The modern experience in Microsoft SharePoint is designed to be compelling, flexible, and more performant. The modern experience makes it easier for anyone to create beautiful, dynamic sites and pages that are mobile-ready. But what are the differences between the classic and modern experiences, and how do you go about creating a modern experience for your organization? This guide is a starting point for people familiar with the classic experiences in SharePoint to help you learn about the modern experience and how you can begin to take advantage of it.
Information architecture and hub sites
Classic SharePoint architecture is typically built using a hierarchical system of site collections and subsites, with inherited navigation, permissions, and site designs. Once built, this structure can be inflexible and difficult to maintain. In the modern SharePoint experience, every site is a site collection and can be associated to a hub, which is a flat collection of sites that share navigation, branding, and other elements. This type of structure is far more flexible and adaptive to the changing needs of your organization. Learn about how to plan for Hub sites.
Navigation
The most effective SharePoint sites (and web sites in general) help visitors find what they need quickly so that they can use the information they find to make decisions, learn about what is going on, access the tools they need, or engage with colleagues to help solve a problem. The fundamental principles and good practices for site and page navigation are equally applicable to both classic and modern SharePoint architectures. However, your options for implementing navigation differ based on the framework for your sites and intranet. For example, the “inherited” navigation experiences available in classic SharePoint site hierarchies (sites with subsites) are not available in the modern experience, but hubs provide a great way to achieve the cross-site navigation features previously available in managed navigation and site hierarchies in classic SharePoint.
In the classic SharePoint experience, there is a set of default themes and site designs that can require a considerable amount of customization to get them to match your organization’s brand. Also, they aren’t very responsive, making the experience on different devices inconsistent. Most site branding requires the use of custom master pages or alternate CSS configurations. SharePoint includes an updated set of default site themes and site designs (or templates) that are responsive and look great on any device. With site themes, you can customize your site’s logo and colors to match your brand. You can also align the mobile SharePoint app for your users to match your company branding. Site designs provide specific layouts and other functionality for your site. Additional branding can be achieved using custom themes or site designs without worrying about something breaking when SharePoint is updated. To learn more about modern branding options, see Branding SharePoint sites in the modern experience.
Publishing
If you’ve implemented publishing sites or publishing-enabled sites in your organization, you know how important it is to create attractive and performant pages to distribute communication to a large number of people. In the modern experience, communication sites make it easy to create beautiful, dynamic, and performant sites and pages that are mobile-ready. There are differences from classic publishing, though, and things you’ll want to think about planning your move to the modern experience. For more info, see Moving from Publishing sites to Communication sites.
Search
Search is an important part of any site – you want people to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. SharePoint has both a classic and a modern search experience. Microsoft Search in SharePoint is the modern experience. The most visible difference is that the Microsoft Search box is placed at the top of SharePoint, in the header bar. Another difference is that Microsoft Search is personal and contextual. The results you see are different from what other people see, even when you search for the same words. You will also see different results based on where you are when you search. For example, searching at the root of your tenant looks across all of SharePoint. Searching from a hub finds content in all sites associated to the hub. Searching from an individual site finds content on that site. Searching from a list or library finds content in the list or library. You will also see results before you start typing in the search box, based on your previous activity and trending content in Microsoft 365, and the results update as you type. To learn more about the Microsoft Search experience for users, see Find what you need with Microsoft Search. There are other differences, especially around customization. To decide which experience your organization should use, see When to use which search experience.
Sharing and permissions
SharePoint continues to provide both SharePoint groups and security groups maintained by Azure Active Directory. Microsoft 365 also provides a third grouping option for SharePoint, Microsoft 365 groups. Microsoft 365 groups are similar to security groups, although Microsoft 365 groups include many additional benefits. Microsoft 365 groups are provided a group email address and additional tools such as a group calendar, notebook, Planner, and a SharePoint Team site. Users assigned to a Microsoft 365 group may also be classified as either a group owner or a group member, in comparison to security groups where all group members have equal access under the group. To learn about the differences, benefits, and best practices for permissions and sharing in the modern experience, see Sharing and permissions in the SharePoint modern experience.
Performance
The modern experience in SharePoint is designed to be compelling, flexible and – importantly – more performant. Both SharePoint performance as a whole and the performance of individual SharePoint components such as search, lists, and document libraries are affected by many factors, all of which contribute to the decisive performance metric: perceived end-user latency, or the speed with which pages are rendered in the client browser. For more info, see Performance in the modern SharePoint experience.
Multilingual
Classic SharePoint publishing sites can use a feature called variations to create a site that supports multiple languages. Modern communication sites leverage a multilingual experience to make content in your intranet sites available in multiple languages. User interface elements like site navigation, site title, and site description can be shown in the user’s preferred language. Additionally, you can provide pages and news posts on communication sites that you translate and that are shown in the user’s preferred language. One of the most important differences in the modern experience is that, unlike the variations feature, which creates a separate subsite for each language, the modern multilingual experience creates a corresponding page in the same site, but in a language-specific folder in the Site Pages library. To learn more, see Create modern multilingual communication sites, pages, and news.
Το LinkedIn OutReach είναι μια στοχευμένη στρατηγική προσέγγισης νέου κοινού στο LinkedIn, το οποίο ενδιαφέρεται για τα προϊόντα και τις υπηρεσίες που μπορεί να προσφέρει η εκάστοτε εταιρεία. Με απλά λόγια, ένα LinkedIn OutReach Plan έχει στόχο να παρουσιάσει την εταιρεία σε ένα δυνητικό πελατολόγιο με σκοπό να δημιουργήσει leads.
Γιατί όμως να Χρησιμοποιήσουμε το LinkedIn;
1. Το κοινό που βρίσκεται στο LinkedIn: Το LinkedIn διαθέτει πάνω από 750 εκατομμύρια επαγγελματίες με το 4/5 να είναι decision makers. Καθώς το LinkedIn είναι ένα πλήρως επιχειρηματικό κανάλι, οι χρήστες το επισκέπτονται για να δικτυωθούν, να βελτιώσουν την καριέρα τους και να ενημερωθούν για τις εξελίξεις γύρω από τον κλάδο τους. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι η στόχευση γίνεται σε ένα κοινό το οποίο είναι ανοικτό να ακούσει και να αλληλεπιδράσει. 2. Το περιβάλλον της πλατφόρμας: Ο αλγόριθμος του LinkedIn προωθεί την αλληλεπίδραση και θέλει το κοινό του να δημιουργεί, να επικοινωνεί και να προβάλλεται. 3. Τα εργαλεία: Το LinkedIn περιέχει τα κατάλληλα εργαλεία όπως το Sales Navigator και τη διαφημιστική τους πλατφόρμα, για να βοηθήσει τις επιχειρήσεις: να βρουν τους κατάλληλους δυνητικούς πελάτες, να διαδράσουν μαζί τους και τέλος να τους μετατρέψουν σε πελάτες.
