

“When we ask our clients about digital transformation and what is needed in-house to enable a hybrid workplace, the key issue is IT support,” she says.


The priority, for them, is to protect their IT teams, who would be burdened with a greater workload. Dispelling the threat of shadow ITĪlthough the likes of Vodafone and BT may well have good reasons for investing in Workplace, Escherich says she doesn’t think the trend of using more than one collaboration platform will be picked up by smaller businesses. If various providers integrate into Teams or Slack, he adds, users won’t feel bombarded by different apps because they’re effectively using one interface. Employees will, effectively, use Teams as a window into their applications, with integrations getting much better. Microsoft, for example, wants Teams to serve as a user interface window, senior analyst with Cavell Group Patrick Watson, says. That is where collaboration platforms come in.
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Indeed, communicating with a distributed workforce means businesses need to upgrade their communications methods, with emailed newsletters and bulletins often ending up in spam folders too. Using such platforms in this way isn’t a new phenomenon, Meike Escherich, associate research director for the future of work at IDC, points out. There’s a risk, however, that piling yet more digital systems onto the shoulders of already digitally stretched workers might inadvertently lead to a loss of productivity and disillusionment. Companies such as BT and Vodafone, for example, are using Facebook Workplace to offer employees a pseudo-social media experience. In fact, over the past year, businesses have increasingly bought into an emerging trend of choosing different collaboration platforms for different types of workplace communication.
