“Connect every person to the power of the outdoors and engage in the fight to protect it.” That mission may seem ambitious, but not for REI Co-op. The largest consumer cooperative in the United States specializes in camping gear, outdoor apparel, and equipment and boasts 20 million members and 15,000 employees who believe deeply in its mission. “We want to be inclusive and welcome everybody into the outdoors,” says Chris Grey, Director of Engineering, Infrastructure and Cloud Services at REI. “That’s one of the pillars of REI’s culture.”
That shared mission and cooperative culture underpin REI’s move to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to facilitate hybrid work for information workers at the company. “REI has enjoyed substantial growth over the years,” says Joey Northcott, Divisional Vice President of Technology Services at REI. “We were building a large campus in Bellevue, Washington, but we realized a different approach was more in line with our needs. We sold our campus and fully committed to a hybrid work strategy. The fact that we had implemented Microsoft 365 and standardized on Teams helped ensure our success in our new workplace environment.”
“We sold our campus and fully committed to a hybrid work strategy. The fact that we had implemented Microsoft 365 and standardized on Teams helped ensure our success in our new workplace environment.”
Joey Northcott, Divisional Vice President of Technology Services, REI
REI commits to hybrid work with Microsoft Surface Hub and Teams Rooms systems
Information workers at REI spent the following 18 months collaborating from home. “We kept productivity high and accomplished a lot of great innovation working remotely in Teams,” says Northcott. However, when COVID-19 restrictions began to subside and a partial return to the office became possible, REI launched a “Future of Work” group dedicated to creating an updated workplace that aligned with employees’ needs. REI created “satellite nodes,” small offices near areas where employees live, which offer open-concept spaces and Microsoft Teams Rooms systems to promote collaboration. “Open collaboration areas make up a big percentage of the new spaces,” continues Northcott. “We use Teams Rooms and Surface Hub devices to facilitate collaboration and Microsoft Bookings to help employees reserve desk space, which we call hoteling.” Even the company’s CEO is forgoing a private office in favor of bookable workspace in the satellite nodes.
REI leaders chose Teams Rooms systems with Surface Hub 2S and Crestron devices to create a rich collaboration experience for employees, whether they join remotely or in person. “We want to make it feel like everyone is together in the same physical space,” says Grey. “The Surface Hub 2S is purpose-built for the Teams Rooms environment and using it helps us create a level playing field between remote and in-person participants.” Northcott adds, “In the past, if you weren’t in the room for a meeting, you could feel forgotten. We’re using multicamera setups and Surface Hub devices to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
For Dominique Morel, Divisional Vice President of Expertise at REI, the right hardware is key to creating an effective hybrid workplace, and the Surface Hub 2S has become a stand-out piece of collaboration technology. At REI, Surface Hubs are mounted on mobile easels and equipped with portable battery packs so hybrid teams can meet anywhere without worrying about time limitations. “After we debuted Surface Hub 2S and the new collaborative hybrid workspaces, we heard a lot from people about how much they appreciated the experience and our willingness to include them regardless of their location,” she says.
REI recently launched Microsoft Viva Insights to help employees understand their work habits and make informed choices about how to be productive and avoid burnout. “I use Viva Insights to help me schedule focus time in my calendar,” says Northcott. “It helps me stay productive and reduce back-to-back meetings every day.”
“The Surface Hub 2S is purpose-built for the Teams Rooms environment and using it helps us create a level playing field between remote and in-person participants.”
Chris Grey, Director of IT Infrastructure Engineering Services, REI
Embracing hybrid work and downsizing office space also aligns with REI’s sustainability goals. “By using Teams for a more flexible approach to work, we help keep 1,500 people off the road every day,” says Northcott. “Sustainability was a driver for changing how we work.”
“By using Teams for a more flexible approach to work, we help keep 1,500 people off the road every day. Sustainability was a driver for changing how we work.”
Joey Northcott, Divisional Vice President of Enterprise Technology Services, REI
When REI established smaller, collaborative office spaces throughout the Seattle area, it replaced its legacy phone system with Teams Phone. “We rolled out Teams Phone capabilities to the entire company,” says Northcott. “Having everyone on a single voice interaction has been a big unlock for the whole company and supports employee productivity wherever they choose to work.”
Adopting unified collaboration tools to bring colleagues closer together
Prior to Teams Phone, REI lacked the means to connect the whole company. “We were fragmented when it came to communications,” says Grey. “We wanted a more unified approach and felt Teams had the most capabilities under one umbrella.”
