New Ways of Working: D365 connecting Defence Team members from across the country

January 21, 2022 - Defence Stories

In April 2021, when Diana Montgomery joined the Learning and Career Centre’s (LCC) team within Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources-Civilian) in Greenwood, NS, it wasn’t long before she felt like she belonged. “When I first started, one of my colleagues, Jayson, who's out in Edmonton sort of just reached out to me to say, ‘Hi, you're new, welcome. Let's set up a time to chat.’” Diana and Jayson were able to introduce themselves using Microsoft Teams on the Defence 365 (D365) platform. “It was really wonderful because I wasn't expecting to be able to connect with people in that way.”

Since the pandemic began, working from home has made making connections with co-workers challenging, but Diana’s team has found a way to informally connect and check-in using Teams. “So all of us that are out in the Atlantic region, we have a chat. It's kind of our virtual water cooler,” she says. “One of my colleagues hops on [the chat] first thing every morning and shares a little picture of, like, ‘Good morning’, with a sunset or pretty garden or a cute puppy or something. And we all talk about how our day was and how our weekend was.”

Besides the relational aspect of Teams, Diana has also found it invaluable in her work. As a training facilitator she can lead up to seven sessions a week with an average of 20 participants per session. She often uses Teams’ features to better engage her audience. “We've started using the polls feature a lot. It's really helpful for getting feedback from participants in our sessions and to make the sessions a little more interactive.”

A year and a half into the pandemic, the LCC has made Teams a part of how their team operates. “I think overall, for myself and most of our team, if we ever returned to the office full time and Teams went away, we'd be lost.” In addition to helping with her work, Teams has helped bring back some of the relationship building between colleagues. “Our experience of working together has really become enriched by using Teams.”