Working Remotely Using Microsoft Teams

With the current climate lots of organisations are looking to start working remotely and get onboarded with platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Slack as quickly as possible. Microsoft have released guidance on The top 9 ways Microsoft IT is enabling remote work for its employees.

Valto have been working remotely since we founded and have created best practices that can help your organisation get your users and departments working online effectively. We’ve put together our working remotely using Microsoft Teams best practices for you below to kick start your planning.

With the current climate lots of organisations are looking to start working remotely and get onboarded with platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Slack as quickly as possible. Valto have been working remotely since we founded and have created best practices that can help your organisation get your users and departments working online effectively. We’ve put together our working remotely using Microsoft Teams best practices for you below to kick start your planning.

Convert your departments way of working to Microsoft Teams

The first thing you should do with the departments is sit down and plan how they currently work in an office setting and how this could be achieved using Microsoft Teams. Examples of the process we go through during our “Microsoft Teams Department Mapping Workshop”:

• Daily Catch Up – Are you doing a daily stand up at the office at the moment? This can easily be created as a Microsoft Teams meeting at the start and end of the day. Create a brief agenda on the agenda of this call and keep it snappy. A perfect opportunity for people to catch up on the day, have a social chat and get into the mindset of working at home.
• Weekly Catch Up – Similar to the above but spending more time with the department and perhaps recording it for people that can’t attend to easily playback later.
• Replace Emails – Get into the mindset of replacing any internal emails with Microsoft Teams and define a policy to do so.
• External Meetings – Perhaps you frequently have face to face meetings with customers. With Microsoft Teams you can host a virtual meeting space with audio, web cams and screensharing. This service is very similar to third party software such as Webex or GoToMeeting.

Take breaks and try to be healthy

When working from home it can be difficult to stay healthy. It is very easy to raid the cupboards, be very inactive from your desk and work longer hours than usual. Promote your departments health and ensure they are being healthy while working from home with the following guidance:

• Taking regular breaks from the computer
• Consider whether catch up meetings can be held on the move during a walk or on a treadmill.
• Take a lunch break and use the opportunity to walk the dog

Valto promote the ideas of virtual coffee breaks throughout the day to catch up on how the day is going, have social chats with staff and ensure people feel that they feel part of the company and not isolated out of sight.

Use Microsoft Teams effectively

Another tip for using Microsoft Teams effectively is to ensure you are getting the most out of the platform.

• Create threads – Teams doesn’t work well if you are just creating new posts every time. Ensure you are using threads for topics to make it easy for people to navigate and browse Microsoft Teams channels.
• Use tagging for productive chats – Ensure you are tagging effectively! Use @Team when you require the whole team’s attention for important messages, use @User when you only require an individual or individuals and don’t use any tag if its for non-important information only.
• Manage your activity feed – Master your activity feed and mark posts you need to come back to as unread!

Valto can provide dedicated Microsoft Teams Training sessions for your organisation (Onsite or Remotely) and we are also hosting a Microsoft Teams Training online session for people to join and provide

Get the most out of Microsoft 365

As well as providing users Microsoft Teams as a platform for remote working consider whether there are any other tools that can help your team be more effective remotely.

• Using Planner & Microsoft To Do to plan your tasks – Both of these platforms are fantastic for task management and work well together. Simplify how your users manage their tasks and replace any white boards!
• Focus Assist in Windows 10 – If your users feel as if they are getting overloaded with notifications using Focus Assist the user can control how many notifications, they get using Focus Assist in Windows 10 and managing their notifications throughout the day. Perhaps inline with a technique such as “Pomdoro”.
• Files – If you’re files are still on a legacy File Server consider moving all of the files over to Microsoft Teams, OneDrive & SharePoint to enable users to easily work from home.
• Telephony – Microsoft 365 Business Voice is an addon to Microsoft Teams and a comprehensive all-in-one communication system designed for small and medium businesses

Promote Social & Fun communications

Finally, don’t overwhelm your employees with Microsoft Teams that’s for work only. Consider creating a company wide team for removing internal emails that are sent out for birthdays, charitable events, news and use new functionality such as Praise to highlight people who are doing a good job!

Building Effective Remote Departments Using Microsoft Teams

Watch the video (opens in a new tab)

The Complete Guide to Microsoft Teams Digital Workplace Remote Working

Download our free Teams remote working guide

The Microsoft Teams Remote Working Checklist Guide

We have also put together a handy remote working checklist guide using Microsoft Teams for free download.

Contact Us

We’ve deployed Microsoft Teams for many organisations including Banks, Non-Profit, Manufacturing and many more. Get in touch with our specialists today to start planning your Microsoft Teams journey. Our Valto Microsoft Teams Services can help your organisation or you can contact us here. You may find our Microsoft Teams Governance Whitepaper useful.