At the start of the pandemic, an industry-leading healthcare company was, like so many other companies, forced to undergo changes that resulted in a huge percentage of its employees working remotely. While helping with plans to bring teams back to physical workplaces, one of the company’s CX team design strategists realized that workplace dynamics had changed and were moving toward a future of hybrid work. Returning to past norms would be unlikely. So he was tasked with better understanding what that hybrid future could be.
As companies across the world discussed “returning to work,” the customer experience team at this healthcare company was instead thinking both about the “return,” and about paving a new way forward — a way where remote workers can maintain a high level of productivity and, most importantly, culture. This was especially important for this CX team, which is distributed across many locations in the U.S. and is made up of product management, product design, full stack development, data science, engineering, and strategy.
The design strategist heading this effort tried various tools to make remote work easier. In comparison to other tools, Teamflow was so well received by the team that he immediately knew he had found a solution.
THE CHALLENGE
A sudden shift to fully-remote work left a hole for collaboration and personal connectivity
Before the pandemic, 30% of the healthcare company’s employees worked remotely, with the rest in the office. Starting in March of 2020, Covid forced changes, leaving only a small percentage of employees physically going into the office.
A recent Microsoft study revealed that 73% of workers want to keep working remotely even after the pandemic ends, though 67% say they are craving more in-person time with their teams. The design strategist’s own research at the healthcare company found similar results.
When the CX team went remote, some aspects of their culture made the jump without issue. Scheduled meetings were seamless enough, but spontaneous work — catching people before or after meetings, bumping into colleagues in the hallways, grabbing a coffee together to discuss a project or walking over to someone’s desk to go over a project — all but disappeared.
“With remote work, there’s no spontaneous group behavior at all. So it became forced. We learned that these things, which are integral to the fabric of company culture, have an enormous business value. But they're hard to schedule. So that’s what we’re trying to put back together.”
—Design strategist at leading healthcare company
The design strategist looked for a workaround, particularly as a move back to the office was nearing.
This healthcare company is now moving toward a hybrid work model. Where some companies want everyone to go back to the office, they understand the reasons to go hybrid: hiring advantages, integration of family needs with work, commuting times, cost savings, and more work / life balance. But making the hybrid model work is the key issue.
“Unless you’re the presenter, larger remote meetings make it hard to participate in any meaningful way. That created a kind of digital second-class citizen.”
—Design strategist at leading healthcare company
The design strategist’s goal has been to find a tool that revives spontaneous group interactions and helps level a playing field between people who choose to work in an office and people who choose to work from home.
THE SOLUTION
Recreate in-office interactions while being remote and staying productive
This industry-leading healthcare company started using Teamflow in its CX team to answer a basic question: Does this work?
Since the design strategist had also been trying several other tools to see what worked best, he was able to learn quickly what his team was gravitating to. They enjoyed Teamflow so much that even when they got moved out of it to start testing another tool, they’d make sure they could still maintain access to working in Teamflow.
“It’s very telling. Teamflow found a way to enable communication patterns for our product teams that our existing tools can’t, and it’s created a way for employees to work together that’s low friction and thus hard to give up”
—Design strategist at leading healthcare company
The CX team has built themselves custom working spaces in Teamflow, arranged in a cluster that allows awareness of others and ongoing conversations with close collaborators when needed. The team starts their workday in Teamflow first thing in the morning, meeting for a standup in one of the larger meeting rooms they customized with images of fire on the table, a pun of the FHIR standards at the heart of their work.
“The team is really a cluster of agile working groups. The developers and project managers use Teamflow to keep these smaller work groups organically communicating, like they used to in an office in real life, and we find that it works for both business and socializing. It’s a seamless transition between the two.”
—Design strategist at leading healthcare company
After their standup, the CX team breaks out into individual audio spaces to stay connected all day. The days feel more human and natural.
THE RESULTS
A more efficient, pragmatic future of work
With Teamflow, the healthcare company’s CX team has found it easier to stay connected, collaborate, and get work done.
If the team needs to get together, they don’t have to start a chat or check everyone’s calendar, send an invite, wait until the time of the meeting, then click a link to get in the same place. There’s no going from one tool to another: it’s all in the same space, like when a team is at the office — moving from the stand up room to the common working area to the game room.
“I'm continuing to explore the space and find remarkable capability. The team benefits are clear.”
—Design strategist at leading healthcare company
The design strategist’s goal has been to find a way to put a paddle in the cultural waters to ensure his team can keep moving forward. Drifting was not an option. And now that his team has been using Teamflow, they see there are ways to regain the interactions that were missing from the in-person office days and enable greater value in a hybrid future.
