In the first chapter, we saw an overview of how you can use Communication sites and Hub sites in SharePoint Online and some situations in which you need a Hub or Communication site. Then, we looked at some SharePoint Online features. In this chapter, we describe various use cases where communicating through SharePoint Communication sites is better. We also see how Communication sites are useful to communicate to small and large groups and create scope for collaboration.
Also, we see how we can send effective communication to big groups and communications related to campaigns, announcements, and leadership teams, thereby creating new communication and collaborative channels. First, we look at the vital difference between communication and collaboration.
Communication and Collaboration
- Communication—We understand that, in this process, two or more people are involved. Communication involves people expressing their feelings, ideas, needs, and questions that are comprehensible to others. It is clearly understandable to the other person or group of people in such a way that they are able to respond to it. It’s very important that the language used in the communication process be understandable to both parties. Communication can be face-to-face, over mobile devices, over Skype calls, and via texts/emails. Communication is an important aspect of being a good professional. If you have strong communication skills, you speak, read, write, and understand what is necessary to do your job.
Figure 2-1Telephone used for communication. Royalty free image available at https://www.freeimages.com/photo/old-phone-1313726
- Collaboration—This is action-oriented communication where two or more people work together to solve problems. Communication is essential in collaboration, as when communication is clear, people understand the message and work accordingly. Collaboration requires a common goal or objective. If a team works collaboratively, this means they communicate very well and work as per expectations. They can then achieve good results in collaboration. Collaboration always focuses on the team or on a group of individuals to achieve goals.
Figure 2-2A team works collaboratively to achieve desired results. Copyright free image available at https://www.pexels.com/search/team/
The difference between communication and collaboration is subtle and they are intertwined. For successful collaboration, you need to have communication and for communication to take place, there is an element of collaboration. Communication initially begins from one side and then the other party decides whether they can respond. But in collaboration, all parties must communicate. Traditional Intranets that communicate information to employees do not have the opportunity to react or respond. In such a situation, communication is one sided. With a traditional Intranet example, we can infer that communication can be one sided, as traditional Intranets existed to communicate information in one way. There was no other way to capture reactions based on information that was communicated. Communication sometimes is casual and doesn’t require action. A casual discussion over dinner or coffee might not have a goal or purpose, yet we have casual discussion to express our minds and feel better. However, collaboration always has a purpose.
Regular employee communication is essential to know what’s happening in the organization.
Collaboration platforms such as SharePoint Communication sites and Yammer help employees collaborate, connect, and share business-related problems.
Two-way communication is necessary to create employee engagement and understand their feedback on published communication.
Collaboration is essential on any news, update, or announcement to understand employee reactions.
Open and transparent communication creates clarity of business objectives in an organization.
Collaboration drives the action plan to drive the business objectives.
Leadership communication is vital to employees, as they often prefer to know the leadership’s views.
Collaboration creates a connection between leaders and employees.
Through communication, employees gain a common understanding of the organizational initiatives.
Collaboration helps to drive these initiatives.
Communication creates a common culture.
Collaboration helps sustain the common culture.
In global setups, employee communication exists in several languages.
Collaboration helps bridge cross-culture boundaries.
Now, let’s look at some use cases where effective collaboration and communication through SharePoint become simple.
Communication and Collaboration Use Cases
We will take different departments into consideration, identify their pain areas, and list the solutions with the help of a Communication site. Every organization has departments that are based on the same office. Global companies have their departments spread across countries and continents. Considering the background of the global organization and the different languages, cultures, and diversities, it becomes very challenging to communicate in one common and understandable language. Internal communication teams work hard to make sure that all communication goes through precise and unique filters for maximum understanding. It is also challenging to have people from different backgrounds collaborate to achieve business objectives.
Human Resources
Must be compliant with local employment laws and regulation—All global organizations are going through this problem, as work permit rules, labor laws, regulations are changing and differ among countries. It is very important that the immigration and human resources departments are in sync before they can hire or deploy employees
Dealing with change—With growing businesses, their strategies, culture, and internal processes change. Some employees have a hard time adopting to these changes. During the acquisition process, multiple changes take place. As a result, some people are able to adapt and others aren’t. As a consequence, there is loss of productivity.
Lack of leadership development—One international study showed that more than one third of companies are performing an average job implementing leadership development programs. A full 30 percent of companies admitted they were below average when it comes to performing leadership development jobs.
