Go Team(s!!)

Some people might have been caught by surprise a bit recently when emails and notifications started pinging around saying Skype is going to be replaced by Microsoft Teams. If you personally or professionally use the messaging service, then it might be a bit of a shock that your method of communicating with everyone is going to suddenly shut down.

But what is Teams? And what are you meant to do with it?

Teams is basically like Skype but there’s a load of new collaborative functions to play around with and the whole thing has more of a group chat, ‘Whatsapp’ feel to it. It is still designed for work, there’s a range of apps to choose from that vary from very serious spreadsheets and scheduling tools to some more fun things like polls and picture sharing. Plus, you can design the groups they each bolt on to so it best reflects your particular organisation’s structure and culture.

I think that if Skype was like a very functional phone switchboard churning away in the basement of industry, then Teams is like suddenly getting trendy smartphones to hand round and make the factory feel like some sort of Google office or a cool, virtual coffee shop.

The truth is that the handover has actually been a long-term plan, and instead of suddenly shutting down, the Skype platform will hand itself over around the world to the new digital communication app allegedly completely seamlessly.

Why should I CARE about Teams?

We are aware that Teams replacing Skype has been planned for a while because of an innovation project we completed in association with Skills for Care . We at Manor Community are now well seasoned experts in all the possibilities and pitfalls of setting up Microsoft Teams for Health and Social Care, and we have developed an easy to pick up and use guide for any provider to install Teams in their organisation. Details of the project are available in our innovator’s page and case study, but plans are being made to get the instruction guide we have made (that is both fully informed by practical experience and appropriate for a range of accessibilities) available online free and instantly.

The Good, The Bad and The Difficult.

Like anything new (and digital), it did take a little playing around to get the hang of how Teams was going to work. However, once you have a feel for the functions and who should be in what group chats, then it can quite quickly and easily be put in place for people to start chatting like they would on Skype, email or text.

Some of the apps and hardware confused things a bit. But again, once a little playing around happened then it wasn’t much work to start people doing some of the more proper tasks (like making funny backgrounds come up on video calls). Setting it up for the clients will depend completely on the specific needs of those receiving an organisation’s services, although there are a couple options to work with to speed up how to appropriately and safely get everyone involved in digital conversations and online group activities.

Participation is the difficult part. It takes a dedicated small team to get Microsoft Teams ready for your whole team. So, if even some of your team do know Teams, the others may need some prompting to get in the habit of understanding and using the new digital communications platform regularly.

Summary

Generally, Teams is simply a more informal and fun version of Skype, it is fairly easy to navigate and offers a few ways to do some genuinely interesting things. It does require some tailoring to your specific context. There will be massive benefits to all communications being brought together into one place, rather than having confused texts, emails and messages flying around, although Microsoft are open about the development progress still being ongoing to make the evolution from Skype as beneficial as possible.

However, if it is done right then the horizontal structure, open nature and intricate tools do make this platform a properly powerful opportunity to let more varied voices and diverse groups contribute to decisions and cultures across all of social care. It can strengthen people’s voices across the industry, particularly those voices who should absolutely be listened to the most but are often listened to the least. This could happen instantly and easily for everyone, injecting co-production right into all the little decisions and actions that make up our routines. Either way, they’re binning Skype so you might have to get on board anyway!!