to SMBs in new markets.

“With Microsoft Azure, we have the agility and scale to react to project demands much more quickly,” says Greg Matuskovic, Director of Global Solutions Architecture, Insurance Consulting and Technology.

Best of all, it makes remote and flexible working easier. With 79 percent of UK employees believing that flexible working makes them more productive, it’s important to ensure you set up your teams for success – something being cloud-native will help you do.

2. Connected customers

Finastra―a leader in financial software and cloud solutions―wanted to encourage open-source collaboration for its FusionFabric.cloud development ecosystem. By moving FusionFabric.cloud to Azure, the organisation has made customer access to the platform ten times faster.

Félix Grévy, Global Head of Product Management at FusionFabric.cloud explains, “Our goal was to create an ecosystem of development partners to deliver applications quickly and at low cost. At the same time, our customers would be able to leverage fintech innovation in our familiar and stable workflow environment.”

Finastra found that Azure seamlessly integrated their development tools, while implementing a microservices-based, cloud-native architecture. This makes it easier to develop and scale applications.

3. Secure business

In the NCSC’s cyber security breaches survey, 42 percent of SMBs surveyed identified at least one breach or attack. In 17 percent of those cases, it took businesses a day or more to recover. By being on the cloud, you remove a single point of failure. And with instant backups, you’re up and running before you know it.

To keep up with the scale of cloud-native, you need automatic detection and response to match the scale. Azure is built with security in mind to help you detect, protect, and respond.

Azure Sentinel takes advantage of the scalability and flexibility found from being cloud-native as well as the power of AI to make your threat detection response faster and smarter. Microsoft Threat Experts is another cloud solution that adds context-rich intelligence to enhance your security.

There’s lots of security benefits in the cloud. It also makes it easier to manage users, data, and access, meaning your employees can get on with focusing on the core of your business and you can get back to doing more of what you love.

4. Efficient growth

Because you have the power of new technology, you can take advantage of things like AI or machine learning to gain insights and innovate quicker. And it doesn’t require hiring a whole team of data scientists to implement it.

“Microsoft allows us to be a pure-play software product company that’s evolving to a software solution company, that’s evolving to a software platform company, all three on the Microsoft Azure Stack,” says Simon Paris, Finastra CEO. “That opens up a whole new potential for us to move into marketplaces and data monetisation, and become the pre-eminent software player in global financial services.”

Being cloud-native lowers the barriers SMB’s often face when accessing cutting-edge technology. By improving access, it makes it easier for you to innovate and you’re your business successfully.

In a world where your business needs to respond in an agile way to the changing world around it, cloud-native lets you innovate and do more, faster. Become more flexible and responsive in a fast-changing environment, while staying secure, giving your employees time to do more of what they love, whilst being able to better connect with your customers.

Find out more

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According to McKinsey & Co, companies that are more diverse and inclusive drive value creation and performance in four key areas:

1. A diverse and inclusive workplace is central to attracting, developing, and retaining talent. Diverse organisations have broader talent pools to successfully compete in this changing world.
2. Diverse groups make faster, better quality decisions, which in turn, pushes better business performance.
3. Inclusive and diverse teams are more creative and innovative. They can give a better customer insight into diverse customer markets, serving the community better and increasing value.
4. It improves employee satisfaction, collaboration, and loyalty, creating an environment that’s more attractive to high performers.

At Microsoft, we’ve been taking part in this journey to become more diverse and inclusive—not only to grow our talent pool, but also to be more innovative and creative, and build a better future for all. An important part of this is creating an open culture and ensuring everyone feels like they belong and contributes with their authentic self.

Here are 10 behaviours we’ve identified from our own journey that will help you create a more inclusive workplace.

1.      Include and seek input from people across a wide variety of backgrounds

At Microsoft, we design products and services for all human experiences and needs so we need to hear from a wide variety of people. You may too. Or perhaps you want to improve customer relationships. Cognitively diverse teams solve problems 60 percent faster. So, whatever work you do, having a diverse input will give you a better, more well-rounded result, at a much faster rate.

You will cater to a broader set of customers if you build your product or service with diverse input. Not only will this increase profitability, but it will also boost innovation. Your employees will be empowered and excited to be part of a positive, supportive environment.

Tip: take advantage of employee resource groups when starting a new project and include them from the early stages.