Poor training programs—There has always been a mismatch in training offerings for employees who are in the office versus those who deal directly with customers. Employees tend to invest more in training employees in the office. Employees who are on the front lines are some of best employees. If you investment more in them, they will stay longer and be a big asset to your company.
Diversity in the workplace—Generations, ethnics, and different cultures all create challenges for human resources.
These are just a few challenges that the human resources department comes across. Do these Communication sites help overcome these human resources challenges? The answer is yes.
Build an Internal Website for the Sub-departments
SharePoint Communication sites allow each subdepartment to build an internal website for its employees. Today, most organizations have an Intranet and each department has a dedicated area where they dump information, which cannot be found easily by users. Subdepartments have no dedicated space and, as a result, people from such teams are not easily traceable. With Communication sites, subdepartments can manage their information on their own. They can publish news, announcements, policies, training programs, immigration rules, and others. Subdepartments can host documents in the Document Library and share them with end users. Not only this, but videos, PowerPoint presentations, and charts can be added to each page. If each subdepartment can work hand-in-hand with its end users, subdepartments will be visible and they will have a greater role to play in the organization. All subdepartmental sites can be connected to the human resources Hub site so that you have a centralized structure of sites under one main Hub site.
The human resources department and its subdepartments can be visible and accessible using Communication sites and, as a result, subdepartments can continue to grow hand-in-hand with end users. No more contacting these subdepartments through a distribution list or raising a ticket in the help desk. You instead visit the subdepartment site and find the available information and contact section, which is a default webpart.
Internal Communications
Existence of communication flow from top to bottom only—The content of this team comes from the person who has a strategic role in the organization. This person could be the strategic business unit head, a departmental head, the chief technology officer, a country head, or the CEO of the organization. The IC team approaches such people from a strategic role and creates news around this, which is published on the Intranet. However, communication should go from bottom to top and also in the horizontal direction, so that management can understand the expectations of the people who report to them.
Lack of employee focus—Some organizations do not allow all employees to voice their feedback, provide suggestions, and propose improvements. Normally such ideas come from specialized teams or third-party agencies. If all employees are given an opportunity to be part of the communication journey, organizational transformation will not remain a challenge as it is today.
Last minute communication—There are various situations, due to heavy rains or snowfall, in which roads are blocked, or due to a local strike, people cannot commute to the office. In those cases, if there is urgent information to be shared, such as leadership changes, company stock changes, or a natural disaster, this is often communicated through emails. Today’s Intranet does not allow you to publish last-minute communications.
IC for digital users—Today’s spending on Intranet resources has diminished because organizations are more interested in their return on investment . Intranet benefits are intangible and cannot be measured through profit and loss, as projects can. There are systems such as emails, Intranet, VOIP, exchange servers, and others, for which we never bothered to have a return on investment. We need them to run the business effectively, which can be proven by closing them down for one day.
Making IC competitive—Today we have different forms of communication in organizations, such as Yammer, Teams, Skype, and Outlook. People-to-people communication is faster than IC. For example, if a new CEO is appointed, this news is rapidly spread through non-IC channels and the IC information is published after it is well known. There is a need now for IC to revamp its strategy, improve the technology, and build better processes to communicate effectively.
These challenges can be easily resolved using Communication sites. In the first challenge, existence of communication only in the top to bottom fashion, for example, you can use Communication sites to make communication two-way and therefore more collaborative. Using the Yammer webpart embedded into your sites, such two-way communication can be facilitated. The moment news is published, users can voice their opinions through the Yammer group embedded into the site. With Communication sites, you can meet the second challenge of IC not being focused on employees. This collaborative experience can also be added using a Yammer group or a Team site. You can use the Embed webpart to add content from other sources such as social media sites and business content sites such as the content loop and make them available on the Communication site page. You can use the Kindle webpart to share previews of books and use Microsoft forms to create survey quizzes and polls. Out-of-the-box webparts available in the Communication sites will help you create user engagement and involve users in the communication journey.
The third challenge is of last-minute communications by IC during natural calamities or local problems. This can also be easily managed by Communication sites. SharePoint Administrator or Office 365 can easily create a communicate site and, within 10 minutes, your Communication site will be ready with important news that you want to share. There are famous SharePoint Communication sites published by Microsoft that demonstrate creation of up-to-date communication in just 10 minutes. This is possible due to the number of webparts it has and no specialized communication is needed unless there is a specific requirement.
