Reed innovates with Microsoft Surface & Teams Phone to improve working life

Improving lives through work

Reed is the largest family-owned recruitment business in the world. The UK company specialises across 20 different sectors of recruitment, with a mission to improve lives through work and to help work to work better for everyone. 

This commitment extends through everything the company does, including in its technology choices. Simon Baddeley, CIO at Reed, explains, “We were very desk-based and very desk-tied; it made us understand that we needed to innovate; we needed to change our platform.” 

To move away from the existing desk-tied scenario, the team at Reed recognised the potential of digitalisation to improve flexibility, agility and convenience for staff. It invested in transformation across both the end user devices, and the underlying platforms – including upgrading its staff’s end-user devices with 4,000 new Microsoft Surface devices for co-members.  

Simon Baddeley says, “Not only are they powerful devices that really give us the whole desktop at our fingertips, they’ve modernised the way we approach the world of work.” 

Reducing the burden on IT support

Switching to Microsoft Surface has streamlined operations for the IT team. The technology element of new-starter onboarding used to take an hour. With the new Surface devices, this has been reduced to 15 minutes. The new devices are intuitive and well-integrated with the rest of the Microsoft product suite used by the business, so they are easy to use and to manage. 

As well as streamlining the onboarding process, the new devices have reduced the burden on the IT support team. The number of support tickets per head has fallen by 55 percent.

Tight integration with Microsoft 365 and Teams streamlines work 

The tight integration with the Microsoft 365 product suite has aided users too; boosting productivity across the business. 

“Planner, OneNote, Teams recording, all those things have just changed our life,” reports Mary Knock, Senior Executive Area Manager at Reed. “Teams Phone has been a real joy. Being able to get hold of candidates quickly and being able to have a virtual call with them has alleviated the problem of people having to come into the office.” 

Switching to Microsoft Teams Phone has enabled Reed to cut that final cord with its former desk-tied model of operating. The need for physical desk phones has been eliminated, so staff are truly free to work from wherever they want, when it suits them. 

“We can call from anywhere and receive calls from anywhere,” explains Simon Baddeley. “It makes logging in and out of call queues much, much easier than it was previously and we’re able to diversify out into virtual call centres in a way we weren’t able to before.” 

Morale is better than ever

“Our productivity has gone through the roof. We’re actually 50 percent more productive than we were in 2019,” states Ian Nicholas, Global Managing Director at Reed. “As well as the fact we are much more productive, our co-members are happier now than they’ve ever been. Morale has never been higher in the business and that’s really important because we want to attract the best talent and also retain the best talent.” 

The success is spurring on the team at Reed to innovate further so it can continue to deliver on its mission to improve lives through work. 

Simon Baddeley states, “This is very much the start of our digital transformation. We see opportunities across business apps and the Power Platform, working alongside Microsoft as an absolutely key partner.” 

The switch to Microsoft has provided the solid foundation for this digital transformation journey, delivering the agility, flexibility and tight integration with key tools necessary to move away from the desk-tied model to a new way of working.  

“When you think about the place of work now, it’s not just an office,” explains Henry Lee. “It’s that device in front of you; that’s the window into the business.”