Frontline workers have suffered ongoing disruption throughout the pandemic which has led to considerable exhaustion and burn out. Increased working hours and pressure means they are also likely to experience a feeling of disconnection from their organisation and their team. As a result, organisations need to support healthcare staff wellbeing. Based on the Work Trend Index Special Report, one of the main focuses organisations should have when it comes to building an inclusive team culture is ensuring frontline workers have the digital tools to stay connected to core organisational messages and resources.

Improving connections to organisational knowledge

Technology like Microsoft Viva Connections can play an important role in shaping the organisational culture to include frontline workers. Viva Connections brings together relevant news, conversations and resources from around your organisation into one place within Teams. It provides both a desktop and mobile experience. Viva Connections is built on the current Microsoft 365 ecosystem within your organisation. It’s powered by SharePoint to help inform, engage, and empower the hybrid workforce. The Viva Connections experience is fully customisable to your organisation’s requirements. Living in Teams, this allows all employees to access information no matter what device they are using and where they are. As a result, all healthcare workers can complete their roles without the need to search for different websites, use different and outdated applications or load resources and tools which only work on a PC.

An improved and updated intranet brought into the flow of daily work in Microsoft Teams provides a simple way for health organisations to deliver all relevant news to frontline workers. It can also create a safe and collaborative space for healthcare teams. This can support organisations in their efforts of keeping employees engaged which can result in higher levels of retention.

Every day, new healthcare regulations are put in place by governments. Often, healthcare workers struggle to find the latest government regulation or guidance and may struggle to pro-actively locate this information. With Viva connections, organisational leaders know they can deliver this content in a uniform experience to all employees, regardless of role.

Delivering connections to new employees

Viva Connections can be particularly useful for new healthcare workers. When joining an organisation it is often difficult to embrace and understand the organisation’s culture and mission. Especially remotely when on the frontline and not in an office setting. Viva Connections provides a virtual resource portal for a new healthcare worker. It supports onboarding through a customisable dashboard which can be personalised to different employee roles. The dashboard delivers a tailored view of these resources through adaptive cards. These can be targeted directly to frontline workers and their own needs. Popular use cases can include weblinks to view pay and benefits, submit holiday requests, view and manage shifts or access time sheets. All these are opened within the Teams browser on a mobile device.

Through the dashboard experience, Viva Connections also provides an extensible platform, where 3^rd party integration such as ServiceNow, LifeWorks or Talentsoft can be plugged directly through adaptive cards. This means that employees can access and complete even more tasks directly from the Connections app. As a result, healthcare workers can save large amounts of time. This is because they no longer need to search the organisations intranet for scattered resources.

Take control of your organisation’s internal communication strategy

In a hybrid working world where healthcare workers are likely to be more disconnected than ever from their organisations, both information workers working from home and workers using mobile devices on the frontline have benefitted from using Microsoft Teams. Now, in this evolution of Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections can ensure healthcare workers stay in touch with their organisation’s latest news, legal requirements and their organisation’s mission and purpose.

To learn more about Viva Connections please connect with Edward Adamson and Ioana Marinescu on LinkedIn. Or, contact your Microsoft account team and we can organise a Viva Connections envisioning session.

Find out more

Get started with Microsoft Viva Connections

Work Trend Index Special Report

3 ways technology can help rebuild your frontline workforce

What’s a Simple Definition of Employee Engagement?

Viva Connections mobile and new partner integrations are now generally available

About the authors

Edward is currently a Modern Work Specialist working with healthcare organisations across the UK, helping on their journey towards digital transformation. Focussing on hybrid working, frontline technologies and wellbeing and productivity management, connect with Edward on LinkedIn to follow content relating to healthcare and Microsoft 365 optimisation.

Ioana works with healthcare organisations across the UK to improve their journey towards digital transformation using Microsoft 365 technologies. She helps healthcare organisations utilise Microsoft Teams to connect multi-disciplinary communities across the organisation, bring wellbeing and productivity management into the flow of everyday work and surface knowledge and learning across the organisation.

The post How to keep frontline healthcare workers connected with digital technology appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Over the last year, the average duration of mental health related absences were three times longer than that of COVID-related absences in the NHS between 1st June 2020 and 1st June 2021. This, teamed with the enormous pressure placed on healthcare organisations recently has placed a newfound importance on personal health and wellbeing. Additionally, frontline teams and their integrated care communities need high quality communication and work practices.

The demand for workplace empowerment tools has existed long before our new hybrid working world. Frontline healthcare workers spend the most time working outside of their working hours compared to their colleagues. According to the 2020 NHS staff survey, 55.2 percent of all NHS employees work additional unpaid hours every week. Due to the demanding nature of frontline jobs, higher employee turnover and the feeling of being disconnected from the community of the organisation is common. This places paramount importance on being able to manage wellbeing at an individual level through readily available tools in order to stimulate a supportive frontline worker community.

Improve productivity and wellbeing

For organisations tackling the increased levels of stress and anxiety of their workforce, leaders are starting to consider the different technologies that can support mental health and wellbeing.

Insights can help empower healthcare employees take control over their own wellbeing. And with Viva Insights, employees can manage the way they work with recommendations visible only to them. For example, a frontline employee on the ward that might want to send praise to a specialist nurse for the incredible way they have been treating a patient. Or colleagues who are part of a multi-disciplinary team might want to make everyone aware of the positive impact a team member has had on their development.

