7 Reasons Why SharePoint Intranet Can Help Your Remote Teams Work Better
Because of the constant connectivity of today’s workforce, the idea of a rigid 9-to-5 office is beginning to sound archaic.
Thanks to advanced communication and collaboration tools available in today’s digital workplace, people can now work anywhere they choose.
There is always communication between teams, but physical proximity is no longer necessary for them to function well.
Remote Employment is the Work of the Future
Even though it’s unlikely that brick-and-mortar workplaces will go away anytime soon, the rise of the telecommuting workforce is undeniable. Currently, 38% of American workers do some or all of their jobs from part. That number is only expected to grow as communication and collaboration technologies work to advance at a rapid time. Workers in remote locations may include:
- Employees, either full-time or part-time, who perform periodic work away from the office
- Workers that are entirely remote from their workplace environment, whether full-time or part-time
- Freelancers, consultants, and contractors that work independently, either whole or part-time
There are several reasons why companies that don’t offer flexible work choices struggle to compete. When companies aren’t limited by geography, they have more freedom to find and hire the greatest people. Companies are learning the hard way that giving workers more control over their schedules and working conditions results in happier, more productive workers, which positively affects the bottom line.
There has been rapid development in the digital workplace, with sophisticated tools for communication and collaboration empowering employees to work in whichever manner and location they see fit. While it is still essential for teams to work together, physically being in the same place is no longer necessary, given the prevalence of constant connectivity.
Despite its many advantages, the remote workforce is still in its infancy, and many companies have yet to figure out how to maximize its potential for productivity and employee engagement. Collaboration software and practices that put teams in the same position to be productive and company-centric, whether at the office, at home in pajamas, or halfway around the world, are essential to the success of a remote workforce.
This is where SharePoint comes in. SharePoint is one of the most successful enterprise-level collaboration platforms in the world. Over the past two decades, Microsoft saw SharePoint grow to over 100 million users around the world.
Microsoft 365 SharePoint Intranet has the tools your employees need to boost your productivity. Below we share how to get the most out of your Microsoft 365 license when you use a SharePoint-based intranet to improve productivity and communication among your remote team.
7 Reasons why SharePoint Intranet is for Your Remote Teams
1. Clear Communication- Share news instantly and stay informed
Your corporate intranet can become a virtual hub where your team meets to communicate effectively.
SharePoint has the features and flexibility to customize the platform to mold this to your business needs. You can choose among various plug-in and play add-ins, workflows, and other widgets for your corporate intranet page. These tools can help your remote teams instantly search, store, or secure key company data. The portal helps companies disseminate information across your organization. This helps you organize information, people, and projects.
You can also use SharePoint Add-ins like the Employee Directory as a central directory for your organization. People can easily search for employees’ information and share their contact details, skill sets, and current project lists. You can embed the add-in on your corporate intranet to connect your staff.
Other add-ins like News Ticker and RSS Viewer share the latest news and snippets related to your company or industry. This helps your remote teams stay informed about changes in your organization.
2. A Great Collaboration Tool
It is vital to ensure Your remote team works together as a group collaborating on projects. SharePoint helps collaborators change documents simultaneously without delay. Co-authoring is a great way to get real-time feedback on your work and ideas.
Also, SharePoint lists serve as project management tools to help remote teams collaborate more effectively. Remote team members can review the list of outstanding tasks, check deadlines, and dependencies, and communicate accordingly with concerned team members.
Furthermore, we developed advanced collaboration add-ins like the SharePoint Knowledge Management add-in. It is a digital repository that stores your key company information. You can use the Knowledge Management add-in to share:
- Policies and procedures
- FAQs
- Best practices
- Document templates
- Project requirement data, etc.
Finally, employees can ask questions in real-time. Employees who are authorized to answer get email notifications about a new question on the platform.
Depending on the privacy of the question, the answer can be privately emailed as well as publicly published if you wish. This add-in can also be easily embedded on your corporate intranet as a widget.
3. Central document repository
SharePoint is awesome when it comes to storing crucial documents. They have an advanced search feature to ensure users can find the data they uploaded.
With SharePoint, you can share documents and files with your remote team at any given time from wherever you are on any device you choose to use.
These documents can be in formats like Word, Excel, PDF, image, or videos. You can also set user permissions for accessing, downloading, or editing these documents thus also setting up a secured system for storage of the crucial company files.
4. Encourage ideas
Your remote team members may not be close physically, but it is important to never underestimate their ability to work together when it comes to innovative ideas.
Your intranet is a central platform where team members can post their innovative ideas, chats, pictures and more. By sharing this information, they can build their relationship, and improve employee engagement.
5. Intranet in your pocket
As companies adopt a mobile work environment it’s increasingly important for employees to have access to business content, anywhere they work, no matter the time of day or device.
With SharePoint Mobile and SharePoint Online, you can use your device to access company data from anywhere in the world. This means you can open, review, and edit documents with colleagues even when you’re not in the office. Note: To keep this digital environment secure, it is only accessible with a specific login URL and the right credentials.
Conclusion
Remote working has become the new normal for many organizations. Because it is still new for many companies, they are learning how to master this new organizational setup.
A robust and intuitive SharePoint intranet can help your team ease into this type of work scenario. Let’s start building a connected workplace for our remote teams and boost their productivity and collaboration with the best-in-class Intranet. Check out our SharePoint Intranet Examples here or contact us today. We are here to answer any questions you have on how to set up your intranet.