5 Ways to Enhance Employee Engagement with Microsoft Teams

Are you trying to find new ways to keep your employees engaged? With the increase of remote work, employee experience is now a concern for many companies. Organizations are looking to leverage technology to overcome the challenges of building an engaged workforce in the era of hybrid work environments.

Not surprisingly, most companies are now heavily utilizing enterprise tools like Microsoft Teams on a daily. Designed to help employees collaborate and communicate, Microsoft Teams is a powerful platform for strengthening employee engagement.

Every organization has their own unique company culture. These are unwritten guidelines, which dictate how people interact and carry themselves within the organization. Company culture is intangible and has become even more difficult to define or change as work-life becomes predominantly virtual.

Although approaching a significant change in culture may be overwhelming, implementing tactics to improve employee engagement are gradual steps in the right direction. Employee engagement can actually be measured through user data, surveys, and feedback, which make it more tangible than culture.

A company with engaged employees is 21% more productive, according to a Gallup survey, which contributes to reduced turnover. Not to mention, the cost of disengaged employees in the US alone is estimated at ~#550 billion per year.

Microsoft Teams usage has skyrocketed since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of daily active users has hit 145 million as of April 2021. More people are relying on Teams as their arsenal for everything work-related. This means, Teams is really where employees are communicating and collaborating the most during their workday, and the prime place for leaders to engage with their team.

If your employees are already on Microsoft Teams, here are 5 ways for you to enhance employee engagement:

1. Video Calls

With the rise of Microsoft Teams usage, this may be the most obvious feature to leverage in enhancing employee engagement. The video call capability in Teams, for many, may be the closest thing to in-person interaction.

Employees can easily overwork, or experience burn out when spending all day in front of the computer screen. Lacking triggers to take breaks, video calls allow employees to experience a more human element while working virtually. Face-to-face conversations via Teams creates a dynamic and collaborative environment in real-time.

Leaders can connect with employees regularly via Teams video call to gain a deeper understand of the overall employee experience.

2. Company-wide Live Events

It’s important to make people feel like they are a part of the team, even if they are miles away. Company-wide meetings, such as town halls, allow employees to experience work beyond their computer screens and feed into the energy of the entire company.

Microsoft Teams empowers organizations with the ability to host live events, virtually across the world to hundreds or thousands of employees at once. And to ensure that every employee gets a flawless video experience, Microsoft Live Events seamlessly integrates with Vbrick Universal eCDN to scale up network capabilities.

Large-scale video streaming can put a strain on the corporate network, but these events are necessary to engage with the greater team. To prevent poor video experience and overall network congestion, companies should adopt an eCDN that integrates with Microsoft Teams. This will ensure that your message is delivered perfectly to every employee across the network. A well-executed live event has the power to reinforce a shared sense of belonging among your workforce.

3. Live & On-Demand Training

Employee training can seem a bit daunting when it’s done completely online —lacking true human interaction. To keep your employees engaged with the learning materials, you can host live training sessions via Microsoft Live Events. Live Events is an extension of Microsoft Teams, which allows the host to lead interactions during the live stream, as well as share video and other content with a larger audience.

There are of course elements that will still differ greatly from in-person training and learning sessions, but Live Events enable hosts to deliver materials in a way that encourages participation. Live streams can also be recorded and available for employees to access on-demand shortly after the event has finished. This makes it easier for employees to stay present during the session, without worrying about missing important notes as they can always refer to VOD content.

4. Chat Groups

In a physical office, there are typically opportunities for people to engage in casual conversation and connect with others on topics other than work. However, working in a remote or hybrid workplace can highly reduce or eliminate the possibility of building those authentic connections.

With Microsoft Teams, chat groups can act as the place for these casual conversations. The chat function provides users with the ability to engage in 1-to-1 or group conversations. Chats can be created for work-related projects, interest-based groups, and etc.

Leaders should start or encourage the creation of interest-based chat groups to better engage with employees on a personal level. These chat groups can provide employees with a sense of connection and bond with co-workers in a virtual workspace. With both work and banter all in one place, this can help to mitigate burn out and support healthy employee engagement.

5. Channel Organization

Often users create channels for specific projects or task forces, but the channel feature can also help to improve the employee experience. From onboarding to company policies, to career development materials and more — providing employees with easy access to relevant information creates a more transparent work environment. This transparency means that employees can feel a sense of clarity and build a stronger connection with the organization.

Microsoft Teams may be a powerful tool for productivity, but there are various opportunities to elevate the overall employee experience via this platform. As video communication and virtual collaboration become the core of operations for many large enterprises, leaders will increasingly rely on platforms like Microsoft Teams to engage with their workforce.

Find out how to fully leverage Microsoft Teams with Vbrick Universal eCDN. Our team can help you ensure that your employee experience is as smooth as your enterprise video streaming. Contact us to learn more.