6 examples of how Google Workspace changes your employees’ lives and improves your organisation

With the Coronavirus pandemic, many companies experienced huge problems in maintaining their activity. In many cases, these problems arose from not having management and productivity tools on the cloud that enabled teleworking, without the required features or even the levels of security needed in these circumstances. In this context, employees’ frustration built up and organisations increasingly realised the importance of the engagement of their workforce.

The lesson was clear: companies saw how important it is to trust productivity tools that enable them to develop hybrid working models (combining teleworking and face-to-face working), which help to achieve business success but also enable them to be flexible to their employees’ demands and thereby achieve their well-being.

According to Google in their recent guide Create what’s next: The future of collaboration and productivity, organisations that want to boost their productivity and collaboration capacities must commit to three basic strategies:

• Make working from anywhere a reality with flexible solutions
• Give people useful tools to maximise their impact
• Enable the exchange of knowledge and human connection

Applying these three strategies, companies can improve productivity and encourage innovation while also better satisfying the current and future needs of their customers and employees.

Flexible collaboration = increased engagement and productivity

Digital employees want to work autonomously, but without this meaning they are isolated from other people within the organisation. For that reason, they value concepts such as collaboration and flexibility, and believe that team work leads to a greater productivity and more solid results (Google’s study confirms this).

With collaboration increasingly present, forward-looking companies are making decisions to: 

• Reward group efforts
• Encourage communication and coordination between departments
• Move from hierarchical models of management to networks of teams

Now that we are in a more global and connected world, both companies and new collaboration tools must enable employees to participate without obstacles or limitations in terms of location, role, experience, language or device. Having features such as subtitles in various languages in video conferences, or the ability to change between devices without negatively affecting the experience, helps to strengthen equity of collaboration.

With the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, the general tendency is that both employees and organisations seek much more flexible collaboration models than they did before.

Technological tools are constantly evolving to respond to this need and anticipate potential future requirements, as is the case with the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) productivity and collaboration suite.

This solutions enables geographically distant teams to work together as one team, thanks to video conferences (for example, Google Meet) where members interact face to face, as well as digital whiteboards which support team brainstorming sessions.

According to a study by Google, in this flexibilization process towards teleworking and hybrid working models, organisations are offering their employees video conferencing tools (81%), new IT equipment (74%) and connectivity tools such as virtual private networks (VPN) or mobile devices (73%).

Examples of improvement with Google Workspace

Example 1. Poorly children

Situation: Your child is ill and you need to look after him/her at home.

Without flexible collaboration tools: It used to be common for a mother or father responsible for looking after the child to miss a day of work, and to have to get up to date with what they had missed when they returned to the office.

With flexible collaboration tools: Looking after a poorly child does not mean missing a day of work and having to take on more work on return to the office. Quite the opposite. The employee can continue with their normal activity remotely, for example, taking part in crucial video conferences while the child rests.

Example 2. Training teams that are geographically distant

Situation: It is necessary to deliver business training to the company’s teams that are based in different offices.

Without flexible collaboration tools: The person responsible for training used to have to physically travel to the different offices, losing working days on travelling and suffering from fatigue accumulation.

With flexible collaboration tools: Thanks to tools like Google Meet and from their own place of work, the trainer can deliver the training at the same time to all of the employees from the different offices. This tool makes it possible to check their reactions and respond to queries in real time. The trainer increases their engagement with the organisation, and the company saves a significant amount of money in travel.

Example 3. Various people working on the same document

Situation: Members of a work team have to edit the same document.

Without flexible collaboration tools: This document used to be circulated by email to multiple addresses, which would lead to chaos in controlling the versions and the final document to be delivered.

With flexible collaboration tools: A solution like Google Docs allows several people to work on a shared document, and it automatically tracks the changes. That way, there is no need to constantly send the document by email or rename the different versions.

Example 4. Participation in meetings

Situation: It is hard to get employees to join meetings, and organising a meeting takes a long time.

Without flexible collaboration tools: The organiser usually has to spend a significant amount of time organising the meeting, and those invited are not always guaranteed to attend.

With flexible collaboration tools: Google Workspace’s communication tools enable meetings to be organised easily, even immediate meetings through a chat conversation when the need arises. These tools quickly and easily turn direct messages and group chats into video calls.

Example 5. Communication between employees from different hierarchical levels or  

offices

Situation: Communication between workers from different workplaces or even different hierarchical levels is anecdotal.

Without flexible collaboration tools: There are hardly any opportunities for communication between employees from different groups or offices.

With flexible collaboration tools: Tools like Google Meet (Video conference) and Google Chat (group chats) help employees to connect with each other, regardless of their rank in the hierarchy or their geographical location. This fact encourages the involvement of employees in the company’s project and brings the teams together.

Example 6. Decision-making based on collaboration

Situation: It is necessary to make a fast and joint decision, but it is difficult to get the employees involved.

Without flexible collaboration tools: Given that joint decision-making is so difficult, the opinion of one of the members is taken as a reference. This might not be in line with the general opinion of the group members, which poses a risk.

With flexible collaboration tools: Google Workspace’s communication tools, such as Google Meet, enable an employee to give different options to select and start to collect votes in a question of seconds. The voting system is much more dynamic and attractive for all members of the group, so decision-making occurs much more quickly and in line with the overall feeling of the team.

At Intelligence Partner, as a Premier Partner of Google, we have accumulated significant expertise in Google Workspace. We know and have confirmed in several projects that this is a solution that improves the way organisations work, encouraging collaboration at all levels and which represents a significant milestone in their digital transformation process.

Our experts are here to show you the huge advantages of Google Workspace for your organisation, your employees and, even, your business model.

Don’t miss this opportunity and contact us!