Familiarity
The issue of how to deal with multi-generational and multi-ability staff is one that Microsoft has given extensive thought to, and its suite of cloud applications has been designed to keep as much of a familiar user interface all the way through as possible. Office 365 is now an industry leading productivity application, partly, Microsoft feels, for this reason.
“This is something that we’ve had to deal with both internally at Microsoft and also within our customer base. We have a very diverse workforce here,” said Kieran Dunne, applications and services lead with Microsoft Ireland.
“It’s also a fact that the pace of change within technology is super-fast. As I think of the tools I use in my day to day work versus what I used two, three or five years ago, they’re changing all the time.”
New collaboration
According to Dunne, one of the thing Microsoft is seeing when it deploys Office 365 is that it enables customers to collaborate and be productive in new ways. But to achieve this it has had to broaden the appeal of its products, make them more accessible and make them easy to use.
“The generation of people joining the workforce now increasingly expect to find collaborative tools — IM, video calling, presence and social networks — available to them”
“In the past, mobile wasn’t so important but now we need to make sure that all of our products can be mobile. Similarly, a number of years ago Microsoft had a focus on first party devices, meaning the Windows PC and Windows devices. Now we need to make sure that our Office 365 services run across all devices, from iOS to Android to Windows and from phones to tablets to PCs.”
Collaboration is also a big part of the appeal of cloud-delivered software such as Office 365, but this can present a challenge for people used to working in non-tech enabled ways.
“If you think about the way that people would have collaborated let’s say 10 years ago, email was king. If you wanted to be productive and collaborate with your colleagues, you sent emails but that’s really changed. What we’re seeing now is that people want to collaborate in lots of different ways so while email still plays a huge part, people always want to collaborate using for instance the Skype client for internet messaging (IM) and presence,” said Dunne.
“Certainly that’s something we’re seeing that’s cross-generational, from the older members of our staff right down to the new joiners – everybody in Microsoft uses Skype for IM and presence. Likewise, a lot of our clients use Skype for video conferencing for everything from small meetings to big meetings.”
Social tools
Similarly, social networking tools are increasingly finding their way into the workplace.
“What I see within our customer base is that the old way of collaborating within the working day used to be very hierarchical — information went up through your manager and up to your manager’s manager and then came back down to you and that was the flow of information,” said Dunne.
“What we’re seeing now is that information is being shared more broadly and much more quickly. People are willing to sacrifice that hierarchy to be more agile and share more quickly.”
The generation of people joining the workforce now increasingly expect to find collaborative tools like these available to them, according to Dunne.
“For this generation coming into the workforce, tools like this are normal and they will demand them of their employers in order for them to do their best work. I think the day when an employer could say ‘we’re still using an old version of Windows, an old version of Office and old PCs — go knock yourself out’, those days are gone.”
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