The ability to send praise in the Viva Insights dashboard can help to create and boost team morale. In addition, this can help everyone to feel more connected, being part of a team where their efforts are recognised and praised. As a result, employee retention is improved.

Getting caught in daily administrative tasks, especially if you are a clinician that regularly faces unexpected circumstances during a shift, can leave little time for wellbeing management which eventually could lead to burnout. Clinicians and everyone across the organisation can start taking control of their wellbeing by setting up reminders in the Viva Insights app to finish their shift by reflecting on how they’re feeling. Over time, they can start analysing their reflections, and begin to understand the driving factors behind their emotions. By focussing on their feelings over time, they can discover ways to reduce burnout.

Meditation breaks can not only help people feel energised but can also improve their ability to focus and engage, leading to better patient outcomes. With the integration of Headspace meditation into Teams through Insights, employees can now tap into moments of relaxation before a patient appointment or a team meeting, making sure they feel ready to tackle any problem that may arise – all from a computer or smartphone.

Through the stay connected tab in the Insights app, healthcare workers can easily discover any pending tasks or people they need to connect with, all based on data from the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Leveraging actionable insights in the context of the day-to-day work can help the workforce to concentrate on things that matter. For example, ward staff can easily complete their admin tasks and focus more on delivering the best treatment for patients.

Take Control of Your Wellbeing

Microsoft Viva brings together scattered organisational resources into the central hub of collaboration that is Microsoft Teams, ensuring healthcare workers can manage their wellbeing and utilise their organisational resources so they can deliver the highest standard of patient care while staying in the flow of everyday work. Insights is the first aspect of Microsoft Viva we will be covering in this blogging series. Make sure to send this document to a human resources colleague, a wellbeing lead or a clinician you know who wants to modernise their wellbeing management.

Keep an eye on our Modern Tools tag on our blog, as we continue our series into how organisations can use these tools to support powerful employee experiences.

Find out more

Introduction to Viva Insights

NHS England » Making the most of the skills in our teams

NHS The Promise

Remote Employees Are Working Longer Than Before

3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world

About the author

Edward is currently a Modern Work Specialist working with healthcare organisations across the UK, helping on their journey towards digital transformation. Focusing on hybrid working, frontline technologies and wellbeing and productivity management, connect with Edward on LinkedIn to follow content relating to healthcare and Microsoft 365 optimisation.

Ioana works with healthcare organisations across the UK to improve their journey towards digital transformation using Microsoft 365 technologies. She helps healthcare organisations utilise Microsoft Teams to connect multi-disciplinary communities across the organisation, bring wellbeing and productivity management into the flow of everyday work and surface knowledge and learning across the organisation.

The post How to improve frontline employee wellbeing in healthcare appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Osborne Clarke is an international legal practice with headquarters in London, and offices around the world. The Firm’s goal is to help clients succeed in tomorrow’s world. One of the ways it does that is to equip all its people with the right digital tools, right processes and empower them with the right skills to use those tools effectively.

To empower employees, they took a different approach to the typical linear style taken for digital modernisation.  “When you’re trying to fundamentally change the way people deliver work, its different,” explains Nathan Hayes, IT Director at Osborne Clarke. By directly engaging with people to solve business issues, Osborne Clarke was able to build internal champions. At the same time, they are improving processes and developing best practices to enable its people to work smarter.

Speed up digital modernisation and empower employees

Osborne Clarke had already started to modernise its business ahead of the UK’s shift to remote working in 2020. Employees were already familiar with Microsoft Teams. However, the shift in ways of working was a real driver for tech adoption because they had to use tools like Microsoft Teams to engage and work. “It’s about winning hearts and minds. People were already engaging with technology in ways they never had before,” says Nathan.

Standardising client experiences and ways of working

Osborne Clarke’s Matter Management Group has been a key part of building the processes behind its digital collaboration modernisation. For legal firms, the managing of a matter from conception to delivery needs to not only meet client expectations, but be transparent, compliant and secure to meet employee expectations too.

Osborne Clarke identified that all its people had a different way of working. This created challenges around the consistency of client experiences across the organisation. The Firm’s Matter Management Group set out to standardise the way they delivered legal services across the organisation, taking learnings from the broader business on how they could work more effectively.

“I have worked with the Matter Management Group and the skill set provided is valuable. There is training support on hand when needed and there is an understanding of how legal teams work which means there’s an appreciation of the comments/concerns we raise and the Group is able to explain the technology easily.”

Partner, Corporate, Osborne Clarke

Connecting business silos to aid transparency and reduce risk

Ensuring transparency over processes and documents is one of the most important factors for legal firms to consider. In a traditional firm, documents are paper-based or baked into business silos making transparency difficult to audit and manage.

When connecting business silos together, legal firms can gain visibility over document sharing, updates, and more. As a result of their modernisation, Osborne Clarke can track when a document is pulled out of the management system and shared with clients via email or on Microsoft Teams to manage risk, create visibility and improve client experiences.

Ensuring security and regulatory compliance

Like many industries, security is highly important for the legal sector. Legal firms need to ensure they not only meet the expectations of clients, regulators, and the business, but exceed them. Firms must ensure any technology meets risk and compliance requirements, while being able to take advantage of innovative solutions to transform client experiences.

“We went through a full due diligence exercise in terms of understanding where our audit trails were, what our discovery options were, and where we engage our risk and compliance team. We have to know that we’ve got an absolutely robust platform,” says Nathan.