Σε ποιους απευθύνεται;
Όπως προαναφέρθηκε, το LinkedIn OutReach Plan για Lead Generation απευθύνεται σε όλους όσους θέλουν να βρουν στοχευμένα leads. Για την ορθή και βέλτιστη λειτουργία ενός OutReach Plan είναι σημαντικό να εξετάσουμε τις ανάγκες της εταιρείας μας, καθώς και το στάδιο το οποίο βρίσκεται το δυνητικό της πελατολόγιο στο conversion funnel. Οι ενέργειες που θα ακολουθήσουμε, βασίζονται στη δημιουργία επαφής και σχέσης με τον δυνητικό πελάτη με τελικό στόχο τη δημιουργία του lead.
LinkedIn OutReach Strategy:
Η δημιουργία στρατηγικής για ένα LinkedIn OutReach Plan για Lead Generation περιλαμβάνει 5+1 βήματα.
Step1 – Προσδιορισμός του κοινού στόχευσης.
Ο προσδιορισμός του κοινού στόχευσης αποτελεί βασικό βήμα κάθε marketing στρατηγικής, και είναι εξίσου σημαντικό για τη δημιουργία ενός LinkedIn OutReach Plan. Φανταστείτε τον προσδιορισμό του κοινού ως ένα χωνί, το οποίο όσα πιο πολλά χαρακτηριστικά προσθέτουμε τόσο πιο μικρό και συγκεκριμένο γίνεται.
Step 2 – Δημιουργία ή βελτιστοποίηση του ήδη υπάρχοντος Linkedin Profile
Για την ολοκλήρωση του OutReach Plan είναι πρωταρχικός στόχος να βελτιστοποιήσουμε το profile ενός ή περισσότερων εργαζομένων με σκοπό να τρέξουμε την συγκεκριμένη ενέργεια μέσα από το profile τους. Όσο πιο ενεργό και βελτιστοποιημένο είναι ένα προφίλ τόσο πιο αξιόλογο φαίνεται στον δυνητικό πελάτη.
Ένα άλλο μέτρο αξιολόγησης μας από την πλευρά του πελάτη είναι και η σελίδα μας στο Linkedin, η οποία πρέπει να αναδεικνύει όλο το φάσμα των υπηρεσιών και των προϊόντων που θέλουμε να προωθήσουμε. Πολύ σημαντικό στο στάδιο αυτό είναι να τρέξουμε την ενέργεια αυτήν μέσα από profile υπάρχοντος ατόμου και όχι από την σελίδα της εταιρείας ώστε να φαινόμαστε πιο άμεσοι και προσιτοί προς τους δυνητικούς μας πελάτες.
Τέλος, είναι σημαντικό οι κύριοι εργαζόμενοι της εταιρείας να έχουν ένα βελτιστοποιημένο profile που να αναδεικνύει την θέση τους στην εταιρεία καθώς λειτουργούν ως ambassador της.
Το LinkedIn Sales Navigator, επιτρέπει την αναζήτηση χρηστών του LinkedIn με βάση τα χαρακτηριστικά των profile των δυνητικών πελατών που θέλουμε να στοχεύσουμε. Επιτρέπει την εύρεση κοινού με εξειδικευμένα χαρακτηριστικά που αφορούν τον κλάδο, την εταιρεία, την θέση & την εμπειρία του δυνητικού πελάτη.
Η αποστολή του Connect Request πρέπει να συνοδεύεται με ένα προσωποποιημένο -όσο γίνεται-μήνυμα. Συχνά τα προκαθορισμένα μηνύματα παραβλέπονται και θεωρούνται spam επειδή γίνεται πολύ συχνή χρήση τους.
Με την αποστολή του Connect Request είναι καλό να εξάγουμε και να διατηρούμε τα προσωπικά στοιχεία των χρηστών που προσεγγίσαμε, με σκοπό να τους επαναπροσεγγίσουμε και να τους περάσουμε στην βάση του CRM μας.
Step 4 – Αποστολή μηνύματος ή σειράς μηνυμάτων
Αφότου γίνει η αποδοχή του αιτήματος, μπορούμε είτε να περάσουμε σε προσωπική επαφή με τον κάθε χρήστη είτε αν θέλουμε να ζεστάνουμε κι άλλο το lead να ακολουθήσουμε μια σειρά αυτοματοποιημένων μηνυμάτων. Είναι σημαντικό να γίνεται επίβλεψη των μηνυμάτων και να περνάμε σε manual επικοινωνία με τον πελάτη ο οποίος ανταποκρίνεται στα μηνύματα μας και πιθανό να είναι έτοιμος για συνάντηση.
Step 5 – Φιλτράρισμα των Leads
To φιλτράρισμα και ο διαχωρισμός των leads είναι εξαιρετικά σημαντικός για την σωστή διαχείριση του όγκου των χρηστών που θέλουμε να προσεγγίσουμε.
Προτεινόμενος τρόπος διαχωρισμού: 1. Cold leads: Το σύνολο των ατόμων από την έρευνα στο Sales Navigator 2. Follow up Leads: Το σύνολο των ατόμων που έχουν κάνει αποδοχή στο αίτημα connect αλλά δεν έχουν απαντήσει στα μηνύματα μας ή το σύνολο των ατόμων που μας έχει απαντήσει ότι δεν ενδιαφέρεται αυτήν την στιγμή. 3. Hot Leads: Το σύνολο των ατόμων που έχουν δείξει ενδιαφέρον για τα προϊόντα ή την υπηρεσία μας και θέλουν να γίνει συνάντηση
Step 6 – Αποστολή Emails σε Cold Leads
Αν και προαιρετικό, σκοπός μας σε αυτό το βήμα είναι η επαναπροσέγγιση του κοινού που δεν μας έχει απαντήσει. Οι λόγοι που μπορεί να μην μας έχει απαντήσει, ποικίλουν και για αυτό, περνάμε σε μια δεύτερη προσπάθεια, εκτός του Linkedin με σκοπό να πάρουμε το Lead.
Ένα OutReach Plan είναι πολλά παραπάνω από έξι βήματα, μια συχνότητα μηνυμάτων, και μερικά Newsletter.
Για την σωστή υλοποίηση ενός OutReach Plan χρειάζονται:
1. Μια ολοκληρωμένη Στρατηγική προσέγγισης του σωστού κοινού. 2. Η χρήση automation tools, για την αυτοματοποίηση της αποστολής των διαφόρων μηνυμάτων, την εξαγωγή στοιχείων επικοινωνίας και την ενημέρωση του CRM. 3. Σωστή βελτιστοποίηση του Profile και άριστη γνώση του Linkedin, με σκοπό την αποφυγή του μαρκαρίσματος ως spam από την ίδια την πλατφόρμα και κλείσιμο του profile οριστικά. 4. Συνεχής επίβλεψη, με σκοπό την αποφυγή αυτοματοποιημένων μηνυμάτων σε χρήστες έτοιμους για συνάντηση ή σε χρήστες που θέλουν περισσότερες πληροφορίες. 5. Δημιουργία στρατηγικής για αποστολή Newsletter σε Cold Emails, με σκοπό την αποφυγή του μαρκαρίσματος ως spam.
Το Linkedin έχει επιτρέψει σε εκατομμύρια εταιρίες να αναπτύξουν το πελατολόγιο τους. Ανακάλυψε και εσύ, πως μπορεί να επωφεληθεί η δικιά σου εταιρεία από ένα Linkedin OutReach Plan με σκοπό να αποκτήσει νέα Leads.