Today, most Intranet users are also social media users and part of the latest technology trend such as Cloud, Azure, and others. Therefore, it is important that we give our user community a similar experience inside the organization. SharePoint Communication sites are available within the Office 365 product family. Once you get this service, your organization does not have to manage it; Microsoft will manage the service and your organization will be the consumer. No more headaches monitoring, database upgrades, patch fixing, maintenance windows, server upgrades, and 24/7 support. This is all done by Microsoft. You focus on using this service effectively. Not only this, but SharePoint Online provides a mobile app that users can use to view organizational communication at any time.
The internal communication strategy needs to be revamped, as users have access to modern internal tools that help them spread messages faster than the IC team does. With Communication sites, various ideas can be implemented using design options such as the Hero, News, Events, and Blank webparts. With access to the Microsoft image library, you can use nice images and make users feel good. Besides, using the Embed webpart, you can show feeds from external sites, use the Yammer webpart for collaboration, link webparts to external links, use power apps for customized internal apps, and much more. It is time to make your Intranets digital, social, and competitive by revamping your old internal strategy, which focused only on content. The time has come to offer digital, collaborative, mobile platforms to your employees.
IT Department
Inaccessibility of IT documents—IT departments support the internal application, including changes and enhancements, which is technology dependent. So, we have a huge team here already. Parts of the team look after the datacenter, handle information security, procure the IT hardware and software, and manage IT governance and licences. Their standard documents are usually inaccessible. For example, if you want security guidelines for a Software as a Service product, you often need to go to multiple people before you can find them.
Invisible services—The IT department provides numerous services such as L1 support (basic hardware and software support) and coordinate vendor support. The IT team also has an L2 and L3 support team that manages escalations and more complex issues. Could the service management team provide services such as database, application hosting, and application upgrades? There is also a delivery team that provides similar services to external customers. Nobody is aware that we have redundant teams that are actually providing similar services, as there is no place in the organization where the IT team and their subdepartments can display services they can offer. In IT, standardizations such as ITIL, IS20K, and others are strictly followed but after achieving compliance in an audit, they do not have a platform to showcase their expertise or experience gained.
Lack of communication—The IT help desk communicates either through a ticketing tool or they use Skype to communicate with end users. Whenever the IT team sends communications, they are linked to application outages, downtime information, software upgrades and others, but these are general communications. No user-specific communication is written down on Yammer, Teams, or the SharePoint site.
Lack of collaboration—Collaboration between the IT department and the user community can be better and stronger. People rely on ticketing tools too much. Some organizations have started using Yammer as a social help desk to collaborate with end users about their issues. That way, the delivery teams interact to deliver business expectations the same way the IT teams and user community should collaborate.
Lack of employee empowerment—Teams from the IT department are never given a chance to run a campaign, announce achievements, and perform fun related activities. We cannot figure out the precise reason for this trend in most of these organizations, but responsibility does lie with the leadership teams.
The IT department has plenty of challenges to be visible and collaborative and to have strong communication. But with SharePoint Communication sites things have become simple for them. The IT department and its subdepartments can now create their internal sites on which they showcase their services, applications they support, and point of contacts. With the help of the Document Library, all the subdepartments can upload and share documents with the user community. Further, they can insert attachments such as Word docs, Excel sheets, and PDFs in their site pages. This resolves the first and second challenges mentioned earlier.
To collaborate and communicate with end users, IT subdepartments can use site pages. Various webparts can used to build visually appealing communication and Yammer will facilitate collaboration. SharePoint Communication sites will give employees an opportunity for a digital and mobile experience. Everything you need to develop a digital and collaborative experience is available through webparts. For employee empowerment, with leadership support, the IT department can execute campaigns, run surveys and polls for their own subdepartments, and create their own Yammer groups for collaboration and outreach. In this way, the IT department can become stronger, more visible, and more accessible without additional cost.
Facilities Management
Invisible department—They maintain a low profile in the organization and are not seen in communications. But ideally, all departments should be visible in the sense that there should be a portal that contains a list of services they provide and a point of contact for them.
No acknowledgement—Facility teams do an excellent job to ensure workplaces are clean, tidy, and up to standard. They work hard, yet don’t get much acclaim and are not typically part of the recognition program.