By conducting a thorough audit of the platform and understanding their audit trails, Osborne Clarke was able to outline where there was a reliance on employees to meet their statutory and regulatory obligations and where they could leverage technology more effectively to save time.

Demonstrating tangible use cases to empower employees

The Matter Management Group worked with teams in the business directly to help solve challenges around working practices and demonstrate how Microsoft Teams can help resolve them. By showing the value of digital technology first-hand within the context of the real day-to-day challenges they were facing, there was a greater chance it would be used. As a result, that they would share their new found understanding more broadly with other colleagues.

“We had a London partner who was looking to improve profitability. We sat down with him and showed him the technologies that could help. He decided he wanted to try Planner and Teams. Then, he codified an entire matter within 24 hours. He sent it out to his team members, assigning tasks in planner. And that was the start of delivering benefits in terms of visibility and in terms of accuracy,” says Nathan.

“I have used Planner within Teams to create the M&A Playbook. The task list is flexible so can be amended for each deal. It can also be assigned to specific people, prioritised in terms of urgency and can set due dates which can be moved if necessary,” says a Partner at Osborne Clarke. “I have found Planner to be incredibly useful and have noticed that junior lawyers are more proactive as they can see the matter set out in tasks from start to finish.”

“Some things I’ve really liked about Planner – it’s very easy to set up and edit the tasks and buckets; It’s useful to be able to tailor what information appears on each task card. For example, on some that are time sensitive I will choose to include deadline details, or if we agree something with the other side which we may need to keep track of later, I can include a small note under the relevant task.”

Associate, Project Finance

Bringing employees along the journey

For Nathan’s team, the most important thing about digital modernisation is to make sure employees are part of the process. This is why the implementation was so successful. The Matter Management Group works directly within business teams to solve build solutions. This means they were not only able to demonstrate the benefit of digital technology on existing processes, but they were also able to equip employees with the right digital skills to work alongside the technology.

“Its great to see how Osborne Clarke have integrated Microsoft Teams in to the firms critical business processes to not only enhance their lawyers productivity but to engage with their clients in a more consistent and effective way. It demonstrates how technology can enable effective change in a secure way when people and processes are closely aligned.”

Karen Grumbt, Account Executive, Legal Sector, Microsoft UK

The future

Nathan believes Osborne Clarke’s journey is far from over. Looking forward, there are ways to automate workflows or paper-based processes. This will not only save time but reduce errors and empowers employees to spend more time with clients.

The secret of Osborne Clarke’s digital modernisation success is its people-first approach. Engaging directly with teams to build solutions that show immediate benefits creates advocates within the business. In addition, ensuring the processes are secure, compliant and transparent, builds not only strong digital proficiency, but creates a more open, collaborative culture.

Find out more

Learn more about Osborne Clarke

Embrace the new world of work eBook

5 ways the legal sector can innovate and empower employees in the future of work

Resources for your development team

Watch the on-demand sessions from Microsoft Build:

Extending the Microsoft Teams experience

Build solutions that span across Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections and SharePoint

About the author

Nathan is IT Director at Osborne Clarke. He has over fifteen years of experience in the strategic delivery of IT into numerous law firms including CMS Cameron McKenna and Bevan Brittan amongst others. Nathan is an active member of the Legal IT community and makes regular contributions at conferences and to a range of legal publications. Prior to moving into the legal sector, he enjoyed extensive experience in a similar capacity within the global distribution sector. When away from the office, Nathan can usually be found surfing whilst attached to a kite, and occasionally being dragged out to sea in a tangle of lines.

Karen is an experienced Account Executive focussed on the Legal Sector at Microsoft. With over five years’ experience working with global law firms, Karen works closely with customers to drive digital transformation and enable them to realise greater business benefit through Microsoft technology.

The post How law firms can securely empower employees and optimise processes appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

During my last role, I managed my team remotely from the UK. We were spread across seven different geographical locations, four different time zones, and were as diverse a team as you might expect for a region encompassing 78 countries. During my 3.5 year tenure we were able to be together as a whole team on only one occasion – for an organisational off-site.

Despite the distance between us, I am proud to have fostered a close and collaborative team culture during that time, one which respected and celebrated our diversity.

This wasn’t without its challenges, however. Maintaining an inclusive environment and ensuring connection required both attention and intention. Managing a team remotely and from home was a great learning experience for me as a people leader. I am keen to share some of my thoughts, learnings and mistakes that were made along my journey in the hope to help you with yours.

Here are my top five tips for managing remotely and from home.

1.      Make sure you are prepared

First things first – make sure that you are ready and set up to productively lead and manage remotely when at home. I remember sharing a particularly embarrassing incident with my team early on in my remote working experience. I was on a call with a senior leadership team when I noticed I was losing WiFi signal. In an attempt to regain the signal, I sprinted with my laptop to another part of the house and tripped over the dog. I accidentally unmuted myself at the exact point in time when I let out a loud expletive aimed at said canine. The leadership team were especially forgiving, although I think the dog still holds a grudge! It was a valuable lesson in the importance of getting set up to credibly and productively manage remotely:

• Prepare your workspace. Make sure you have a reliable connection and you have what you need to be productive.
• Figure out when you really need the focus time. Not all calls and meetings are equal in this regard. We all have distractions when working from home such as partners, kids, pets etc. If I had an especially important call, for example, with a customer or if I was required to present, then that was the time I found a way to create calm, e.g. asking my husband to take the dogs out, putting a movie on for the kids, or asking the builders (yes really) to hold back on the pneumatic drilling for an hour or so.
• Embrace the quirks. For those other calls which are a more informal catch ups like 1:1s and team meetings then my view is that we’re all adults and nobody really cares if a dog barks, postman arrives or a child comes in. I was once on a call where my bosses partner appeared in full view in swimming trunks behind her on a Teams call. In a fully remote team some of these moments provided the best social moments of connection.
• Set your boundaries. It is important that you still maintain a healthy separation between home and work life even if you are working from your home. Be intentional about your working hours and setting expectations for availability. This is especially important if working in a global company and across cultures and time zones.