Introduction Even before the global pandemic introduced new security challenges to organisations, CISOs were dealing with a complex security landscape. Technology stacks for security have evolved into a jumbled mix of point solutions as security teams address multiple threat types from a variety of endpoints, apps, services and networks. As CISOs pivot to prioritise around post-COVID-19 security strategies, it’s a good time to revisit ways to streamline and strengthen security environments. Rather than cobbling together individual point solutions, consider a more integrated approach that provides comprehensive protection and enhanced capabilities for today’s workers, with tools that take advantage of intelligence and automation capabilities to simplify management and reduce risk.
Deliver unified end-user experiences for greater security Consolidate security with a more cost-effective solution Reduce cyber risk with integrated, best-in-class protection
How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 4 As the security landscape evolves, with new threats cropping up almost daily, security teams face a heavy burden to keep pace. In some cases, technology has added to the challenge instead of mitigating it. A complex mix of siloed, single-point security solutions are time-consuming to deploy and inevitably lead to a patchwork of consoles and reports that are difficult to monitor and manage across the enterprise.
In a study by Forrester Consulting, 59% of organisations acknowledged the challenge of correlating security alerts from disparate technologies to detect threats. “Reducing the number of disparate security point solutions that must interact with each other – particularly older, legacy ones – brings complexity down to a manageable level,” the study notes.¹
In addition to reducing complexity, a consolidated solution can improve your overall security posture by filling gaps created by a lack of integration across the technology stack. For example, a separate study by Forrester Consulting found that organisations deploying Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P2, which provides a holistic, integrated approach to security, reduced the likelihood of a security breach by 60% and decreased the time required for investigation and remediation of security incidents by 89%. Consolidate security with a more costeffective solution ¹‘Security Through Simplicity,’ Forrester Consulting, December 2018. How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 5 60% decrease in time required for investigation and remediation of security incidents 89% reduction in the likelihood of a security breach Another benefit of vendor consolidation is improved cost management – a critical consideration in these extraordinary times, when every penny counts. In a recent study by CIO, 75% of IT leaders expect IT budgets to remain flat or decrease in the next 12 months and 45% expect to be spending more time on cost control and expense management in the months ahead. “We recognised the best-in-suite value of Microsoft 365 E5 not just from a security perspective.… We realised we could get everything we needed with one licence. If we had used separate vendors, it would absolutely have cost more, in addition to the complexity of managing multiple products and contracts.” Customer perspective – Doug Howell, Director of IT, The Little Potato Company
How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 6 Deliver unified enduser experiences forgreater security
CISOs have long known that security is only as strong as individual users across the organisation. More than two-thirds (68%) of organisations in a recent survey by Cybersecurity Insiders believe they are vulnerable to insider attack and less than half (42%) said their ability to monitor, detect and respond to insider threats is very or extremely effective.
Insider risk includes the unintentional leaks that may occur due to overly complex security tools and policies. The shift to remote work makes it imperative to provide easy-to-use tools for securely accessing data, apps and systems from any location. Modern security tools provide strong, secure access to applications while removing the traditional friction points that can inhibit productivity. A seamless single sign-on experience provides quick access from anywhere to the dozens of applications users need daily to perform their job duties. And it can save users an average of 10 minutes per week and save the organisation USD 2.9 million annually, according to Forrester Consulting. of organisations in a recent survey by Cybersecurity Insiders believe they are vulnerable to insider attack said their ability to monitor, detect and respond to insider threats is very or extremely effective.
68% 42%
How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 7 Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) is one proven method to address the dreaded password reuse issue. It’s well known that users often reuse passwords across multiple accounts, which flies in the face of good security hygiene and also puts an organisation at greater risk of a security breach. Passwords were tied to 80% of breaches in 2019, according to the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.
Another option that’s gaining favour is to remove the password entirely. Passwordless methods such as Microsoft Authenticator, Windows Hello and FIDO2 security keys provide a simpler and more secure authentication experience across the web and on mobile devices. Based on the FIDO2 standard, these methods enable remote users to authenticate easily and securely without requiring a password. Windows Hello uses biometrics, providing a convenient option that is three times faster than using a password. MFA and passwordless access are just two examples that represent a broader shift from perimiter-based defence to identity-based management and a Zero Trust security model. Using identity as the control plane lets organisations treat every access request as untrusted until the user and device are fully verified. “If you make security hard, people may work around it. With Microsoft 365, we get native capabilities, visibility into our operational environment and simplicity for all employees.”
Customer perspective – Simon Hodgkinson, Group Chief Information Security Officer, BP How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 8 80% of breaches in 2019were tied to passwords
How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 9 Reduce cyber risk with integrated, bestin-class protection
Poor security posture is often rooted in complexity. Security teams have historically struggled to keep up with threats and signals across a patchwork of poorly integrated solutions that fail to cover the breadth of workloads, clouds and devices that businesses run on. A consolidated tool set can improve your organisation’s overall security posture by reducing complexity and integrating protection across the enterprise. An integrated solution will also help security teams more effectively deploy and leverage automation and AI technologies to further improve protection.
Automation is critical for modern threat protection, in part because it can help correlate, consolidate and analyse an often-unwieldy volume of alerts for anomalous behaviour, particularly now that much of the workforce is outside the office. For example, the AI and automation capabilities in Microsoft 365 Defender reduce alert triage and correlation by 50× on average, empowering teams to more quickly detect and respond to threats.
The cloud has given rise to a new generation of modern security tools that simplify the defender experience by combining signals and automating responses to catch threats that would otherwise go unchecked. The most important emerging tools are cloudnative Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Most vendors only offer one or the other. How a consolidated security stack can reduce your risks and costs 10 Microsoft offers a unique approach that empowers security professionals with both cloud-native SIEM and XDR tools from a single vendor. This brings a new level of integration that gives defenders the best of both worlds: end-to-end visibility across all of their resources and intelligent alerts built with a deep understanding of individual resources, enhanced with human and machine intelligence. Microsoft 365 Defender provides best-in-class real-world detection according to a MITRE ATT&CK evaluation, which found that the Microsoft solution provides: Microsoft SIEM and XDR solutions can help reduce ‘alert fatigue’ significantly – as much as 90% in some Microsoft evaluations.
Nearly 100% complete coverage across emails and docs, endpoints, identities and apps across kill-chain stages.
Leading out-of-box visibility into attacker activities to dramatically reduce manual work for the security operations centre.
“Going with a best-of-platform security approach from Microsoft was the right choice because of the rapid innovation across the platform.” Customer perspective – Erik Passchier, Global Head of IT Infrastructure, Rabobank
Microsoft Office 365, propelled in 2011, is a finished bundle of uses and administrations, which is right now being utilized by more than 155 million individuals all around the world. It is a cloud-based model and gives the clients a variety of features which will help support your business profitability. Read on to find out more about the comparison between Microsoft 365 Business vs Enterprise.
Introduction to Microsoft 365 Business
Microsoft Office 365 Subscription offers various types of pricing plans. Even though the basic features remain the same, there are some differences that can make a difference in the way you work.
Recently, Microsoft has changed the naming conventions for its Office 365 Business plans and now they are called Microsoft 365 Business.
