Talk Social To Me - Taking the leap to Microsoft Teams
When the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into lockdown, digital workplace consultancy Talk Social To Me (TSTM) took a leap and migrated its entire knowledge base to Microsoft Teams.
CEO Carrie Basham Marshall predicted the world would be working from home for some time, and if clients were about to suddenly jump into Teams for remote work, her company should too.
Previously, the TSTM team had been working on a variety of platforms including Workplace from Facebook, Yammer and G-Suite.
“We made the decision to make Teams our main collaboration hub some time ago, but at the very beginning of the COVID lockdown, we accelerated the execution and moved quickly,” Carrie said.
“We wanted to go through the pain of a fast migration internally so that we could share our best practices with clients who were about to do the same.”
Carrie Basham Marshall, CEO, Talk Social To Me.
SWOOP Analytics can confirm TSTM does indeed operate under best practice. In SWOOP’s 2021 benchmarking of almost 100,000 teams on Teams, TSTM had the fifth highest ranked team based on high productivity measures, and three teams in the top 0.1%.
The team ranked fifth overall in SWOOP’s 2021 Microsoft Teams Benchmarking was TSTM’s Company Operations team, the hub of TSTM’s internal work.
The team is broken up into eight channels, where day-to-day work happens, and all relevant files and templates are added to those channels.
“The Company Operations team is our command centre where, if information is not specific to a client, it lives in the most appropriate channel within this team,” Carrie said.
She uses the example of trying to find a template for a webinar presentation. In the past, colleagues would message each other in search of a particular template, asking if anyone could remember where it was filed. Now there is a channel where all the templates are shared, making it quicker and simpler for everyone to get their work done.
“A result of our strict information governance in Teams is that we no longer have to rely upon a person’s memory to find content,” Carrie said.
TSTM's Company Operations team on Teams.
A different team for every client
TSTM’s framework for using Teams is simple, yet effective.
A team is created for every client, and all work related to that client is done in the channels of that team. All internal work is done on the Company Operations team.
When TSTM migrated to Teams, it made the decision to also migrate all final deliverables given to clients and include those in the client-specific team, ensuring all work was searchable. All unfinished work was purged.
That meant the move to Teams also became a housekeeping exercise across the organisation, with a clear governance on when to create a new team – only for a new client or project.
Unlike many organisations, TSTM has been a 100 per cent virtual workplace since day one, when the company was formed back in 2013.
“For us, collaboration was a necessity from day one. We have never had the luxury of in-person meetings,” Carrie said.
“We’ve also migrated from tool to tool on purpose, many times.”
Carries explains a constant migration between tools is because TSTM wants to ensure it’s always working with the most relevant collaboration tools on the market to get work done, and it’s important to understand what it feels like to be an employee at one of its clients, using their tools of choice. While TSTM’s current hub is Teams, it still uses Yammer internally, and it uses a variety of tools with customers as well.
“Most clients we work with have a platform that they use consistently, so we find ourselves at TSTM switching between collaboration tools all day when we’re collaborating with customers,” Carrie said.
Working asynchronously – and making it work!
Almost all TSTM employees work in different time zones, and everyone’s work schedule is completely flexible.
Some choose to work at night when kids are asleep, others early in the morning or on weekends and some during traditional work hours.
“There’s a constant volleying of work across time zones,” Carrie said.
The TSTM team lets colleagues know when they’re needed with @mentions in Teams. For this to work for everyone, it’s also important to ensure notifications are switched off on your phone when you’re not working, to avoid work becoming invasive in your private life.
“We live and die by our notifications in Teams,” said Carrie.
“My colleagues and I have a very good practice of @mentioning each other at all times, even within a chat, because we have found that when you conduct the vast majority of your business in Teams, the number of messages can get overwhelming very, very quickly.”
TSTM CEO Carrie Basham Marshall presenting at a pre-COVID-19 event with SWOOP Analytics.
With the correct use of @mentioning by colleagues, Carrie’s notification list becomes her “to do” list.
“I start my day by looking at my notifications rather than browsing team by team for updates,” she said.
“I like to see where I’ve been targeted and where I need to focus first, and that all comes into the @mention practice that we have developed internally.
“For us, balancing work and life is critical to how we function as an effective group. If someone is choosing to get work done at 10pm her time, that’s great, but I may not want the notification my time, in the evening. We have a shared understanding that an @mention does not imply that you’re needed right away.
“That’s why we’ve each had to build our habits on where to check, based on knowing our colleagues are not working synchronously. We’re working asynchronously and we’re still targeting each other with information.”
Don’t be fooled – Teams is complicated
Carrie and her colleagues consider themselves to be power users of Teams, and yet they are the first to admit it’s a complicated beast.
“When you’re used to email, which is still the paradigm for most employees, you have to be a power user to get the most out of Teams,” Carrie said.
“This is a problem for most companies, since IT and other power users are likely setting up the architecture and training for your average employee. Teams is feature-rich, but very overwhelming, and there are many best practices to help with this, but most companies aren’t establishing those quite yet.”
Therefore, she said training for Teams needs to be based on people’s roles. For example, if you’re a people leader, you’ll use Teams differently than a frontline worker.
“There’s no one answer for everybody,” Carrie said.
“Because it’s so complicated, IT and others need to have better change management and better bespoke training available.”
Without training, Carrie has found people revert to chat, instead of using teams and channels, and; “all of your important knowledge now goes to chat to die”.
Hence, the importance of ensuring people are taught how to integrate Teams as a work flow platform rather than just a chat tool.
“It’s still really very early for Teams. In its most basic form, it’s good for calls, quick collaboration and chat, but that’s not what Microsoft is trying to do with Teams (and Viva),” Carrie said.
“They are trying to change how we behave and interact with people and information at work.”
If the future of the employee experience depends on effective adoption of Teams at scale, then every Microsoft customer needs to do more than simply treat Teams as the latest technology rollout, Carrie says.
“Show every employee how Teams can make their work life easier and more manageable,” she said.
