Shining a Light on Community Collaboration in an Era of Social Isolation

The global lockdown has brought many challenges that enterprises have never faced before. Interestingly, technological issues are way easier to solve than social ones. Social distancing and isolation are common problems that negatively affect employees all over the world. Alexandra Goger, Senior Marketing Specialist at Itransition Group, says introducing digital communities can be an effective way for enterprises to support social connections during remote work. 

Enterprises face unprecedented challenges caused by global lockdown and the spread of remote work.   Supporting uninterrupted communication and collaboration among different employees is one of the critical tasks demanding additional investment and effort from business owners. Many enterprises invested in online collaboration tools to let employees stay connected regardless of location. However,  apart from employee-to-employee and team interaction, there is one more critical collaboration layer — community collaboration.

Enterprises can have both formal and informal communities. Formal communities are typically formed within a professional domain but, unlike teams, they do not necessarily consist of professionals involved in the same project. For instance, an R&D center that studies the opportunities of implementing augmented reality (AR) into work processes,  a  knowledge hub that unites employees with healthcare-related expertise, or a learning group that refines their sales skills are all examples of formal professional communities.

At the same time, informal communities bring employees together outside of their working activities and strengthen social connections. A sailing club for people passionate about weekend yachting, an art gallery for those who create and share their artworks, a video center for employees to upload and watch videos of their interest are examples of informal communities.

The problem is that communities aren’t easy to organize and support even in a typical office environment, not to mention today’s realities of remote work and social isolation. The good news is that the right technologies can help enterprises launch and manage corporate communities successfully.

Learn More: 10 Building Blocks of Long-Term Remote Work Strategy

The Rise of Collaboration Software

The global shift to working from home has urged many businesses to revise their approaches to business workflow automation and adopt collaboration tools more actively.

The research on the impact of COVID-19 on SMBs in the USA showed that the lockdown has made almost 30% of SMBs adopt collaboration tools for the first time. In comparison, 46% of the surveyed businesses have significantly increased their usage of collaboration tools.

Above all, companies are active in deploying collaboration tools to address basic communication needs and support an uninterrupted connection between employees. However,  companies can get more benefits from their collaborative software, particularly content-centric.

Learn More: Team Slack or Team Google? Best Approach Is to Remain Neutral

Setting Up Formal and Informal Digital Communities with the Microsoft Collaboration Stack 

Some communities can have ‘communication addicts’; others can be ‘silent’ and prefer depersonalized content sharing. Considering this, organizations can choose different tools from Microsoft’s collaboration stack to adapt technologies to community members’ many temperaments and habits. 

SharePoint

Members of both formal and informal communities can collaborate actively on large volumes of content. That’s why all types of SharePoint sites, including team, communication, and hub sites,  can be suitable for hosting communities. Structured thematic libraries are a good place to store documents and visual materials of various formats. Community members can use discussion boards to share their opinions and comment on the published content. The built-in publishing features allow employees to post, share, and discuss news, events, experiences, and specific knowledge bits. 

SharePoint can also become a central event hub for communities to manage their calendars and announce upcoming events and spread follow-up materials, videos, and collect participants’ feedback.

Thanks to the availability of the ready-made SharePoint mobile app, employees can check out and contribute to the community activities while on the go or away from their desktops.

Microsoft Teams

When communities prefer real-time communication and want to organize live sessions remotely, Microsoft Teams is the tool to go with. Teams have become a real lifesaver for employees during remote work, which is demonstrated by a steadily increasing number of Teams’ active users. With around 13 million daily active users in   2018, the app was used by over 75 million daily users in April 2020 and reached 115 million daily active users in   October  2020,  according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Teams are suitable for communities that choose dynamic collaboration as the tool comes with built-in video conferencing and instant chat capabilities. Communities can launch public and private Teams, with public or private channels accessible for a broad audience or keep their collaboration details confidential.

Yammer

Communities opting for a Twitter-like communication style can rely on Yammer.  The tool can help community members share opinions, news, announcements, ask questions, and launch polls aggregated together in a central feed that looks much like familiar feeds of social networks.

When in Yammer, community managers can also keep control over their communities’ popularity and dynamics. The Yammer Insights come with detailed stats on posted and read content,  users’ reactions, and communication activity. Those insights can help community leaders understand how the community evolves and take action if they see the activity decrease.

Communities using media content heavily can choose Stream and Sway as their main platforms. Stream offers communities the ability to manage their video channels, publish, share, and comment videos via a YouTube-like interface. Sway can be a handy tool for employees who like creating appealing presentations and digital documents to make community content more attractive and engaging.

Learn More: Building a Culture of Organized Serendipity in the Remote Work Era

Breaking through Social Isolation

Active and maturing communities are essential for organizations at any time because they create an extra layer of corporate culture and social connection that can be more important for employees than their immediate working environment. Today, communities’ role is even more important, as they are to fight the most frequent issues of remote work that are loneliness and lack of personal interaction.

Confined to their houses, employees have little to no chance to take up outdoor activities and communicate to anyone except their families and teams. In this context, digital communities are a feasible way to add social activities to employees’ lives and let them feel less isolated.

Using Microsoft’s tech stack, companies can quickly launch diverse communities without putting much into deployment and customization. Moreover, businesses can adopt Microsoft’s tools according to corporate communities’ preferences. For example, IT can add Yammer or Stream capabilities to SharePoint sites to offer more ways for community members to interact and exchange content.

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