Following are a couple of highlights which separate the two:
a. Mail Storage Limit for different Microsoft Office Online Plans
With regards to email storage, Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Enterprise have much more to offer than Microsoft Business. The Microsoft 365 / Office 365 Enterprise give their clients access to a bigger Exchange Online post box size of 100 GB and boundless stockpiling as an archive mailbox, when contrasted with the Business which offers a capacity of 50 GB.
b. On-Premise CAL Rights Equivalency to Office 365
OneDrive storage limit is another difference which differentiates the two families of Microsoft Plans. The Enterprise family offers unlimited while the Microsoft Business Premium maxs out at 1TB of cloud storage.
c. Sharepoint Plans
Microsoft Business Family provision Sharepoint Plan 1 at max while the Enterprise Family do come with the option of SP Plan 2
d. On-Premise CAL Rights Equivalency to Office 365
Another significant contrast between the Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business is the on-premise CAL (Client Access License) rights. Microsoft Enterprise gives its clients the ECAL Suite which gives them the right to use On-Premises Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, Windows, and so on.
e. Business Intelligence and Analytics
Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Enterprise accompanies a wide scope of Intelligence and Analytics apparatuses which are not offered in Microsoft Business. The Enterprise provide services like Advanced Excel, Delve Analytics, and Power BI Pro, which help the clients perform systematic errands and picture information on one stage.
Thus, Microsoft Enterprise can be useful for any organization engaged with performing significant level explanatory tasks.
f. Security and Compliance
Microsoft/Office 365 Plans for Enterprise offer very vast features in Security and Compliance and Advance Threat Protection sections as compared to Business plans which would prove saving an organization from huge losses and great productivity without compromising over security. Things like Advanced Threat Protection, Desktop Analytics, Device Guard & Creds Guard, Cloud App Security and Endpoint Configuration Manager (Device Management Solution) for the devices securing from unauthorized office apps & device access, generated reports of security for desktop devices and cloud apps, blocking anonymous codes from running on desktop devices for automated real-time security from malware, viruses etc. would prove very efficient solutions for your company security.
When we talk about the security and features of Azure Active Directory, Business Family only supports upto Azure AD Premium Plan 1 while the Enterprise do come with the option of Azure AD Pl
Any organization with very sensitive data that’d not like to miss out any Security and Compliance and Advanced Threat Protection features for tightening the security of environment and not ready to comprise the loss of critical data should opt for the Enterprise.
g. PSTN Calling Capabilities
Microsoft & Office 365 Subscription for Enterprise may come with Phone System license by default and one wouldn’t need to buy an add on for it which is required to make PSTN phone calls. Business plans may be brought together with Phone System using add on, but the Phone System isn’t already built into the plans.
Any organization looking for some productive apps, very tight security and PSTN calling capabilities in one bundle should always opt for the Enterprise one.
The essential contrast between the Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft Business is the quantity of users advertised. Microsoft Business can be utilized and imparted to up to 300 users, though Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans can be imparted to a boundless number of users.
Henceforth, the Business Subscription is an answer intended for little and developing business, though the Enterprise plan is fitting for bigger firms.
A significant contrast which each business will consider before buying Microsoft is the expense of the two. While the fundamental highlights in both Microsoft 365 Business vs Enterprise continue as before, the previous one comes at a lower cost.
The base cost for the Business plan ranges from $5 to $20, while the Enterprise features come at a more significant expense going from $8 to $57.
Along these lines, for any individual who wishes to utilize only the fundamental feature of Microsoft, the Business plan would be the correct alternative.
Microsoft 365 Business
Microsoft 365 Enterprise
Max Mail Storage: 50 GBOn-Premise CAL Rights: NoneBusiness Intelligence and Analytics: None Max Users Count: 300Cost Range: $5-$20Flavors: Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Max Mail Storage: 100 GBOn-Premise CAL Rights: PermittedBusiness Intelligence and Analytics: Permitted Max Users Count: UnlimitedCost Range: $8-$57Flavors: Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, F3, E3 and E5 & Office E1, E3 and E5
You can find the comparison between the different Microsoft 365 Business flavors, the comparison between various Microsoft 365 Enterprise Plans, and that for different Office 365 Enterprise Plans in these articles. Of course, if you feel indecisive, our consultants would love to help you choose the right plan – often offering additional discounts and promotions based on number of users. Who doesn’t like discounts, right? Just book a meeting with us and let us help you get started!
When teams need to spend time looking for resources, wait for other people to get back to them or try to knit together information from different software or devices, projects end up running late. Team members rush to meet deadlines making it almost impossible to do their best creative work.
But isn’t working in a team supposed to make you more efficient—not less? That’s the idea, but you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t always work out that way.
Have you ever found yourself saying, “Who has the latest version of that market analysis? I know it’s been updated, so how come the only one I can find is months old?” or “It’s taking too long to get feedback on the budget from the team; we’re running out of time!”
We heard you and created Microsoft Teams—the chat-based workspace in Office 365—so you can get all the creative benefits of teamwork and free your teams from these productivity sinkholes.
Find what you’re looking for—instantly
One of the biggest time-wasters for teams is looking for content, tools, contacts and conversation threads. Imagine how much more effective everyone would be if they had instant access to everything they need—right in Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Teams uses powerful, integrated search capabilities and built-in access to SharePoint, OneNote and Planner, so team members can find what they’re looking for—instantly. Because every document shared in Microsoft Teams is saved to the cloud, team members work from the latest version—no searching.
Get that feedback
Team members often get stuck in a holding pattern because they’re waiting for the feedback and sign-off to drive a project forward. They try to set up conference calls, but to-and-fro scheduling burns up time. Even when they finally do get on a call, make edits to project documents and send out the revised versions, they’re often stuck waiting again for sign-off.
All that changes when they can quickly start a team, private chat or online meeting with decision-makers and collaborate on shared files to secure approval right away. Integrated notifications plus side-by-side chat while viewing a document enables on-the-spot editing and finalizing of materials.
Get Microsoft Teams for free
That’s right, free. As in $0. Work together with features like chat, file sharing, and video calling.Get started for free
Bring relevant information into Microsoft Teams
Team members can tailor workspaces with the specialized content and apps they need every day. For example, using Microsoft Teams, they can add tabs like a Word document or Power BI dashboard to provide quick access or take quick action with bots. Add apps like Jira or Trello to bring relevant information into your hub for teamwork.
You can do all this with built-in security and compliance features, including data encryption and multi-factor authentication for enhanced identity protection.
And now for the best part about teamwork
Microsoft Teams lets you fully embrace the upside of teamwork—frictionless sharing that makes good ideas exceptional. Seize the potential for dramatic innovation by supporting a collaborative culture, and your enterprise can:
Widen the ideation pipeline.
Accelerate time to market.
Deliver higher-quality products and new customer experiences.
The pandemic has dramatically accelerated the role of technology as a core enabler for hybrid work, and developers are at the heart of this transformation. Last Microsoft Build, we introduced collaborative apps, a new app pattern designed to bring people, processes, and data together to help users thrive in the hybrid workplace. Just like mobile devices completely transformed how people consume software, collaborative apps are transforming how people in every organization work together.