REI moved to Teams just a few months before switching to remote work in response to business interruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Company leaders worked with the Teams Engineering Group, the Microsoft FastTrack for Microsoft 365 team, and Affirma, member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to roll out the tool and help expand employees’ ability to communicate. “In Teams meetings, we share screens and use Whiteboard, the raise-hand feature, and emojis,” says Northcott. REI leaders also use Teams live events for all-company updates and information sessions. “We host communications and employee gatherings in new ways now that we have Teams,” says Northcott.
“We were fragmented when it came to communications. We wanted a more unified approach and felt Teams had the most capabilities under one umbrella.”
Chris Grey, Director of IT Infrastructure Engineering Services, REI
Adopting Teams brought globally dispersed colleagues across REI closer together. “The employees in our office in Shenzhen, China, spend a lot of time traveling to different areas of the country,” says Northcott. “Their travel and the time difference made it difficult for them to interact with US colleagues. Teams has been hugely beneficial for connecting our global workforce.” Employees based in China now use Teams meetings to share and collaborate on documents via OneDrive in real time.
REI’s hybrid work strategy, supported by Teams, has also opened new recruiting possibilities. “We used to operate a sole call center in Sumner, Washington, where our agents worked in person,” says Northcott. “When we went fully remote with Teams, all those agents began to work from home. That freedom and flexibility has allowed us to hire outside the Puget Sound area.” A more geographically diverse workforce helps create a competitive advantage, says Morel. “Enlisting perspectives across the country gives us a much broader perspective so that we can be more relevant to the customers throughout the country,” she says.
Boosting innovation in a hybrid setting
To ensure that employees working in a hybrid setting don’t miss out on spontaneous meetings that yield innovative ideas, REI worked with the Microsoft Modern Work Customer Co-Innovation team to create a custom app in Teams called “Converge." The app will help employees working in satellite nodes find out who is scheduled to work at which location and how long it will take to get there. “Employees use the Room Finder feature in Outlook to book space in any of our satellite nodes,” says Northcott. “The Converge app will help facilitate interactions between colleagues who collaborate together digitally and help new employees make connections. It’s really exciting to use Microsoft technology to keep building our culture of collaboration in a hybrid workplace.” The Converge app, which employees pin in Teams, will also help prompt employees to spend time socializing together after the workday is over. “One aspect of Converge is pretty fun,” says Ryan Stoughton, Principal Business Systems Analyst at REI. “Using a map, folks can check nearby restaurants and locations such as parks and outdoor facilities and then book a space, whether that’s for a team lunch or a happy hour after work.”
“It’s really exciting to use Microsoft technology to keep building our culture of collaboration in a hybrid workplace.”
Joey Northcott, Divisional Vice President of Enterprise Technology Services, REI
Encouraging citizen developers to build solutions with Microsoft Power Platform
REI is supporting a budding citizen developer movement at the company, using Microsoft Power Platform to make it possible. “We have just introduced something called Power Camp,” says Grey. “We introduce employees to Microsoft Power Platform to give them tools they can use to solve business problems themselves.”
Grey has high hopes for the potential solutions that retail workers and corporate employees will create using Microsoft Power Platform. “By giving our community the ability to build low-code apps, we are empowering employees to improve their experiences and, by extension, our customers’ experiences,” he says.
Using Microsoft security tools to keep remote work simple and highly secure
Behind REI’s hybrid workplace and citizen developer program is a focus on security. “We always make sure we prioritize security with a great user experience,” says Grey. “The security inherent in Microsoft 365 and Teams has helped us reduce the need for remote employees to constantly use VPNs.” Today, employees sign in using Microsoft Azure Active Directory multifactor authentication.
REI also uses Microsoft Teams Connect capabilities to simplify how employees collaborate with external parties in Teams. “With Teams Connect, we collaborate confidently outside the company,” says Grey. The company considers Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Intune key to its strategy for protecting mobile devices. “Moving to Microsoft 365 has helped us give employees more opportunities to use personal devices and gain additional capabilities to help keep them secure,” says Northcott.
Maintaining culture while transforming how people work
After reacting quickly to the challenges of the pandemic, and making some bold changes along the way, REI is ready to embrace a new way of working.
“Because of our aspirations and shared values, REI attracts really passionate employees,” says Northcott. “People value the open, collaborative culture here, and we’re using Microsoft tools to make sure that culture endures even in a hybrid work environment.”
“Moving to Microsoft 365 has helped us give employees more opportunities to use personal devices and gain additional capabilities to help keep them secure.”
Joey Northcott, Divisional Vice President of Enterprise Technology Services, REI
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