Leveraging Microsoft 365 to support transition to 4-day working week

Our customer, a Local Enterprise Partnership, provides support for hundreds of businesses in the county, helping them grow, innovate, secure funding and attract talent.

Having transitioned to a fully remote working model following the Covid pandemic, the organisation had decided to pilot a 4-day working week, as part of a national scheme.

This significant change to working practices would be supported by a number of initiatives and resources to help employees embrace and succeed in the new setup. A key component was to leverage their existing investment in Microsoft 365 to support and enable employees to effectively manage their work, as well to enhance and streamline business processes and workflows.

The priority was to help employees to better manage their tasks and workday, and to help manage work/life balance and wellbeing. This would leverage the capabilities available through existing M365 licensing, and align with the strategies and resources being developed to support the 4-day working week transition.

With our customer we designed a training programme to engage and enable employees to take advantage of the Microsoft 365 tools available to them.

Session topics focused on practical steps to help employees organise their working time and activities, highlighting and suggesting ways to use the Microsoft 365 toolkit:

Configuring your working schedule​ (focusing on Teams, Outlook and Viva)

• Working week and quiet hours​
• Focus time, virtual commute and reflection​
• Out of office and status / presence​
• Managing notifications​

Managing your schedule and tasks​ (Outlook, To Do)

• Organising your calendar​
• Managing personal tasks

Working with colleagues (Teams, OneNote, Planner, To Do)

• Asynchronous working and ‘working out loud’
• Shared notes
• Shared tasks

Meetings (Teams, Outlook)

• Meeting ‘lifecycle’ (before, during and after)
• Coordinating meetings with your team
• Managing your availability for meetings

Training sessions were successfully delivered over the course of a week, with all employees eligible. Sessions were delivered online via Teams, grouped by business function to facilitate contextual discussion regarding each team’s specific requirements and working practices. The customer’s live Microsoft 365 tenant was used to demonstrate the capabilities to provide a more accurate and relevant experience to delegates.

Microsoft 365 capabilities were presented in a ‘non-prescriptive’ way to enable delegates to decide which tools and approaches would work best for them, with opportunities during the sessions to ‘follow along at home’. Useful resources were provided to delegates following the sessions.

The training sessions helped support our customer’s transition to a 4-day working week, which was adopted permanently following their successful pilot.