With more than 270 million monthly active users, Microsoft Teams offers developers an unmatched opportunity to build collaborative apps. Since the beginning of 2020, monthly active users of custom-built or third-party apps in Teams have grown more than tenfold. There are more than 1,400 Teams apps, with more and more independent software vendors (ISVs) generating millions in annual revenue from customers using their apps built on Teams and Microsoft 365 services. Looking ahead, we expect emerging technologies that bring the digital and physical worlds together, like Microsoft Mesh for Teams, to open new engaging possibilities for collaborative experiences on Teams.
This year at Build 2022, we are sharing several enhancements and new capabilities for developers building collaborative apps for Teams and Microsoft 365. Watch my keynote with Charles Lamanna, Innovate with collaborative apps and low code, to view the highlights. Read on to get a full recap of our Build announcements, which are organized here in three sections: new ways to help you delight your users with rich collaborative experiences, scale your productivity and grow user engagement, and monetize your apps. We can’t wait to see what you will build with these innovations!
Delight users with rich collaborative experiences
Introducing Live Share: Interactive app experiences in Teams meetings
We are introducing Live Share, a capability for your apps to go beyond passive screen sharing and enable participants to co-watch, co-edit, co-create, and more in Teams meetings. Developers can use new preview extensions to the Teams SDK to easily extend existing Teams apps and create Live Share experiences in meetings. Live Share is backed by the power of Fluid Framework, which supports sophisticated synchronization of state, media, and control actions with only front-end development. This synchronization will run on Teams hosted and managed Microsoft Azure Fluid Relay service instance—at no cost to you. Our early partners building Live Share experiences include Frame.io, Hexagon, Skillsoft, MakeCode, Accenture, Parabol, and Breakthru. Watch our Live Share on-demand session and try out the new Teams SDK extensions.
Figure 1. Hexagon Live Share prototype enables engineers to annotate and edit 3D models and simulations, while they brainstorm together in Teams meetings.
Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay general availability
Fluid Framework is a collection of open-source, client-side JavaScript libraries that underpin the Live Share real-time collaboration capabilities. Azure Fluid Relay is a fully managed cloud service that supports Fluid Framework Clients. Developers are using Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay to enable real-time interactivity on their apps beyond Microsoft Teams meetings. Fluid Framework, the Azure Fluid Relay service, and the corresponding Azure Fluid client-side SDK will be ready for production scenarios and available in mid-2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs for updates. Watch the on-demand session to learn more about building collaborative web apps with Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay.
Create Loop components by updating Adaptive Cards
Microsoft Loop components are live, actionable units of productivity that stay in sync and move freely across Microsoft 365 apps starting with Teams chat and Microsoft Outlook. Today, we are announcing the ability for developers to create Loop components. Now you can easily evolve an existing Adaptive Card into a Loop component or create a new Adaptive Card-based Loop component. Additionally, Adaptive Card-based Loop components can be surfaced with Editor using Context IQ, our set of intelligent capabilities working in the background of Microsoft apps and services, to stay directly in the flow of composing an email. Zoho Projects is using these Adaptive Card-based Loop components to help its customers improve incident response times, reduce outage durations, and improve overall performance against service-level agreements (SLAs), by enabling users to complete these tasks across Teams and Outlook. Zoho Projects and ServiceDesk Plus Cloud are among the first products integrated with Microsoft 365 apps to implement Microsoft Loop. Developer private preview for this capability starts in June 2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs or follow us on Twitter @Microsoft365Dev for updates.
Figure 2. Zoho Projects is extending adaptive cards to be live, actionable Loop components that work across Teams and Outlook.
Introducing Microsoft Azure Communication Services sample app builder
Microsoft Azure Communication Services interoperability with Teams enables you to create experiences that support seamless communications between customers on any custom app or website and employees working in Teams. For example, Teladoc Health built the first-of-its-kind custom fully integrated clinical and administrative virtual healthcare solution that allows care team collaboration and access to relevant clinical data directly within Teams, and the ability to seamlessly deliver virtual care to patients who join from a custom app.
Figure 3. Teladoc Health is enabling care providers to work and connect from Teams while patients join from a custom app built using Azure Communication Services.
Today, we are introducing the Azure Communication Services sample app builder, enabling developers to easily build and deploy a sample application for virtual appointments in just a few minutes, with no coding needed. Through the sample app, customers can book appointments powered by Microsoft Bookings and join a Teams meeting through a custom web app with a company-branded experience, while staff use Teams to join scheduled appointments. The sample app is fully open source and developers can tap into the code for more customization. Visit Github to learn more.
Microsoft Graph API enhancements to embed chats and channel messages into your apps
Microsoft Graph chat APIs enable developers to embed Teams chats into their applications, enabling their users to collaborate seamlessly without having to switch back and forth across apps. We are introducing several new APIs in preview with capabilities such as enabling chats with federated users (like users outside your tenant), identifying which messages are read and unread by the current user, and subscribing to user chats and membership changes. These new APIs will be generally available in mid-2022. Visit our chat message resource type docs page and view the on-demand session to learn more.
SharePoint Framework and Microsoft Viva Connections
SharePoint is the most flexible content collaboration platform powering experiences across Microsoft 365. SharePoint Framework now lets you create parts and pages in SharePoint sites, Teams apps, and more. It is at the center of our extensibility capabilities for the new Microsoft Viva Connections employee experience platform. Check out the how-to session on building tailored employee experiences for Viva Connections that directly integrate with Teams apps.
Figure 4. A sample Microsoft Viva Connections app running in both Teams and on a mobile device.
Approvals extensibility
Approvals in Microsoft Teams help everyone—from frontline workers to office workers—to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly in the flow of work. We are introducing create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) APIs for Approvals. Developers can use the Approvals APIs to enable approvals within line of business apps and use webhooks to track changes and drive workflows with Approvals in Teams. The Approvals APIs will be available for preview in mid-2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs for updates. View the on-demand session to learn more.
Scale developer productivity
Build once and deploy anywhere across Teams and Microsoft 365
Today, we are announcing the general availability of the new Teams SDK that enables you to build apps for Teams, Outlook, and Office using a single application and deployment model and build collaborative apps that make use of the capabilities relevant to each product. Developers can now upgrade to the latest Teams JS SDK v2 and App manifest v1.13 to build production Teams apps, and run full-scale pilots with users on the preview channels of Outlook and Office. This will enable developers to get feedback and prepare for the distribution of their apps on Outlook and Office later this calendar year.
These updates are backward compatible so all your existing Teams apps will continue to work as-is in Teams with production-level support. Our Teams developer experience including our Microsoft Teams Developer Documentation, tooling, support, and code repository has been updated to support extended apps. You will be able to distribute both single-tenant and multi-tenant apps using existing Teams experiences. To learn more, check out our on-demand session about extending Teams apps across Microsoft 365.
Figure 5. MURAL is extending its Teams app’s personal tabs and search-based message extensions to other Microsoft host apps.
MURAL is among the early partners bringing the connected experience across Teams, Outlook, and Office to life with their apps, like the example above showing a search-based message extension inserting a MURAL directly into the Outlook message as an interactive Adaptive Card. In addition to MURAL, several other partners, including Adobe, eCare Vault, go1, monday.com, Polly, ServiceNow, SurveyMonkey, and Zoho have helped us get these new tools ready and we are excited to make them generally available to everyone at Microsoft Build.
Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and CLI now generally available
Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and command-line interface (CLI) are tools for building Teams and Microsoft 365 apps, fast. Whether you’re new to Teams platform or a seasoned developer, Teams Toolkit is the best way to create, build, debug, test, and deploy apps. Today we are excited to announce the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and CLI is now generally available (GA). Developers can start with scenario-based code scaffolds for notification and command-and-response bots, automate upgrades to the latest Teams SDK version, and debug apps directly to Outlook and Office. Get started building apps with Teams Toolkit today.
Figure 6. Building a notification app for Microsoft Teams using the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code.
Collaboration Controls in Power Apps
We are announcing Collaboration Controls in Power Apps to let developers drag and drop Microsoft 365 collaboration features like Teams chats, meetings, files, Tasks by Planner, and more right inside custom apps built with Power Apps. Collaboration Controls will be available in preview in mid-2022. View the on-demand session to learn more. Subscribe to the Power Apps blog for updates.
Grow user engagement and monetize your apps
App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 App Compliance Program is designed to evaluate and showcase the trustworthiness of application-based industry standards, such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001 for security, privacy, and data handling practices. We are announcing the preview of the App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365 for applications built on Azure to help them accelerate the compliance journey of their apps. With this tool, developers can automate a significant number of tasks to achieve the certification faster and easier. This tool also produces reports that can be easily shared by developers to help IT gain visibility of app security and compliance. Learn more from our App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365 docs page.
Improved app management and discoverability
The Teams Store helps users find the right apps through updated app categories, curated app collections, featured top apps, and intelligent recommendations based on what colleagues and peers are using. This Microsoft Build, we are making available a central experience within the Teams Store to help users track the apps they are using across various Teams and group chats, and see what permissions are required by these apps. We are also making the discovery of apps through tabs, message extensions, and connectors more contextual to help users find the right apps and grow usage of the ISV apps in Teams. For example, in the context of composing messages, the message extension suggestions will be organized by tasks and actions users can take with it. Lastly, users on mobile devices can now add your apps right from the mobile device, such as from a link or QR code.
In-app purchasing for Teams apps
A top request from partners and developers is to provide the ability to include a paywall experience directly from within your Teams app. This gives you the ability to turn a free app into a freemium version, where you can choose when to prompt your users when to subscribe to your app. The new in-app purchase functionality is available today and can be invoked with a few lines of code. Learn more from our in-app purchases docs page.
Figure 7. Developers can enable freemium upgrades directly within Teams with a few lines of code.
Teams app license management
Another area we are making advancements in is enabling users to manage and assign purchased licenses. It’s previously been up to developers to build the license management component into their solution, whether on their landing page or directly within the app. To help streamline the license management experience, we will soon be offering the ability for you to offload the license management capabilities to Microsoft where users can manage and assign licenses—directly in Teams. License management in Teams will be available in preview in mid-2022.
New collaborative apps coming to Teams
We are excited to see ISVs bringing innovative collaborative apps to Teams across a broad range of scenarios. Here are just a few examples of the new apps available now or coming soon:
MURAL app for Teams gives teams everywhere the ability to bring a shared collaboration space directly into Microsoft Teams. Users can improve teamwork with asynchronous visual collaboration, and transform disengaged conversations into productive, engaging meetings and workshops using hundreds of templates and proven, guided methods that empower teams to deliver breakthrough results. MURAL is a Microsoft preview partner, and the MURAL app now works across Teams, Outlook, and Office for a single, connected experience.
Observable app for Teams allows companies to bring their data, context, and logic together in one place to uncover insights collaboratively and accelerate data-driven decision-making across the organization. New updates coming to the Observable app in June 2022 will offer Microsoft Teams notifications when collaborating through comments in Observable.
SAP S/4HANA operational purchaser chatbot provides collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Teams to SAP S/4HANA users within a conversational user experience. It uses Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication and leverages Microsoft Graph APIs to allow users to call other parties or schedule Teams meetings with business partners directly from the bot in the context of the authenticated business user. This provides tight integration of the Teams collaboration experience in a standalone app in SAP, bringing connectivity and collaboration where users need them.
ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app from ManageEngine, Zoho’s enterprise IT management division, leverages Microsoft Teams to streamline business and IT service delivery, manage and accelerate IT incident resolutions, and improve service experience across the enterprise. Coming soon, the ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app will enhance its existing static Adaptive Cards with Loop components, which will allow everyone working on the ticket to get the latest updates and trigger service desk tasks without switching tabs.
Figma, the collaborative design platform, is introducing a new app that will enable teams to share, present, and collaborate in real-time on Figma and FigJam files within a Teams meeting. The app also leverages the new Adaptive Card functionality so when a user shares a link to a Figma or FigJam file in a Teams chat, the card unfurls, allowing users to open the file from within Teams. Users can also view and respond to file notifications directly from Teams. The Figma app will be available later in 2022 in the Teams app store.
Two managers contributing to the same report from two different locations. Three executives using an online whiteboard and building a presentation from three corporate campuses. Four hundred employees participating in an online meeting from their homes spread across the four corners of the globe.
Real-time collaboration is just that—people working together at the same time even if they’re in different places. And the online collaboration tools available are just as varied as the types of collaboration they enable. For example, desktop sharing. Using a feature that allows you to share your device screen with others allows them all to see exactly the same thing so everyone can collaborate at the same time with the same context. Document sharing is another collaboration tool that gives multiple people access to the same piece of writing, spreadsheet, or presentation so that they can collectively add, edit, or comment on a single live file.
How real-time collaboration works
A file is made commonly available to multiple people in multiple locations. This requires storing the file in the cloud and then providing a link or access to the file. It also requires the people who are collaborating to have uninterrupted internet access, the same collaboration software, or integrated apps that interact seamlessly.
The difference between traditional collaboration and real-time collaboration
The main and most obvious distinction between the two types of collaboration is the timing of their processes. Traditional online collaboration can only occur sequentially—one person at a time. For example, an employee creates a document, emails it to a colleague for review, the colleague emails it back, and so on. Real-time collaboration between multiple people happens simultaneously—an entire team of people can work together on the same project at the same time.
Why real-time collaboration is important now?
As remote work and working from home is increasingly encouraged and accepted by many industries, in-person collaboration such as conference room meetings and whiteboard sessions will become the rare exception versus the norm. For productive collaboration to continue, people need new ways to come together and contribute without sharing the same physical space. Online collaboration tools are designed to do just that by replacing old analog methods with modern digital ones. With tools such as online whiteboards now being widely adopted and used, it’s easier than ever to empower people working remotely to collaborate in real time.
Work together and stay productive using Microsoft OneDrive
Store, share, protect and collaborate on your files from any device, anywhere.Learn more about OneDrive
Types of real-time collaboration
The types of real-time collaboration possible are as varied as the apps that enable them. Here’s a list with some of the most common ways people collaborate in real-time:
Document sharing and editing
Videoconferencing
Desktop sharing
Online whiteboards
Instant messaging (real-time text) and chat rooms (or threads)
Real-time collaboration features
Different real-time collaboration tools have different sets of features for enabling group interaction. Some have instant messaging, or other real-time meeting and communications tools, and file sharing so everyone involved has access to files at the same time.
A few important features to look for when considering collaboration tools:
Seamless integration with other productivity apps such as document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation software.
Easy access and visibility of files, calendars, meeting notes, and communication threads.
