Why digital collaborative work is not the same
By: Vanessa Malke
Tags: Collaboration, Miro, Digitalization, Work From Home, Workshop

The words digitalization, Digital Transformation and all busswords around it have been around for quite some time now. But in my eyes these terms came really for everyone to live these past weeks and days. The crisis which is caused by the Corona COVID-19 impacts the lifes of everyone. As of right now most of us are also impacted in our business life since offices are shut down and employees sent into homeoffice.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Homeoffices and virtual work

As mentioned earlier the ideas of digitalization are not new. That´s why most of the companys are able to still operate at some level. Office workers can work from home and can use their office devices for their tasks and to communicate with each other. But not everyone is used to work from a homeoffice and is used to the change of communication and collaboration. Therefor it is, in my opinion, important to enable employees not only with hardware but also with software and skills in order to work best together. There are plenty of good tools out there that help to stay in touch, to collaborate and to do the work. Make sure your employees have access to these tools and find some kind of super users that can help others to learn how to use these tools.

But what about collaborative works such as Workshops?

As described homeoffice is possible and manageable for most of the employees. It needs some time to adjust but in the end most of the office workers will be able to fulfill daily business. But especially when you think about running projects, collaborative workstreams, workshops with external partners etc, most of us have no experience with running these workshops and stream totally virtual. In my opinion these interactive and collaborative tasks can be done virtual as good as on site — with adjustments.

Think about a scheduled on site workshop: Since you must take visitors from outside in account you try to squeeze as much as possible into one day and into one workshop. Everybody has to clear their calendar for a whole day — which sometimes seems impossible these days.

Now think about a virtual, interactive workshop where no one needs to travel neither everyone has to clear a complete day. Instead of a big workshop day you can split it into manageable pieces where you have virtual collaboration mixed with self-directed activity. You can use virtual breakout rooms where a group of people collaborate and present the results afterwards. And when it comes to interactive elements you can use virtual whiteboards such as mural.co, Microsoft Whiteboard (for basic whiteboarding) or Miro.

Last but not least a few words regarding methodology

Do not try to use the same methods 1:1 which you normally use during on site workshops. Think about how you can transform these methods into digital formats and how you can gain advantages out of this. Maybe also try to think about “new” workshop formats to enable everyone to work collaborative and interactive together.

This list is by far not finished but as a first overview I like to leave it like this. I´m happy to discuss this topic with you and happy to get input, ideas and opinions.