2.      Prioritise the relationships

In my previous roles I had been used to managing people with a rhythm of 1:1 meetings on a monthly basis in order to review progress and check-in. Being based in the same office if there was ever a requirement for an interim chat, decision, or catch up we knew we would see each other and so there were plenty of other opportunities to connect – normally in a corridor, in the kitchen, or just wandering over to someone else’s desk.

Managing remotely however is different and these are some of the learnings I discovered as a result:

• Frequent contact is important. In order to maintain connection and build the manager-direct report relationship, I consciously doubled the frequency of 1:1 meetings or check-ins with my direct reports as I had done with my local office based team. I had catch ups every other week for most of the team, but for new joiners or where we had business challenges, I did a weekly meeting. These connections were invaluable for keeping in sync with the team and it was the frequency, rather than the length of these connections which was important.
• Welcome the ‘ping’. I made sure my status was accurate and welcomed the informal ‘pings’, quick asks for help, and kept a close eye on this throughout the day. It’s important that you are accessible to your team when they need support.
• Maximise opportunities for connection. Whenever possible I prioritised an informal ad-hoc Teams video chat over sending an email when I could to encourage relationship building and make sure things we’re taken out of context.

3.      Running inclusive remote meetings:

I have found the phrase “if you don’t intentionally include you unintentionally exclude” to be so true. In the early days of remotely managing my team it became obvious that only a few voices were being heard. It took deliberate attention to foster a feeling of inclusion on our calls where every voice could be heard. Over time we found what worked for us and these are my top tips:

• Don’t try to pack too much into the meeting agenda. Whilst it’s tempting to get everything crammed into the meeting, this might not leave enough space for discussion amongst the team. Put lower priority items at the end of the agenda so if you happen to overrun then you can start with those next time.
• Allow time for social connection. Whilst you are waiting for everyone to join, rather than sitting in silence, use the time to catch up on what happened at the weekend, the weather, family life, etc. Anything to build those social connections in the group.
• Turn on the camera. It makes such a difference to the engagement of a remote team when they can see each other on the call. You can do this by putting a fun slide/reminder at the start of the call as a quick prompt and as a manager, modelling the way by being the first to turn your camera on.
• Consider a ‘check-in’. A check-in usually takes the form of a quick update from each of the meeting participants and is perfect if you have a relatively small team. This could be to see how they are feeling, whether they are facing any challenges, and what they are looking forward to amongst other things. The important factor here is to engage all participants from the outset of the call.
• Let your team build the agenda. Another trick to get participation is to ask everyone to input topics they’d cover in your meetings.  Once you have a list of topics from everyone, you can prioritise by having everyone “+1” on the topics they care about, and work through them in that order to maximise coverage of interest in the topics during the time you have. Carry over any items which were not covered to the next meeting/call.
• Notice who is speaking and who is quiet. Try to encourage active participation of all on the call. Invite other opinions if some of the team are not contributing and don’t feel comfortable jumping in every time there is silence on the call.
• Rotate meeting ownership. Ask other members of the team to present content on the call, or even organise the agenda for the call on behalf of the team.
• Record the meeting. If team members are unable to attend this means they can review the content later. Recorded meetings also come with the audio transcript so team members can easily go back to review meetings and get actions.
• Turn on live captions. Teams uses AI to put live captions onto meetings in real-time. This is useful for members who might be joining from a busy environment, or are hard of hearing.

4.      Promoting collaboration

When a team is remote, and not just remote but working in isolation and/or outside of the office then the chat functionality of Teams really becomes important. However, if this is new to an individual – either because they are used to working in an office or are new to a team then here are a few tips to promote collaboration.

• Promote an open and supportive culture. Create a safe space where your team are empowered to share problems and challenges in your Teams channels (as well as ideas, best practices, and offers of help. Using the power of your community to support each other should enable faster resolution to issues and everyone’s knowledge benefits from seeing the conversation. As a manager you can ‘like’, @mention someone and recognise with thanks both the question and the contribution of the team.
• Get to the point in Team chats. Some organisations and Teams are promoting a ‘NoHello’ approach to chat conversations. Although we love to be polite, share a greeting and wait for a response which might take minutes to come, you may have joined your next meeting before you get what you need. Make it a practice in your organisation, by all means to share a greeting – but follow this straight away by the question or request. Much quicker and more respectful of time.

5.      Don’t forget the Fun

We all have a limited attention span in meetings and in particular, on remote calls. That’s why it’s important to keep the engagement, attention, and energy up. Some of the great ways we found to do this were:

• Use the chat function. On our Teams meetings, we encouraged equal levels of engagement and participation in the chat window as we did in speaking on the call. Everyone loves a GIF or a meme. Typically, alongside any speaker or presentation there was a constant stream of chat, feedback, questions, comments, and activity throughout the session.
• Use the full functionality of Teams. You could use the whiteboard to brainstorm ideas (or for a quick round of Pictionary), and the poll functionality to gauge opinions (or for a quick trivia quiz). Being mindful to inject some lighter moments of fun into the meeting will create deeper levels of engagement and participation when used during the meeting.

