Stephen Port- Stephen Port
How work gets done: A review of the Microsoft Productivity Score
The way we work is changing, and technology is becoming part of our everyday lives at home and at work.
We now expect to be able to collaborate and communicate with our colleagues on any device, from anywhere at any time. This cultural shift has led to an ad-hoc adoption of productivity and the tools we use to achieve it. This has resulted in some great innovation and practices but also some inefficient, older ways of working.
Business owners, technical adoption leaders, training specialists or similar roles need to be able to understand how their organisation uses Microsoft 365 day-to-day. They need to know if best practices are being followed and if the technology provided to their workforce is suitable for the job at hand.
The Productivity Score in Microsoft 365 brings insight and visibility into the way your organisation works so you can take action to improve the how your organisation and users operate
So let's have a quick look at why you would want to start using it!
Firstly the score includes the following elements.
Metrics: The Productivity score gives you the opportunity to get under the hood and see how the organisation collaborates and communicates.
Insights: You can gain insights on your data and learn how to improve user experience and productivity in Microsoft 365.
Actions: Take recommended actions to update skills and systems so everyone can do their best work as efficiently as possible.
The data, insights and recommendations are aligned to two key areas
People experiences
This measures how people collaborate on content and use the products available in Microsoft 365. It shows how your users utilise their time when communicating and collaborating, ultimately helping you understand which tools are being used across your organisation and how they could be improved.
Communication - How many people are sending emails vs Teams messages or community posts?
Meetings - How many meetings have taken place with screen sharing or video on?
Content Collaboration - What are the trends in the number of users who are creating and collaborating on content or just reading content?
Teamwork - What percentage of people are engaged in a shared workspace and how do they collaborate and communicate in there?
Mobility - How many people are using more than one platform, e.g. mobile, laptop, web-only to access applications and content?
Technology experiences
Productivity depends on having good, reliable equipment for your remote workforce. A poorly tuned laptop that crashes regularly or is slow to boot will have users feeling frustrated, increasing their stress level and ultimately becoming less productive.
Microsoft 365 Apps health - Are your corporate devices running the latest or supported versions of software and what update channels are they on?
Microsoft has also released a special report for Business Continuity. This report helps business leaders understand:
How collaboration and communication are affected by the shift to remote work.
The impact on work-life balance as people adjust to working from home.
If remote meetings support effective decision-making.
Summary
Using the lesser-known Microsoft Productivity Score will provide some invaluable insights as to how to improve the modern digital workplace for your organisation. We use it extensively with the clients we speak to. If you would like to learn more please send us an email at
info@dapt.uk and one of our principal consultants will be in touch!
If you are looking for more, instant information, check out the video below and subscribe to my YouTube Channel where I will be creating useful playlists for all things Microsoft 365 plus some of my own walkthroughs. - Click here to subscribe!