If agile working has been the direction of travel for some public sector organisations over the past few years, nobody could have predicted the rapid shift to remote working that we have seen in 2020. Everyone agrees that agile working is here to stay, but remote working – where many public sector organisations are today – and true agile working are two different things.

At Six Degrees, we believe that the agile workspace represents the future of work. Delivering the same remote working user experience regardless of location is great, but it fails to address a key aspect of our working lives today: that we have different working needs at different times.

The latest technology enables users to work in a manner that’s most appropriate to their immediate requirements. It empowers users by recognising that they need time to communicate and collaborate, but they also need time to concentrate and contemplate. By nurturing an agile working culture, you can increase productivity whilst driving engagement and fostering inclusivity – ultimately improving the essential citizen services you deliver.

Increase Productivity

The UK public sector is facing challenges on two fronts: whilst the demands placed upon organisations by citizens have never been higher, operating conditions have presented issues as large numbers of users have been mobilised to work remotely.

To respond effectively to these challenges, organisations must ensure their user productivity is maximised even when individuals and teams work remotely. Microsoft Teams provides a hub for teamwork that consolidates applications in one place, making it easier to collaborate and share information whilst making meetings more efficient.

In a Forrester study commissioned by Microsoft [1], this was found to save users between one and eight hours per work, depending on their roles: a tangible saving that demonstrates the productivity efficiencies that can be achieved by using Microsoft Teams to drive an agile working model [2].

Drive Engagement

Effective engagement is essential if UK public sector organisations are to address the often-complex challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. A Harvard Business Review report found that at some organisations a staggering 80% of company work time involved collaborating – whether through meetings, emails or phone calls.

Microsoft Teams make this engagement easy. When your users need to work collaboratively, Teams enables them to make dynamic changes that get them where they need to be – faster. Teams facilitates collaboration across multiple channels, allowing users to introduce video calls to instant messaging chats, embed ‘click to call links’ in documents, and use all available collaboration methods in a straightforward, intuitive way.

By nurturing an agile working culture, you can increase productivity whilst driving engagement and fostering inclusivity.

Foster Inclusivity

The new reality of agile working presents an opportunity for organisations to foster inclusivity throughout their teams. Recruitment teams are able to widen candidate talent pools, enabling organisations to hire and support people from outside their typical geographic and employee profiles and ensure they flourish regardless of their individual circumstances.

Agile working can also potentially reduce bias playing a part in decisions, with employees more likely to be judged solely on productivity, effectiveness and the value of their work. And finally, some users that would normally find it difficult to share opinions face-to-face may feel more comfortable being themselves when working remotely, making it easier for them to speak up and have a voice.

Empower Your Users and Drive Innovation

The way we work is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Adopting an agile workspace will help you improve user wellbeing whilst meeting today’s complex challenges head on, empowering you to deliver exceptional citizen experiences.

Six Degrees is one of the UK’s only Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework approved partners. We work with public sector organisations throughout the UK, enabling them to leverage our Microsoft knowledge and deep cyber security expertise to deploy Microsoft Teams and other secure cloud-based solutions that drive tangible financial and operational benefits, whatever stage they are at in their digital transformation journeys.

For more information visit: hub.6dg.co.uk/smarter-working [3]

We are sponsoring a virtual session at the Smarter Working Virtual Summit on Wednesday 21^st October from 11.15am to 12:00pm, where we will be accompanied by George Wood, a Cloud Solutions Architect from Microsoft. To register for the session visit here [4].