With COVID vaccines rolling out at an accelerated pace, businesses are scrambling to get organized for the ‘post-pandemic’ era. And while we’re trying to figure it out, a few things are certain. First of all, business travel will be curtailed for a variety of reasons, as documented in an insightful Wall Street Journal article, entitled, These Technologies Could Hold Back Business Travel Indefinitely. Second, resolution about where people will be spending most of their work time is still up in the air, but a complete return to the office remains unlikely, at least in the short term. Many companies are experimenting with flexible office arrangements, as has been documented recently in prominent press outlets like the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review, to name just a few.

Another certainty is that workers will face new collaboration and teamwork challenges in the post-pandemic era, regardless of whether they are working from home, from satellite or regional offices, or whether they are back in corporate office space. These challenges are the direct results of technological adjustments made during the COVID ‘work from home’ lockdowns, including the vastly expanded use of Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.” Note that Nadella said this a full year ago, in April 2020, when it seemed unlikely that we would still be in lockdown 12 months hence. As a result, we have seen a massive adoption of Microsoft Teams, going from 13 million users in July 2019, to 115 million users in October 2020.

Microsoft 365 Introduces New Challenges

Now that workers are using Microsoft 365 apps in earnest, they face two new challenges:

• Finding important business information is increasingly difficult as emails and documents are now spread across multiple Microsoft 365 apps, like Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.
• Getting help from colleagues in the context of working with customers, suppliers, and partners is more difficult. Workers can’t just step into a colleague’s office to ask for help answering an email request.

To help people use Microsoft 365 tools effectively to get work done in the new ‘post-pandemic’ reality, harmon.ie has recently published an ebook, entitled, Two Keys to Productivity in the Post-Pandemic Workplace. Read the ebook to learn about:

• Unique new collaboration challenges for remote work
• Finding information quickly in Microsoft 365
• Getting help from colleagues in real-time