As we enter 2022, the UK is undergoing a staffing shortage crisis across several different industries. The government have advised the country to work from home wherever possible, forcing the majority of staff to work from their home offices, kitchens and bedrooms, once again.
For some businesses this will prove particularly troubling, as their IT systems will make their ability to pivot to hybrid working more difficult. Microsoft Office 365 makes flexible working a reality for businesses.
Microsoft Office 365 is renowned for its ability to give businesses more flexibility and freedom with the suite of applications within the Microsoft ecosystem all working together.
But, what can Microsoft Office 365 do for businesses? Allow Neuways to explain…
Collaborative Working
The Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem makes it simple for your business to remain operational from any location. By working within a shared environment, users can easily work on the same documents, spreadsheets and presentations together. This development allows departments to work successfully on projects simultaneously, even if they aren’t physically together in the office.
Distance can cause miscommunication, with the potential for colleagues to be working on different versions of the same document. But by using by Microsoft Office 365 apps, a team can be reassured that they are working as efficiently and collaboratively as possible.
Ease of Communication
This sense of collaboration is helped by how seamlessly businesses have transitioned to using Microsoft Teams throughout the pandemic. Teams gave departments a simple way to stay in contact with one another. Through group chat functions, colleagues can remain connected to one another with ease, which has helped to reduce the burden of working remotely – those employees who thrive upon working as part of a team can still have that connection with the rest of their colleagues, with video calls just a click away.
Additionally, as we have progressed through the various challenges of the pandemic, Microsoft has continued to update Teams with more useful features. Planner is one of the more recent additions. A simple, easy-to-use tool, Planner helps pull together departmental to-do lists, not only giving an entire team a way of tracking progress on different tasks and projects, but allowing for collaboration, with documents and notes easy to share and add to set jobs.
It’s all in the Cloud
But how is this possible, you might ask? Well, it’s simple: the Cloud. The Cloud has been long discussed for years within IT circles, but has really proven its worth over the last two years. With businesses forced to break away and work in several different locations, the Cloud has enabled the successful transition for hundreds of businesses.
Microsoft’s OneDrive provides a foundation for businesses to work with. It renders emailing attachments pointless and gives a centralised position for all of a business’ data and information to be saved to – no longer restricting a user to the files on their own office computer. In saving your files to OneDrive, you can access them anywhere using the browser or office app, as well as being able to easily share files. Microsoft consistently support the service with regular updates and security patches, making their ecosystem one of the safest available.
In Conclusion…
Of course, no one knows how we will escape the uncertainty that the pandemic has caused. There may well be further changes to the way we live our lives to come, with businesses having to be flexible in order to continue to safely operate. Without investing in an agile IT system, organisations are only setting themselves up to fail.
If you’re interested in exploring how Microsoft Office 365 can help bring flexible working to your business, contact the experts at Neuways today on 01283 753 333 or email hello@neuways.com.