Find out more

Tips for effective remote work

Join our virtual Microsoft 365 Training Day: Journey to Microsoft Teams

About the author

Georgina is Delivery Management Leader in Microsoft Services, where she helps customers realise their full potential through accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. She leads a high-performance team of seasoned service delivery professionals well versed in cloud adoption, delivery management practices, and technology trends. Previously, she was Head of Talent Acquisition for Middle East and Africa. Georgina is passionate about coaching and developing individuals to achieve their potential, with an interest in diversity and inclusion.

The post 5 tips to keep your remote team engaged and motivated appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

I wanted to share a few learnings from the journey we have been on at St. Hele’s School in Plymouth to help settle concerns and ensure that you have everything set up in the right way to get you started with remote learning if and when necessary.

1. Remove distractions

The Head of Science at St. Hele’s School was also worried about the same situation when it came to using Microsoft Teams and the first thing we did was to set up the initial Teams site and customise the settings. One of his concerns was that students would be distracted by the chat facility and that this would open up a world of distractions in the form of GIFs and memes. Once the Teams site was set up, we went into the settings, switched off the chat facilities, and muted all students which removed their ability to post anything and would give us a bit more control when they were added to the Teams site.

2. Test and learn

When the students were added to the Teams site, they were able to easily access the relevant files they needed to revise from and weren’t distracted by anything in the first instance. We did try leaving the chat facilities on with another group of students but within minutes they had completely lit up the Teams site with lots of images and animated GIFs in their excitement. We do plan on bringing these fantastic features back but only once the students are fully familiarised with the Teams interface.

3. Customise channels and folders

The next stage was to set up the channels that we wanted to use within the Teams site. We decided to set these as private so that we could invite individual students to the right channel based on their year group. For example, only year 9 students were able to access the year 9 section. This made it easier for students to access the content that was relevant to them and their specific learning journey.

The most important thing to consider when setting this up the first-time round is to make sure that you have the folder structure that you wish to use that is ready to go. Teams has a fantastic feature that allows you to drag and drop your file structure into the files tab that you should be able to see in each of your channels. Any files you wish to be available for every student to see can be added to the files tab in the general channel.

Hopefully it has been useful to see how we’ve approached getting started with Microsoft Teams to help you with your own remote learning plans.

Find out more

Introduction to Microsoft Teams

4 tips to make the most of remote learning and deliver an uninterrupted student experience

About the author

The post 3 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams for remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Fast forward to this year and I was the one presenting at the Training Academy. Alongside Alan Crawford, we showed the impact that OneNote Class Notebook is driving for teachers, students, and classrooms everywhere.

1.      Making organisation easier

As a planner, my OneNote contains my daily schedule and learning intentions/success criteria for each lesson. I have my layout set as a template so when I add a new page, it’s all done for me. To this, I add any resource files or weblinks that I need.

Because it works on any device, I can check my planner on my phone before school, on my desktop in school, or even during the lesson on my Surface as I move round the class. My teacher OneNote also has the school events calendar, department timetable, policy documents, and teaching resources. Basically everything I need across the whole year is at my fingertips wherever and whenever I need it, meaning I can work smarter and be more productive.

2.      Increasing student collaboration

Class Notebook is the tool I use to share all resources with my pupils no matter what type. It keeps all the resources organised so that students can easily find them. These are all stored in the content library and thus are accessible to students so they can take control of their learning but not editable for them.

Students are encouraged to download the OneNote app on their devices so they can access these resources outside of school. It’s now easy for a student to find the right resources they need to complete homework.

They are also given a personal section which can only be viewed by the teacher and themselves. In there, I distribute notes. They can annotate and highlight key words using the drawing tools tab.

All biology essays are completed in OneNote as assignments in Teams. This makes it easier for me to check how students are progressing with an essay. When completed, I can easily add a screenshot of the marking scheme and give them written or audio feedback.

3.      Distributing and reviewing work

Distributing work to students is quick and easy in Class Notebook. Select the Distribute Page button and it gets sent out to each student’s own personal notebook section. Quick and simple and saves all those trips to the photocopier.

To review work, I select Review Student Work and I can go through each student’s page to mark and give feedback.

4.      Encouraging student voice

I also use OneNote as my school whiteboard. I use this to record the teacher notes we refer to in class. This ensures that all students can revisit the class notes. If they are absent, it’s easier for them to catch up before they return to class.

PowerPoint files are inserted as printouts so I can annotate over to add additional information.  I can screenshot an image from the web for labelling.  Also, using the Insert Picture feature I can take a picture of a page from the textbook to explain something or a question as we work through the answers together.

I often insert pictures of pupil work and they often lead the learning. They then talk through their work and share with the rest of the class. Student voice is so important in my class. With OneNote, they have the opportunity to share their written work digitally with everyone and explain their thinking behind it.

5.      Improving maths comprehension

My students fully embrace Maths Tools in OneNote. I don’t use it often in my classroom, but they tell me it is a very useful tool.

If they are working on an equation they can use the Lasso button in the Draw tab to select the equation and see the steps to solve it. This is useful when they need some help to see how to solve the equation and the teacher is not available to explain, such as working at home.

