6 Steps to Successfully Introduce Your Hybrid Team to a New Tool

If you’ve ever used the phrase ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,’ you probably don’t work in tech. 

Thousands of apps and tools are released every day, focused not just on fixing problems, but on optimizing the solutions.

As a business, it's your responsibility to ensure that your team has the best tools and resources available to them in order to achieve their goals. 

However, tools that optimize and improve the processes already in place can be particularly difficult to introduce to your team. Over 70% of digital transformations fail to reach their goals.

The reasons for this range from a fear of failure to not understanding the benefits. Add to this the obstacle of a hybrid workplace, and introducing a new tool can feel like an impossible task.

The good news is, it’s not. You just need to have a strategy and execution plan to make the rollout successful no matter where employees are located. 

Keep reading for our six-step process for introducing your hybrid team to a new tool.

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Why is it Difficult to Convince Teams to Adopt New Tools?

Unless you have a concrete problem to solve, introducing new tools can be met with questions; Do we really need this? Is it worth the effort to learn? How is it going to help me? 

Most employees need convincing of new tools when the practice they already have, or tools they currently use work, but isn’t optimal.

For example, as a hybrid workspace management tool, we see thousands of customers come to us because they are currently using a spreadsheet to book into the office. 

Does the spreadsheet work? Technically, yes. Is there an easier way to book into the office? Absolutely. 

For those not managing or running the spreadsheet, there isn’t a vast amount of difference in the effort it takes to book in on either tool. This causes friction when it comes to adoption rates because employees often don’t know or understand the change.

To help roll out a new tool, you need to help people understand the benefits, set expectations, and build habits.

Follow the steps below to avoid running into difficulty when you decide to introduce a new tool to your hybrid team.

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6 Steps to Successfully Introduce Your Hybrid Team to a New Tool

As the person researching and implementing a new tool, it’s easy to prioritize finding the right one over encouraging the team to use it.

Use these steps to cover both, and include your team from the beginning to increase the chances of success.

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1. Request Recommendations From Your Team

It’s unsurprising that employees want to have input in the decisions that impact them. 

However, having employee input is not only valuable to them – requesting recommendations from your team also provides you with insights into their needs and preferences.

As a decision-maker, what you want and expect from a tool may not always be what’s right for your team, so finding out what is and isn’t essential for them is an important part of the research process.

Speak to people both in the office and working remotely. We previously discussed the very real issue of proximity bias, and prioritizing the opinions of those in the office is a perfect example of what not to do. 

Involving your team near and far is a great way to foster a sense of collaboration and ownership.  This will also lead to greater adoption and enthusiasm when the tool is later rolled out. 

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2. Find a Tool that’s Simple to Use

Ideally, you’re introducing a tool that’s going to make people’s lives easier. 

However, as a hybrid team, the chances are you’re already even more reliant on apps and tools for everyday processes.

If this is the case, it’s even more important to ensure any new tools are quick to pick up.

You should try to prioritize simple, effective tools over extensive tools that offer solutions you simply don’t need – and luckily, you won’t be short of options. 

The chances are there are extensions and integrations that can easily be added to your current catalog with minimal effort.

Slack has a directory full of apps that can be added to its platform, so your team isn’t learning a brand-new interface. Similarly, Chrome has extensions that can be added to your Google account and Microsoft Teams has its own apps that can be integrated too.

In short, don’t overcomplicate something that has an easy answer.

3. Demonstrate How it will Benefit Your Team

By far the most important part of introducing a new tool to your team, is to outline how it’s going to benefit them.

If your employees can’t see or understand why they’ve been introduced to a new piece of technology, they’re not going to put the effort in to pick it up.

To avoid this, outline the following when you’re introducing them to it:

• Why you’ve been searching for a new tool or piece of technology
  Is it because your team has grown? Is the old process too slow? Do you have new goals or needs as a business?
  
  
• What the goal is overall
  Do you need to improve collaboration? Are you looking to increase office attendance? Do you want to improve project handovers between teams?
  
  
• How it’s going to help them achieve this?
  What’s going to improve if they adopt this tool? Is it more thorough? Is it easier to access? Does it quicken the process?
  
  

Employees both want and deserve to understand the ROI of their time and energy in learning a new tool. If you’ve chosen the right one, it should be easy to justify.

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4. Lead by Example to Build Awareness Around the New Tool

If you or senior management aren’t using the tool, you can hardly expect your team to adopt it. 

Having those in senior positions use the tool and show enthusiasm for it is a powerful way to encourage usage. It demonstrates solidarity by showing you understand what you’re asking of employees, influencing adoption. 

It also sets the expectation that using the new tool isn’t negotiable. If you request senior management to get to grips with it before rolling it out to the wider team, you’ve demonstrated that it’s worth everyone’s time to learn how to use it. 

This also provides employees with support if they need help learning or understanding how to use it. 

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5. Encourage Habit-Forming to Increase Adoption 

It’s important to make sure nobody is left out of important information on how to use the tool; don’t limit demonstrations to in-person meetings if half of your team is working from home. 

Create reminders, schedule training for those who want a walk-through of how to use it, and make the new tool a necessary part of everyone’s routine.

Studies have shown that people need to complete an action 66 times before it comes a habit. Once you’ve built that habit, however, it’s hard to break.

Whether it’s booking into the office or opening a new app first thing in the morning, at the start of rolling out the new tool you need to step up and ensure they create the habit of using it.

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6. Measure Usage and Collect Feedback

You need to analyze both the usage and the feedback itself to make sure opinions on your tool are unbiased. Until then, nothing should be absolute.

If there’s a slow or low adoption rate, look at what could be impacting this and ask questions to help make it easier for employees to learn the new tool.

Do they need extra training? Would they like more time in their day to learn it? Or is it simply not a better way of doing things?

For feedback, ensure you’re gathering information from a wide variety of people, roles, and locations.

Allow time for employees to get to grips with the new tool before collecting opinions.  Answers gathered days after the tool is rolled out are bound to differ from answers gathered weeks or months after.

If you’re receiving the same notes, good or bad, it’s generally a sign that everyone is on the same page.

Introducing a New Tool Doesn’t Need to be a Challenge

Adopting a new tool is one of the easiest ways to optimize your business processes. Follow the steps above to help your hybrid team understand and adopt your new tool.

We built Officely with simplicity in mind so that employees could build habits and seamlessly add its usage into their daily routine. It’s why we live in Slack, a platform your team already knows how to use.

Watch our demo on how Officely shows everyone who’s in the office and what’s happening, so your team has a reason to make the commute.