2.      Listen carefully to the person speaking until they feel understood

Listening is an active process you undertake to make sure you understand what the speaker is saying. It’s also important to respond appropriately to what they’re saying.

Remain impartial as you listen. Remember that a natural part of speaking includes pauses, so leave any questions, clarifications, or comments until the speaker has finished. Use verbal and non-verbal cues to show you’re actively listening.

Don’t forget to leverage technology. Both Skype and PowerPoint now feature live captions and subtitles. This will make it easier for those who are hard of hearing, in a noisy office, or speak another language to actively listen or be heard.

Tip: active listening is a skill that can be learnt. Remember:

• Pay attention
• Show that you’re listening
• Provide verbal and non-verbal feedback
• Remain impartial
• Respond appropriately

3.      Make a habit of asking questions

Questions are key to learning. That’s how detectives solve cases and how inventors invent. It also opens the floor for discussion and innovation. Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to. Ask questions to broaden your mind and deepen your understanding. This will help you gain knowledge and learn from new experiences.

Tip: start with open-ended questions before delving deeper to gain a better understanding.

4.      If you have a strong reaction to someone, ask yourself why

The best way to deal with someone who causes a strong reaction in yourself is to turn inward. Pinpoint these triggers and address them. After all, they didn’t create those triggers. Doing this will help show you why you have this response so you can anticipate, soften, or alter your reaction.

Tip: we can’t all get along all of the time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all work productively together in a professional, supportive environment.

5.      Address misunderstandings and resolve disagreements

Everyone has a different point of view. There’s often no right or wrong, just different life experiences that create different opinions. Active listening will reduce misunderstandings in the office. It will also make disagreements easier to resolve in a mature, communicative way.

Try to think of the situation from the other person’s—or an outsider’s—point of view. Be professional in your response and try to address the issue directly and once it’s resolved, move on.

Tip: remember that we’re all working towards a common goal and have the same values at heart.

6.      Act to reduce stressful situations

Sometimes stress is unavoidable, but we can change how we react to defuse the situation. Identify what is causing the stress and see if there are ways to reduce the triggers. Is there a practical solution, or is it only a temporary feeling? Even if you can’t do anything about it, sometimes just acknowledging the feeling helps.

If you see an employee under stress, offer them support. They could be taking on too much or they might need help on an urgent project. They might need a break, or even just a kind ear to vent to. Supporting your employees with their work-life balance will not only minimise stress, but it will also maximise their ability to contribute to the business.

Tip: offer well-being resources and create a culture where employees know it’s OK to talk about stress.

7.      Understand each person’s contribution

A big part of working in a team is understanding everyone’s role. No matter how big or small, each employee is a piece of the jigsaw that completes the puzzle. You won’t be able to innovate unless you have a great team ethic and a common goal to work towards.

It’s important to keep communication lines open. Apps like Microsoft Teams make it easy to collaborate and communicate together no matter where employees are located.

Tip: know everyone’s role and skill set so you can use their talents to get the best out of them.

8.      Examine your assumptions

When we understand how assumptions and bias influence our behaviour, we can act to create an inclusive culture. We compiled a set of learning resources to help our employees at Microsoft understand the impact of bias. These might also help you empower your employees to create a more inclusive environment in your business.

Our unconscious bias training will help you understand what it is. We also show how to counter it to support a diverse and inclusive culture.

Tip: changing assumptions doesn’t happen overnight—it requires continuous and proactive attention. Try to spend 10 minutes a week using these tools to stay familiar with them.

9.      Ensure all voices are heard

The softer spoken, quieter members of our team can contribute just as much as the more extroverted employees. It’s important to recognise the different ways employees contribute to the conversation, and make sure their voices are heard. This could involve following up on conversations via email or in Teams, or perhaps having smaller meetings or one-to-ones.

Tip: ensure you keep the lines of communication open for employees and assure them you’re taking their thoughts and opinions seriously.

10. Be brave

Something we’ve learnt from our own journey is that it doesn’t end. We’re committed to continuous improvement and learning. Key to this is making inclusion a core priority. In fact, it’s built-in to our employee KPIs—all employees are expected to play an active role in creating inclusive environments.

We know that being diverse and inclusive is better for business. It helps us attract and retain top talent. And, more importantly, it’s helping us build a better future for all.

Find out more

Re-imagine Accessibility

Our journey to an inclusive workplace: 

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