It even insert a forms quiz for the students based on that equation. So they are not only seeing how to solve the problem, and then apply this to various questions generated in the form. This is also a great teacher time saver as the students are self-marking.

6.      Improving student and teacher communication

I really like the variety of ways that feedback can be added to OneNote. I type feedback, write it in digital ink, but also can insert audio feedback too. If work requires an extended response it is far quicker for me to record what I have to say and insert it into the OneNote.

This means face-to-face feedback with the students doesn’t stop. I can add this type of feedback at a time when the students aren’t in class. They can listen to it many times if needed as it’s saved in their notebooks. Also, for pupils who find reading feedback a more difficult task, audio feedback is far more effective for them, even for short comments.

7.      Improving accessibility

Immersive Reader is available to teachers and students across so many of Microsoft’s tools for the classroom. It ensures all pupils can access the learning content and has a huge impact.

In the View tab, select immersive reader. A new window will appear for the text on the page. Here, you can change the page colour, text spacing, or highlight grammar specifics. But what amazes people the most is the read aloud feature. Not only can this read out text, but it can translate it into another language and read it out!

Helping students reach their potential

For the last four years I have been using OneNote Class Notebook in my classroom and each year my use of it evolves and changes. I have seen first-hand how using OneNote can help teachers and students. It saves me time so I can focus on my students. It allows me to make my classroom more accessible than ever before. For students, it’s helped them gain vital digital skills, improved their collaboration, communication, and empowered them to increase their learning potential.

Find out more

Discover more with OneNote

Organise your classroom with OneNote

About the author

Sarah Clark is a Teacher of Science and Biology at Queen Anne High School in Fife. She is an MIE Fellow Scotland and a OneNote Avenger – she even has the cape to prove it! She has been teaching for 16 years and is passionate about integrating technology in the classroom to help enhance learning and enable students to gain digital skills.

The post 7 ways to unleash students learning potential with OneNote appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Working with academic colleagues at the University of Central Lancashire, we have been exploring the use of Teams with our students for just over two years now and have learned a lot throughout that time.

Here are some of the main ways that Microsoft Teams can transform the student experience based on learnings from our own journey.

1. Fuel collaboration

Collaboration is vital to a student’s growth, helping them engage with subjects, improve inter-personal skills, and even become more creative. Microsoft Teams allows students to collaborate on documents together in real time whilst giving them the ability to engage in multiple forms of communication – from text, to voice and video conferencing. This helps them seamlessly trade ideas, leading to better, more informed work.

2. Foster community

Teams actively supports the facilitation of organic student learning communities, where students can really start to grow connections with their learning peers. The nature of Teams means that, no matter where students are, they can come together as a group and support each other as they pool resources and knowledge.

3. Encourage social learning

It helps those who may not have an active voice in the ‘traditional classroom’, by allowing them the time to think and reflect before sharing their own views. These students are able to observe, and offer their own input in their own time, and in their own way.

4. Facilitate peer-to-peer support

The tech’s active environment encourages students to support and respond to each other’s queries and concerns – depending less on the academic team and increasing transparency across the group’s communication. Not only does this alleviate some of the pressure from faculty members, but also helps all students involved consider new ways of thinking about different topics.

5. Develop netiquette skills

Teams is a safe, digital space for students to start to develop their own professional online voice and presence. This can be particularly important before they begin participating in more public social arenas, such as Twitter. It’s almost like a training ground for what is and isn’t permissible online – and it’s completely secure, too.

6. Create an inclusive learning environment

Students access Teams using their university accounts – either via their own devices or their institution’s IT and library facilities. Its ease of usability encourages more out-of-hours and flexible working, fitting more easily around any other personal or work commitments. All a student needs is their phone and they’re instantly connected via the Teams app. This should make it less stressful for them, giving them more freedom to work their way and on their terms. Because great ideas don’t come strictly during working hours.

7. Help students take control of their own learning

In some cases, students are pro-actively setting up their own spaces for formative feedback and adding in their tutors as moderators. Simple polling features can allow students to voice what it is they would like to learn about or discuss next, as they start to really take ownership of their own learning. This is at the core of what learning, particularly in higher education, is about. Teams helps nurture this mindset, granting students the tools they need to own their work.

8. Provide a familiar learning environment

Teams can harness the often-familiar characteristics of contemporary social media platforms, but in a safe, private and professional environment. This can have a substantial impact on both raising and maintaining student engagement with the learning platform. There isn’t the fear of being ‘exposed’ and ‘open’ that comes from other social media platforms – and unlike those sites, Teams is designed to increase productivity and teamwork through a secure app, rather than feed into the vanity narrative.

9. Prepare students for the future digital workplace

Students are encouraged to develop a range of transferable, work-ready skills. One example of which, often includes their ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with others in online environments. As the modern workplace continues to evolve, with digital transformation at its heart, equipping students with the right skills is vital to everyone’s success – as individuals and as future employees.

Find out more

Moving from ‘learner management’, to learner autonomy and skills for the future

Microsoft Teams: Top 10 tips for learner engagement 

How can technology support inclusive and participatory learning? 

