Wow September already, this year is absolutely flying in – it will be Christmas before we know it! August as ever was largely dominated by the Inspire Roadshow for the Dicker Data Microsoft Team.

We have now worked our way from Invercargill to Whangarei and hit up many places in between! I’d just like to extend a huge thank you to our partners for attending and engaging during the roadshow, as well as for your continued support of Dicker Data. We couldn’t do what we do without our loyal partners, and it was tremendous to catch up with so many of you while we were on the road. We now head into the final few months of the year focused on closing out 2022 with a bang.

Since this is a Modern Workplace blog, this seems a good place to mention that from the 19th of September we’ll have a new Modern Workplace BDM joining us! This will fill the role that I had previously done and will offer a fantastic new resource for partners to lean on. More on our new hire next month….

 

For this month’s blog I thought I’d highlight another tremendous set of content for partners to leverage. This content is customer facing and can lead to some engaging conversations in terms of the ways that customers want to work under the hybrid working model.

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The WorkLab Guides are focused on enabling the hybrid workplace and the digital workforce, extending one of the primary themes of this year’s Microsoft Inspire. These (downloadable) guides provide a wide range of discussion or decision points for businesses that are looking to define how their business operates in a hybrid working world.

There are 4 Guides that are ready to be explored:

  • Make In-Person Time Count

  • Unlock Asynchronous Collaboration

  • Regain Work-Life Balance

  • Get Hybrid Meetings Right


All 4 guides address challenges that many businesses are currently facing, and they follow on from Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index Report. By utilising the data generate in the Work Trend Index Report, Microsoft have a clear understanding of these challenges and will typically have the tech & tools required to address them.

In the “How to Make In-Person Time Count” Guide, 5 use cases are covered that will provide businesses guidance on redefining what in-person time is for and making the most of in-person time together. This guide identifies things that Leaders, Managers & Individuals can do to address these use cases:

  • Team Building & Bonding

  • Re-establishing “Weak Ties”

  • Reconnecting People to Mission & Culture

  • 1:1 Connects

  • Brainstorming



I also thought there was some value in the 3 in-person experiments that businesses could try with their teams:

  • Two days in the office per week, with one “team” day optimized for team bonding, and one “people” day optimized for one-on-one connections between teammates and broader networks.

  • A team on-site day followed by a meeting-free workday or work block. This model can help people focus their on-site time on team building, collaboration, and connection since they know they’ll be able to catch up the day after.

  • Several on-site days, with in-person meetings built around core hours (say, 10 to 2) so that people can avoid rush hour and schedule their workday around school pickup and other commitments.

 

The “How to Unlock Asynchronous Collaboration” guide offers insights on how to collaborate effectively, regardless of whether you are in the same time zone or physical location as your collaborators.

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They offer helpful tips for making each of the 4 modes in the above diagram work:

  • Different Time, Different Place (Async, Apart)

  • Same Time, Different Place (Sync, Apart)

  • Same Time, Same Place (Sync, Together)

  • Different Time, Same Place (Async, Together)


This sort of framework is incredibly helpful to businesses and leaders to make the most effective use of time, both when employees are meeting in person or working remotely.

In the “How to Regain Work-Life Balance” guide Microsoft again break the tips or steps down into easily consumable chunks, this time identifying 5 things that leaders can do along with 4 steps individuals can take to ensure that the correct balance is struck between work & personal life.

 

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For leaders, the recommendations are:

  1. Create New Behavioural Norms

  2. Model Balanced Behaviour—and Use Timeboxing

  3. Empower Managers to Experiment

  4. Give People the Power to Prioritize

  5. Codify the New Norms and Best Practices—and Revisit Them as You Learn More

 

For individuals, the recommendations are:

  1. Embrace JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out

  2. Create Space Between Meetings

  3. Schedule Focus Time

  4. Use Commute Time to Shift Your Mindset

 

Each of the above leader & individual points goes into a lot of detail that I’d recommend reading through. There are learnings there that everyone should take note of to ensure the correct balance is struck.

The final guide is “How to Get Hybrid Meetings Right” and this pulls together a lot of the concepts that some of the other guides mention such as the work modes & making that in-person time count.

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With so many of us spending so much time of our work life in meetings, getting this right is essential to the success of hybrid working. I don’t want to commute for 1-2 hours each day just to sit in online meetings, while I think that in-person brainstorming is much more effective than attempting to do it online. Finding the right location for a particular meeting type certainly has an impact on the successful outcome of that meeting, and ensuring that the participants, regardless of location, can provide constructive input is key.

So many of the tools that are now available to us have been built with this in mind, so now it’s just about ensuring we are using those tools in the correct manner! These guides are a great place to start, particularly in terms of driving different types of discussions with your customers. I’m a big fan of talking about the cool stuff and modern ways of working and I usually find customers are too!

If you want to discuss different ways to approach these concepts with your customers, or to get a demo of some of the tools that can make these meetings or collaborations more effective, please contact the Dicker Data Microsoft Team today.