Can we work in sweatpants and still be productive?
Are you enjoying working from home in sweatpants? If the answer to question is yes, then I have good news for you. This working from home situation isn’t about to end anytime soon. A recent Gartner study found that 82% of companies plan to allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time (1) .
The bad news is that project teams might not be as productive. According to research (2) , project teams that are most likely to succeed at working remotely are those where the team members have worked with others at the office before, have similar work styles, like one another, have access to high-end technology that helps them collaborate, and are skilled at using that technology. Many teams don’t have all of these attributes.
Here is one example of why project teams might not be reaching their full potential. Organizations often use multiple technologies to manage project information. They have one solution with structured project data: what work needs to be done, when is it due, and who is responsible for the work. And they have another solution for unstructured collaboration. What happens when there is information in different tools? There is confusion, frustration, and lack of productivity.
So, what can be done about this? ServiceNow is working to make project teams more productive. The PPM Collaboration app (available in the ServiceNow Store) has been enhanced and now allows teams to sync their project information from ServiceNow to Microsoft Teams. The PPM Collaboration app (first introduced last August in the ServiceNow Store with integration to Slack) has been enhanced and now also allows teams to sync their project information from ServiceNow to Microsoft Teams.
Here’s how it works. Once a project is created in ServiceNow, the project manager can click a button to create a Microsoft Teams channel for that project. When this is done, as people are assigned to project tasks in ServiceNow…they will automatically get added to the Teams channel. Details about risks, issues, actions, and decisions from ServiceNow can all be sent to Microsoft Teams. ServiceNow will send a daily project update to Teams with the current project status along with tasks that are due that day as well as late tasks.
By proactively sharing information between ServiceNow and Microsoft Teams, we are helping project teams be more productive in this age of working from home…even in sweatpants.
For more information on the PPM Collaboration app please see the ServiceNow docs site.
(1) Gartner Survey Reveals 82% of Company Leaders Plan to Allow Employees to Work Remotely Some of the Time, Mary Baker, July 2020
(2) How To Make Distance Work Work, Judith Olsen, Gary Olsen, April 2014