Cultivating collaborations with learner communities in Teams 

About the author

Chris is a Senior Learning Technologist in the UCLan TELT team, and digital learning lead for the University’s Faculty of Health and Wellbeing. He holds Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy and has completed a PGCert in Digital Education with the University of Edinburgh. Since 2018, Chris has led development of UCLan’s innovative and sector-endorsed “DigiLearn” model – to recognise and reward the inclusive digital practice of academic colleagues. Keen to widen collaboration across the sector, he established UCLan’s “DigiLearn Sector” – a community fostered to connect digital practitioners from across FE, HE and beyond. Chris is also an active member of the Microsoft, Jisc and ALT communities – regularly contributing to their respective blogs and presenting at various sector-level events. He is a lead contributor to UCLan’s own Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching blog, and has his own blog – #edtechthoughts. As a Microsoft Learning Consultant, Chris now works with other institutions – supporting their adoption of Microsoft technologies to improve both staff and student outcomes.

The post 9 ways to transform the student learning experience with Microsoft Teams appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 

…So said ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. As someone who sees change as an opportunity to grow both professionally and personally, that quote has always struck a chord with me.

However, it’s important to realise that not everyone has the same outlook. For many employees, change can be daunting. Whether your company is transforming to the digital workplace, introducing unfamiliar technology or even altering roles, transformation in the workplace can cause major disruption to the employee experience, impacting everything from productivity to mental health. As such, managing change against these challenges requires an empathetic response.

Here are some ways you can address some of the common questions and concerns around change to put your teams at ease and help them embrace the opportunity.

1. My role in the digital workplace is changing, and I don’t know what to do

All organisations undergo structural change. Dealing with the cut and thrust of modern business demands becoming lean, agile, and flexible. With it comes the introduction of the empowering nature of technology that has or will transform everyone’s role – from caretaker to CEO.

The initial reaction to this is involuntary, and can often be one of resistance. However, don’t try to fight it.

In my experience, your employees must process this in their own way. If they’re upset, allow them to be upset. If they’re optimistic, embrace that optimism. If they’re angry, help them channel the anger into something positive. There’s no specific, codified way employees should act in these situations, but it’s not healthy to suppress all emotions.

After the initial shock of hearing about change, it’s time to support employees in seeing the opportunities. If the change means joining a new team, what new things could your team learn? What new advice can be gained from a new manager? If the change means moving companies, help your people imagine where it could lead and support them through the process.

2. They’ve introduced new technology and I don’t know how to use it

Learning new technology can be tricky. It’s time-consuming and often involves a lot of  admin during the set-up process. Just when you think you’ve cracked it, you might hear about a new technology being introduced to replace it.

D’oh!

One major challenge is understanding the different technology suites a new company uses.

When I first began stumbling across this, I used to resist. I started doing work on my home device, so I could carry on using the old software I was familiar with. This was arduous, clunky and, to be honest, a bit childish. A case of “I want to use what I want to use and don’t care what you say”.

However, I’m glad to say I left that stage behind quite quickly. Now, when presented with new technologies, I wholeheartedly embrace them. Learning the different capabilities of each has opened my eyes to new ways to use them and new ways of working that are more suited to the digital workplace.

It’s the same for your employees – using new technologies means gaining new skills. That might be on a grand-scale, like learning how to create engaging presentations using PowerPoint’s built-in AI capabilities or it might just be finding a few fun life-hacks and shortcuts that make work even easier.

To help your employees get to grips with new tech in the digital workplace, start by figuring out how they learn best. Some of your team will be textbook titans who prefer to sit and get all the background reading under their belt before tackling a new project. Others might be on-the-job supremos who learn by interaction and embrace a trial-and-error mentality.

Understanding where they’re most comfortable is important to ensuring success.

3. I need to make changes to my team, but I’m not sure how people will react

“You need to lose headcount.”

Five dreaded words no business leader wants to hear. You’ve spent time recruiting a team to help realise your lofty ambitions, working hard to develop a close-knit culture. Now, you need to put them at risk.

I’ve seen managers react in different ways to this in the past – some go for the blunt “it is what it is” method. Some go decidedly down the other track of “if I pretend it’s not happening it might not happen”. I’ve managed the communications for these changes on several occasions, and the best advice I can give during these times is…

Be empathetic in your delivery. Be proactive in your support. Be confident in your justification. And don’t forget, change affects the whole team, not just the leavers.

There’s a heavy emphasis on getting the correct terminology into organisational change communications. There are legal implications to consider and the wording needs to be accurate. However, one thing that’s under your control is the tone of delivery.

Think about your people. Understand how and why they might react differently. Remember, it won’t be the same for everyone, so tailor your approach.

Next, before announcing these types of changes, consider the support mechanisms you need to put in place to help employees at every level. Offer career coaching and support sessions. It might be that people would rather deal with the change on their own, but it’s better to have these things in place than to have people feel abandoned. Proactive support is critical. It’s where positive change lives or dies. As an employee, there’s nothing quite as demoralising as feeling like you’ve received bad news, then being left to deal with it alone.

When it comes to confidence in your justification. What this means is that, before you move to the digital workplace, it’s important to be certain as to your reasons for doing it. Whenever changes are made, there will inevitably be questions, comparison, and issues. As long as you are sure why you’re changing, and are happy to openly and honestly justify them to employees, people will feel a greater sense of understanding. It might not make them happy about it, but at least they’ll be reassured by the fairness of the situation.

Lastly, and importantly, when it comes to company culture, the impact of organisational change can be felt greatly by those remaining. I’ve seen people feel guilty, wondering why they’ve kept their job when others didn’t; I’ve seen people in tears over losing the friends and connections they’ve made in the workplace.

Don’t assume your people will automatically bounce back. Support them, offer ongoing guidance well after the point of change, and bring them on your journey. Culture doesn’t grow itself; nurturing it is the only way to get through difficult change.