Flexibility to collaborate anytime, anywhere, and from any device—desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Confidentiality from built-in, advanced security and compliance capabilities
Ease of implementation among groups, businesses, and organizations
Benefits of real-time collaboration
The benefits are becoming clear as more businesses and groups implement and adopt online collaboration tools such as online whiteboards. Here are just a few proven benefits of real-time collaboration:
Improved participation and knowledge sharing from working together as a team just as you would if you were in the same room.
Increased efficiency and productivity from a simplified and seamless process that eliminates back-and-forth communications and replaces the chaos of multiple versions with a single, shared document living in the cloud.
Higher employee morale and job satisfaction and decreased feelings of isolation and loneliness associated with remote work.
Streamlined workflow with meetings, conversations, and file sharing—all happening simultaneously.
Greater cost-effectiveness over traditional methods of collaboration which require office space, equipment, and travel.
Expansive reach and scope from the ability to connect anyone inside and outside your business including employees, clients, and vendors.
Get started
Where, when, and how we work is changing. Fortunately, online collaboration tools give people the freedom and flexibility to work hand in hand even when they’re apart. Are you ready to start seeing the benefits of real-time collaboration for your business? Take next steps and learn more about the latest solutions such as an integrated suite of apps or a powerful set of collaboration and communication tools.
In choppy economic waters, new data points to three urgent pivots for leaders to help employees and organizations thrive
September 22, 2022
Illustration by Vanessa Branchi
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M
Months into hybrid work, not everyone agrees on how it’s going.onths into hybrid work, not everyone agrees on how it’s going. Employees and employers are divided. Employees have embraced flexible work and its benefits and are rejecting a return to hustle culture.
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Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong?
At the same time, many leaders yearn for the office life of 2019—hallways abuzz with chatter, coffee overflowing. Add to that what can only be described as one of the strangest recessions the world has ever seen: business leaders must contend with rising inflation, shrinking budgets, and, paradoxically, a talent marketplace that remains incredibly tight.
Now more than ever, it’s the job of every leader to balance employee interests with the success of the organization, aligning everyone around the most impactful work. One thing is clear: “Thriving employees are what will give organizations a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic economic environment,” according to Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. And, creating a culture and employee experience to meet the needs of today’s digitally connected, distributed workforce requires a new approach.
To help, we surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with LinkedIn labor trends and Glint People Science findings. The data points to three urgent pivots for leaders to drive alignment and empower people for the new ways we work. Because when employees thrive, organizations flourish.
People are working more than ever, while leaders—already worried by signals of macroeconomic decline—are questioning if their employees are being productive. The majority of employees (87%) report that they are productive at work, and productivity signals across Microsoft 365 continue to climb. This spring, we found that the number of meetings per week had increased by 153% globally for the average Microsoft Teams user since the start of the pandemic, and there is still no indication that this trend has reversed, suggesting this peak could become the new baseline. On top of an already high meeting load, overlapping meetings (being double-booked) increased by 46% per person in the past year. And users are flooded with meeting invites—even as the overall meeting acceptance rate has remained fairly steady (growing by only 3%), declines and tentative RSVPs have soared in the past two years (84% and 216% growth, respectively). The strain is clear: in an average week, 42% of participants multitask during meetings by actively sending an email or ping—and that doesn’t include practices like reading incoming emails and pings, working in non-meeting files, or web activity.
At the same time, 85% of leaders say that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive. And as some organizations use technology to track activity rather than impact, employees lack context on how and why they’re being tracked, which can undermine trust and lead to “productivity theater.” This has led to productivity paranoia: where leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased.
85%
of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.
Many leaders and managers are missing the old visual cues of what it means to be productive because they can’t “see” who is hard at work by walking down the hall or past the conference room. Indeed, compared to in-person managers, hybrid managers are more likely to say they struggle to trust their employees to do their best work (49% vs. 36%) and report that they have less visibility into the work their employees do (54% vs. 38%). And as employees feel the pressure to “prove” they’re working, digital overwhelm is soaring.
Productivity paranoia risks making hybrid work unsustainable. Leaders need to pivot from worrying about whether their people are working enough to helping them focus on the work that’s most important. 81% of employees say it’s important that their managers help them prioritize their workload, but less than a third (31%) say their managers have ever given clear guidance during one-on-ones. Solving this issue needs to start at the top: 74% of people managers say more guidance on prioritizing their own work would help their performance, and 80% say they’d personally benefit from more clarity from senior leadership on impactful priorities.
Clarity is key
Employees who report having clarity about their work priorities are:
3.95x
as likely to say they plan to stay at the company for at least two years
7.1x
as likely to say they rarely think about looking for a new job
4.5x
as likely to say they’re happy at their current company
Source: Glint, 2022
48% of employees and 53% of managers report that they’re already burned out at work, so prioritization must go beyond simply reordering an overflowing to-do list. Leaders need to create clarity and purpose for their people, aligning work with the company mission and team goals. And defining what work doesn’t matter is just as important as defining what does—in a world where everything is important, nothing is. We’ve reached a point of diminishing returns due to overwork and overwhelm—if leaders don’t intervene, they put productivity in jeopardy.
Showing employees that you care requires creating a continuous feedback loop—listening and taking action consistently. Only 43% of employees can confidently say their company solicits employee feedback at least once a year—meaning over half of companies (57%) may rarely, if ever, ask and hear about their employees’ experience at work. And even if their company is collecting feedback, 75% of employees (and 80% of managers) think it’s not often enough, and 75% of business decision makers say it’s not actionable enough. In an era of ongoing volatility, timely, actionable employee insights are critical to gaining and maintaining a competitive edge. To ensure that decisions are driven by the most up-to-date information, leaders need to consistently take a pulse on how their employees are doing.
Productivity Paranoia
There is a stark disconnect between the portion of leaders who say they have full confidence their team is productive (12%) and the portion of employees who report they are productive at work (87%).
Survey respondents were asked, “On a typical day, how much do you agree or disagree with the following? ‘I feel productive when I work’” Survey respondents in a leadership role were asked, “How much of a challenge is the following when thinking about new changes brought about by the shift to hybrid work? ‘Having confidence that my employees are being productive’”
Illustration by Valerio Pellegrini
Closing the feedback loop is key to retaining talent. Employees who feel their companies use employee feedback to drive change are more satisfied (90% vs. 69%) and engaged (89% vs. 73%) compared to those who believe their companies don’t drive change. And the employees who don’t think their companies drive change based on feedback? They’re more than twice as likely to consider leaving in the next year (16% vs. 7%) compared to those who do. And it’s not a one-way street. To build trust and participation in feedback systems, leaders should regularly share what they’re hearing, how they’re responding, and why.
Take action:
Set goals like OKRs to ensure that employee work aligns with company goals. Also, establish NO-KRs, or what employees should not do in order to get the most critical work done.
Create and reinforce a culture that rewards employees’ impact, not just activity, or risk people LARP-ing their jobs.
Collect employee feedback regularly at organizational, departmental, and team levels to keep a pulse on your people—and empower managers and leaders to actively listen, coach, and make better decisions to improve the overall performance and wellbeing of their teams.
2.
