Use Microsoft Teams To Engage Your Digital Champions

Welcome to the third instalment of our Digital Champions blog series!

In our last blog, we talked about creating a winning environment for our digital champions so they can really have a positive impact on your change programme.

One of the key elements was creating engaging communications and building a connected network who are there to support each other as well as their colleagues.

In this blog, we’ll continue with the theme of communication and connection, focusing on:

• Communicating with your Digital Champions
• Using Teams to create your network
• A quick look at the Changing Social Digital Champions as a Service app

Communicating with your Digital champions

We’ve said it before and we’ll no doubt say it again, 70% of change programmes fail (research by McKinsey) with poor communication cited as one of the key contributing factors.

A lack of, or poor communication is a major flaw in many Digital Champion programmes leaving people feeling disconnected, disengaged and demotivated.

Champions need guidance, clarity, support as well as the knowledge and skills to take on their new role of confidante, student, teacher and go-to guru.

In order to strengthen the impact of your change programme, you need to create a connection with your champions and a place where they can share their experiences, ideas and feedback.

Giving them the right tools to do this will drive their enthusiasm and give them a central hub to connect to their fellow champions as well as share any concerns or queries with their champion coordinator.

Using Teams to create your network

The Digital Champions as a Service programme has been built on years of experience working with organisations to build sustainable and engaged communities of employees.

They’re passionate about ensuring the champions they work with are connected, consulted, informed and engaged.

And what better platform to use to create a connected environment…yes, the king of collaboration tools, Microsoft Teams.

Changing Social’s Adoption and Change Specialist (and Digital Champion guru), Kelly Orford said: “This is what Teams was built for. It’s the perfect platform to get a group of possibly disparate colleagues in one place focusing on one goal.

“It has all the features you could possibly need for learning, connecting, informing and celebrating your champion network.”

The Digital Champions as a Service utilises two elements of Teams to create a winning platform for their champion programme – a Digital Champion as a Service Team and a Digital Champions as a Service app which can be hosted within your organisations tenant.

So, what should a Digital Champions Team look like?

This is where all your champions will connect and collaborate. It’s their hub for all the information they’ll need throughout the programme.

You can build your Team out by using:

• Team chat – to send communications, invites for webinars or virtual meetings and events, send polls, encourage discussions between champions, share ideas or experiences and support each other with queries.
• Virtual events – to host webinars or virtual team meetings for learning and to create connection between the champions.
• Learning centre – which has a host of learning resources pulled from Microsoft Learning Pathways so you can guarantee it’s always up to date with the latest information.
• Files – to share documents or collaborate and work on documents as a team.
• Feedback – to see how the champions are feeling and if they have any specific feedback on the programme or a particular topic. You can make it an ‘Ask the Expert’ so they can contact the experts if needed.
• Profiles – you can create profiles for each champion where everyone can see how they’re progressing during the programme and even create some competition with a leaderboard of the quizzes they’ve completed and badges they’ve won from completing them.
• Gamification – is a great way to celebrate the achievements of the champions as they attain badges as and when they’ve completed learning. The more badges they have and the more quizzes they complete, the higher they are on the leaderboard.

They need to feel part of a self-sustaining team where as well as the support of the experts, they have the support of their fellow champions. Encouraging communication and collaboration within this area will really drive the passion and desire to make your change programme a success.

A quick look at the Changing Social Digital Champions as a Service app

As part of their Digital Champions as a Service product, Changing Social has also developed their own Digital Champions as a Service (DCaaS) app. This app is for everyone within the organisation so they can see and connect with their Digital Champion for support.

Anyone within the organisation can search for a champion by name or by a particular skill which they have attained during the programme. They can also see a list of all champion profiles which details the skills and badges they’ve received.

Colleagues can also give kudos to a champion which is a fantastic way of recognising their efforts. There’s no better recognition than from a colleague. A big thumbs up can really have a positive impact. Managers too can give their own team champions the kudos they deserve.

The app also has the ability to recruit new champions as people see what a positive impact they’re having on the programme and ultimately, the business.

They’ve even added a chat bot for frequently asked questions so there’s information and answers at the click of a button.

Microsoft Teams really does offer everything you need as a platform to connect your champions and keep them informed.

Does your business need help to implement Microsoft 365 and its many tools? Do you want to harness the talent from within your organisation to support it? Then get in touch. We provide a comprehensive Digital Champion Programme providing all the learning and support your champions will need to make your digital change a success. Contact us at [email protected] for a chat.