The urgency behind organisations’ scrabble to launch collaboration and community platforms – with literally days’ notice in some cases – meant traditional planning couldn’t happen, with little time to prepare people, refine purpose, and arrange support and guidance.

As Microsoft’s Satya Nadella explained: “We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.”

A 2021 survey of 1,000 organisations found that 73% had invested in more than one collaboration tool and Microsoft reported a 400% increase in Teams usage from March 2020 to November 2021.

For some, this type of rapid transformation has left them with overlapping channels, inconsistent workarounds and incompatible ways of working, often hindering rather than helping productivity.

Sequel’s Employee Engagement Trends Report 2022 asks how communicators can help businesses balance their corporate and social purposes with strategic objectives while connecting remote teams.

We explore the opportunities and challenges of the Modern Workplace and predict 2022 as the year when communicators finally switch from pause to play and return to a more strategic approach after two years of clamouring to keep up.

The report includes insights from our client work and across the industry as businesses look to make their future workplace modern, purposeful, people-centric, authentic and focused on wellbeing.

Our top 3 tips include:

1. Continue to review and refine your channel mix by making sure everything has a clear purpose and that you use the right channels for the right reasons
2. Invest in training and support to improve employee digital maturity
3. Keep an eye on external trends and learn from them.