Embrace the fact that people come in for each other
The return to the office has been a struggle at many organizations—with some employers rolling back plans after one-size-fits-all policies failed to generate a great return. So how can leaders inspire people to prioritize in-person time together? The data shows that people come in for each other to recapture what they miss: the social connection of being with other people. In other words: rebuilding social capital can be a powerful lever for bringing people back to the office.
While 82% of business decision makers say getting employees back to the office in person is a concern in the coming year, the fact is that people now expect flexibility and autonomy around how, when, and where they work. Policy alone will not reverse this reality: 73% of employees and 78% of business decision makers say they need a better reason to go in than just company expectations. While a less certain job market may motivate some employees to spend more time in the office, a more lasting, effective approach requires concerted efforts to rebuild social capital. Organizations that fail to use in-person time to rebuild and strengthen team bonds may risk losing out on attracting and retaining top talent.
73%
of employees say they need a better reason to go into the office than just company expectations.
The data reveals a better way to bring people back together to engage and energize them. Connecting with colleagues is a key motivation for working in person. 84% of employees would be motivated by the promise of socializing with co-workers, while 85% would be motivated by rebuilding team bonds. Employees also report that they would go to the office more frequently if they knew their direct team members would be there (73%) or if their work friends were there (74%).
Younger people are especially keen to use the office to establish themselves as part of their workplace community and feel more connected to their co-workers: younger generations are particularly looking to connect with senior leadership (78% of Gen Z and Millennials vs. 72% Gen X and older) and their direct managers in person (80% Gen Z and Millennials vs. 76% Gen X and older). Gen Z is also particularly motivated by working in person to see their work friends (79% vs. 68% of Gen X and older).
Social Connection Is Worth the Commute
Workers say they are even more interested in going into the office for their friends and peers than for managers and leadership.Gen ZMillennialsGen XBoomers213040506020%40%60%80%100%friendsdirectTeamimmediateManagerseniorLeadershipmy ‘work friends’ would be theremembers of my direct team would be theremy immediate manager would be theremy senior leadership would be thereI would go into the office more frequently if I knew…
Survey respondents were asked, “As an employee who is working in a hybrid environment, how much do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?”
Authenticity Matters
We asked employees about how an authentic—open, honest, empathetic—manager impacted them. Here’s what they said:
The desire among employees to reconnect with co-workers dovetails nicely with a powerful organizational need: to rebuild social capital. 68% of business decision makers say that ensuring cohesion and social connections within teams has been a moderate/major challenge due to the shift to hybrid work. Employees are feeling this acutely, with roughly half saying their relationships outside their immediate work group have weakened (51%) and that they feel disconnected from their company as a whole (43%).
The office can’t be the only answer—technology plays a critical role in creating connection wherever, whenever, and however people work. And communication is crucial to keeping everyone engaged and informed: according to nearly all business decision makers (96%) and employees (95%), effective communication is among the most critical skills they’ll need in the year ahead. And communication will need to be authentic, not just informative. Employees list authenticity as the #1 quality a manager can have in supporting them to do their best work (85%), and 83% of business decision makers say it’s important for their senior leadership to show up authentically.
Take action:
Use in-person time to help employees rebuild team bonds and networks.
Build a digital employee experience to help employees stay connected to each other, to leadership, and to the company culture no matter where they’re working.
Create a digital community with modern communication tools to fuel conversation, empower people to express themselves, and connect leadership and employees.
3.
Re-recruit your employees
Amid macroeconomic headwinds, now is the time for every organization to re-recruit, re-onboard, and re-energize employees. And the data shows if people can’t learn and grow, they’ll leave. As employees embrace a new “worth-it” equation, they’re increasingly turning to job-hopping, the creator economy, side hustles, and entrepreneurship to achieve their career goals. And in a still-tight labor market, leaders who were hoping for the tide to turn have so far been disappointed. Rather than ignore or fight these trends, the best leaders will prioritize learning and development to help both people and the business grow.
Younger generations are the most likely to aspire to be their own boss, with 76% of Gen Z and Millennials saying that this is a goal, versus 63% of those who are Gen X and older. These younger generations are also more likely to say that they’d stay at their current company longer if the company gave them the flexibility to pursue side projects or businesses for additional income (77% vs. 66%). And this spring, 52% of Gen Z and Millennials reported they were likely to consider changing jobs within the next year. Employers can’t ignore this next wave of the workforce: in the US alone, Gen Z employees are projected to make up approximately 30% of the workforce by 2030. And on LinkedIn, Gen Z employees are transitioning jobs at a faster pace than other generations, up 22% in the past year (far exceeding Millennials, whose job transition rate dropped by 1% in the same timeframe).
76%
of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support
Across the workforce, employees are hungry for growth opportunities: 56% of employees and 68% of business decision makers say there are not enough growth opportunities in their company to make them want to stay long term. And many employees believe that learning requires leaving: 55% say the best way for them to develop their skills is to change companies. That sentiment increases as people rise through the ranks at their company, climbing from 51% among lower- and entry-level workers to 66% among upper- and mid-level managers, and 69% among executives. Making it easier for employees to find their next growth opportunity inside the company seems obvious, but the data shows organizations aren’t prioritizing internal mobility enough.
If People Can’t Learn, They’ll Leave
Many workers feel that they need to leave a company to develop their skills.
Survey respondents were asked: “How much do you agree or disagree with the following when you think about your future career? ‘The best way for me to develop my skills is by changing companies’”
Illustration by Valerio Pellegrini
2 out of 3 employees say they would stay longer at their company if it were easier to change jobs internally (68% overall, 73% Gen Z, 73% Millennials, 65% Gen X). That rises to 3 in 4 for people managers (75%) and business decision makers (77%), revealing a powerful retention tool for your leadership layer. This focus on long-term growth and skill development may explain why 68% of employees and 77% of business decision makers say they would rather make a lateral move that offers new skills than a vertical move that is more senior but has fewer learning and growth opportunities.
The connection between learning and retention is clear: 76% of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support. The numbers rise even higher for business decision makers (+7). In fact, employees consider opportunities to learn and grow as the #1 driver of great work culture, a jump from 2019 when it was ranked #9. So taken as a whole, prioritizing employee learning and growth presents a winning retention formula for organizations—or, alternately, if neglected, could pose an existential threat.
The skills gap puts daily work at risk
According to LinkedIn, the skill sets for jobs have changed by approximately 25% since 2015. And by 2027, this number is expected to double. But many employees don’t have the current skills they need, let alone ones for the future.
Take action:
Make learning and growth core to the employee experience—that means bringing the right resources and learning experiences into the flow of work to close the skills gap.
Recognize that people want opportunities not just for promotion but to broaden their skills. Organizations need to make internal mobility a key priority and help employees view their career as a climbing wall or playground, rather than a ladder.
Shift your mindset to create an internal talent marketplace where people can grow their skills, build their careers, and find purpose while helping the organization thrive.
The Way Forward
The changes that have swept the work world over the past few years are not temporary. Flexibility is a feature, not a fad. And 2019 leadership practices simply won’t meet the moment for a digitally connected, distributed workforce. Leaders who look to data—not just instinct—and focus on clarity, social capital, and career growth can realize both the promise of hybrid work and the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Now more than ever, positive business outcomes depend on positive people outcomes.
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Escape Business Solutions 