Lack of training and development—For support function team members, there is no career development as we have for others. There is no training program, and there are no workshops conducted for them. In short, there is an absence of collaboration due to which they are unable to get promoted.
Limited access—Support employees are often not given enough access to major internal applications. In my experience, employees from the support function were not given corporate mail addressed to reduce cost and they were operating with general email addresses and mail accounts. If the situation is limited, an employee focus strategy will never become possible.
SharePoint Communication sites are created for all types of employees, so that they can effectively collaborate and communicate. With SharePoint Communication sites, internal sites allow all participating departments to communicate and highlight their services. Employees, after reading their news, announcements, and updates, will acknowledge their work and share praise and appreciation. Integrating with Yammer will help with collaboration between support functions and their service consumers. Training and workshops can be made available on the support function portal. The organization has to take a stand and explore how Communication sites can provide opportunities for each employee in the organization to contribute to their department and organization.
Communication Sites for Smaller and Larger Groups
Lack or absence of a virtual place to communicate
No communication strategy planned for smaller groups
Small team comfortable speaking over the phone and one-on-one rather than in teams
Lack of guidance on communication improvement
Small team in a global setting prefers face-to-face workshops rather continuous communication
Email communication is often preferred
Smaller teams may be relatively small but the communication aspect is vital and this where SharePoint Communication sites make communication smooth in smaller teams. Smaller teams can create a site for their internal communication and objectives. This can be private and can embed a Yammer group for collaboration. Sites will create transparency and will reduce one-to-one communication. Agile Scrum Master can use Communication sites effectively. After the daily standup meeting, the status of artifacts can be published on the Communication site. The team’s task list can be shared through Communication sites. Useful presentations and documents can be attached to the sites using the File Viewer webpart. Minutes from a meeting can be shared by posting over the Communication sites. Events can be organized, team planning can be shared, and more stuff can done using Communication sites. They will enhance the way smaller teams work and communicate.
Lack of feedback channels, which leads to areas of improvement or growth being hidden.
Preferred email communication.
A combination of generation Y users and traditional users, which leads to a conflict of communication mediums.
Less communication with new people joining the team.
Sharing project collaterals if the size is too big.
Culture barriers if the team is global.
Communication sites will make life easier for bigger teams. Distribution lists can simply be deleted and Communication sites can be used instead. All project reports, documents, planning notes, general content, and news should be stored on the Communication site. The project manager of a bigger team can share project planning, daily task schedules, and meeting updates on the site.
Execute Campaigns Using Communication Sites
Campaigns are events managed by the organization to improve user engagement and communicate business objectives. For any campaign, its reach is very important. Email was a primitive source for campaign communication and for sharing marketing collaterals. However, not all of the employees will read campaign related emails if they are getting multiple emails everyday and, as result, the reaction is minimized. Besides, due to the large size of market collaterals, email servers can hang. Therefore, you go through plenty of challenges when sharing content.
Create a campaign-specific Communication site and keep it public if the campaign is global.
Design your site page using the Hero, News, Highlighted Content, and Blank design options.
Using the Planner webpart, display campaign planning.
Add the Yammer webpart to add Yammer groups linked to campaigns.
Choose a visually captivating image from your site page.
Add the Document Library to share files.
Schedule campaign events using the Event webpart.
Publish campaign communication.
Make campaign announcements.
Share marketing collaterals.
Publish campaign reports using the power BI.
Add links using the Link webpart.
Share site links through email and the Yammer group.
Once the campaign is closed, you can archive or delete the site.
SharePoint Communication Sites for Leadership Communication
In today’s world, leadership has been transformed and leaders are expected to have excellent communication skills. Leaders usually publish their messages during the kick-off year, yearly reviews, new wins, and organizational road map. Some leaders with expertise in a certain area, for example the chief technology officer, will start a new technology series to communicate with their employees. If we create a Communication site for each leader, the leaders will be able to communicate with their employees on a regular basis and get feedback. SharePoint Communication sites can lessen the gap between leaders and employees.
Summary
In this chapter, we discovered the different departments and their challenges linked to communication and collaboration, which can be resolved using Communication sites. We also learned that this feature can be effectively used during campaigns and for leadership communication. In the next chapter, we see how Communication sites create collaborative experiences for the end users.