Many employees are still emailing spreadsheets, storing them on their local drives or on a network share and wasting precious time looking for the “right” version of that customer presentation. This is the reality of the employee experience in every industry around the world. Collectively as change and IT professionals we have failed our employees by not imbuing them with desire for digital literacy. Now that we have accepted this fact, we can move to rectify the situation.

A common mistake in user adoption programs is to tout the benefits of moving to the cloud from the perspective of the organization or its IT department. These are not motivating factors for most employees. Employees are paid to drive results in a particular discipline and so we must share with them how changes like the implementation of Microsoft Teams or other collaboration and communication solutions will benefit them.

First and foremost, we can reduce their interaction with IT. Properly governed Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 workloads can support a self-service mode. This allows employees to create project teams on-demand and when they need them. This reduction of friction with IT and IT services is a capability that will allow you to deliver a more secure environment for your company data by reducing your employee’s reliance on consumer and shadow software. Other benefits like anytime/anywhere access can often sound to an employee like, “I have to work anytime and anywhere.” Instead show the benefit of answering an important chat while in-between customers or while picking up your children from school (though not while driving!). The ability to meet the demands of today’s pace of business is essential but so is making sure you attend to family responsibilities. Supporting a secure, mobile workforce with elegant software can address these needs.

Part of your core message can be to acknowledge that your employees are fundamentally trying to do a great job. They want to collaborate more seamlessly and deliver a great experience to your customers. It is the job of IT, change, and business leaders to design systems that will melt into the background of this primary goal. But first, we must weave appreciation for our employees into the change dialog.