About the author

Adam Renshaw works as a Communications Lead within the UK Services business unit. His role focuses on landing key strategic messaging, sharing best practices, and celebrating business achievements. Adam’s passion for communications stems from his love of all things creative. When it comes to creating videos, storytelling or developing impactful digital designs, he just can’t get enough. Communications gives him the opportunity, quite often with a blank slate, to share his passion with other people.

The post 3 ways to help your employees adjust to change in the digital workplace appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Good communication is the difference between a speech so stirring you can’t help but believe, and an article you skim-read just to get to the end. It’s the difference between leading people on a journey and leaving a room full of scratched heads and blank faces. And it becomes even more crucial in the digital workplace.

Skilled communicators empower audiences, while poor communicators sow confusion.

And for some, it can be a tricky balancing act. How often have you had to ask, ‘Why isn’t that department aware of your project?’ Or overheard a colleague wonder out-loud, ‘How we can share and celebrate our latest completed project with the business?’

Unfortunately, as businesses grow, the challenge to be heard – all while employees are buffeted by workplace emails, IMs and other digital distractions – grows with it.

Working as Communications Lead for Microsoft Services UK, I align our vision to help everyone achieve more. That means ensuring my communications are clear, concise, and, above all, empowering. The right message has a major impact on peoples’ productivity and performance.

That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.

These are my five top tips for helping your communications rise above the noise in the digital workplace, so the next time you’re asked how best to share and celebrate your latest project, you’ll know exactly where to start.

5 ways to stand out in the digital workplace

1. Be bold, be different

I’m frequently asked how to help business communications stand out in the workplace. My first piece of advice is pretty straightforward: don’t be afraid to try something new. The status quo quickly becomes wallpaper, if it hasn’t already.

Take internal videos as an example.

Video consumption is on the rise both in our personal and working lives, so it makes perfect sense to use the medium as an opportunity to be heard – the value of a short, powerful video that can be watched by staff on the go is high. However, while there’s a place for a short piece to camera to get a message across, if you’re looking to win hearts and minds you’ll need to get creative and deliver an experience.

Entice the goose-bumps of your viewers by incorporating music. Film from different angles to create an emotional connection. Visit different environments. Involve different people in the process. Include bloopers.

You don’t need to be Spielberg, but if you’re willing to try something new, people will naturally stop and pay attention.

2. Know your audience

It’s impossible to stand out without understanding what makes your audience tick. Are they an email army or Yammer champs? 9-to-5 office lovers or flexible, on-the-road heroes?

Getting out and talking to people on a personal level about what they want to hear and how they want to hear it is an important first step, and one that has to be taken before you can think about how best to move on.

Of course, there will be lots of different ways people like to consume their information. With such a wealth of technology available, they’re spoilt for choice. The key is identifying themes that help employees achieve more without stepping over the line into spamming every method available.

3. Use channels for what they were designed for

Most people have logged into multiple platforms and seen the same message peppered across the screen. To be fair, I can understand the logic behind this – “if it’s on every channel, I can be sure employees are more likely to see it”.

In theory this might make sense, but in my experience it has the opposite effect; overloading a workforce with the same messages turns them off.

Have confidence in your digital channels, take advantage of the different technologies, and understand that everything has its place.

Use Teams for smaller collaborative projects where you need to share documents related to a specific goal or for instant messaging colleagues. Use Yammer to broadcast and share at large. Use email to bring together key messaging into aligned notes, so you deliver one note rather than twelve.

These are just examples of how you might decide to use your platforms, but it’s crucial to breed a culture whereby people know where to find different types of information. Don’t feel the need to litter every channel.

4. Speak like a human

When I say speak like a human, what I really mean is

drop the jargon, drop the acronyms; be conversational and be authentic. Nobody in the workplace has ever been inspired by the thought of a ‘2Q45NNCFPWU’. It’s just never happened.

A friend once asked me how I manage to take complex, technical messaging from stakeholders, then deliver it in a simple, understandable way to a wide audience who may never have come across the project (and now I’m writing this down, I’m starting to think I need to either get out more or get new friends…).

For me, it comes down to three ‘takeaways’:

When receiving your message, what is it that you want people to think, feel and do?

If you can nail those in a succinct, understandable, human way, then you’re well on the way to success.

5. Don’t lose sight of the fact that employees are people too

This may sound obvious, but it’s something I come across a lot. It’s easy to get so close to a project that you genuinely feel you should be sharing every detail with everyone you can.

You don’t.

Trust me when I say you can’t underestimate the value of taking a step back and remembering that in a busy digital workplace, you’re likely to only get a snippet of attention if your message isn’t directly related to your recipient’s working life.

It’s important to go high level – deliver key facts in an easily digestible way, and, honestly, if they want to know more people will ask, transforming a monologue into a conversation.

If I could leave you with one piece of advice for when it comes to your next opportunity to communicate with your colleagues, it would be this:

What would grab your attention? Figure out the answer and do it.

Find out more

Drive employee engagement in the digital workplace

Download the employee engagement guide

About the author

Adam Renshaw works as a Communications Lead within the UK Services business unit. His role focuses on landing key strategic messaging, sharing best practices, and celebrating business achievements. Adam’s passion for communications stems from his love of all things creative. When it comes to creating videos, storytelling or developing impactful digital designs, he just can’t get enough. Communications gives him the opportunity, quite often with a blank slate, to share his passion with other people.

The post 5 tips for standing out in a crowded digital workplace appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.