For years, organizations have been actively navigating how to improve hybrid work for all employees. While going back to the office on a hybrid schedule is more common today, a majority of workers, including 58% of executives, 55% of managers and 43% of entry-level workers, identify balancing productivity as the biggest challenge of hybrid work.
With this being the top concern, Lucid Software’s Hybrid Workplace Whiplash Survey of more than 2,500 knowledge workers discovered that companies have tried to address productivity concerns by expanding their tech stacks, with 45% of workers using five or more tools to complete assignments and get their jobs done. But nearly half (44%) of workers aren’t satisfied with the tools their company offers when it comes to collaboration.
The survey also sheds light on why workers aren’t satisfied and the clear disconnect between the tools companies have in their tech stacks and the tools employees want. For example, only 22% of workers currently report using visual collaboration software, but 73% of workers believe visuals are important for effective collaboration.
For more than a decade, Lucid has been putting visuals at the center of collaboration, powering teams, whether in-office, hybrid, or fully remote, to collaborate, stay aligned and build across workflows. Lucid’s newest capabilities address a lot of the needs employees have in order to work more effectively and boost productivity in a hybrid environment.
Supercharge team alignment with enhanced AI capabilities
AI has proven itself a mainstay in today’s business operations, with 75% of organizational leaders whose teams use AI say it has improved their collaborative abilities. When incorporating AI became a mainstream focus for companies and teams, Lucid was ahead of the curve. For over a decade, Lucid has provided an intelligent and comprehensive visual collaboration platform that supports workers at every phase of a project. And with Lucid’s latest AI features and plugins, workers can get more done faster by generating new visuals and summaries of their Lucid documents.
For instance, Lucid’s Collaborative AI will quickly suggest ideas and summarize content. Taking these AI capabilities further, teams can now use AI prompts in Lucidchart to auto-generate a flowchart, sequence diagram, class diagram, or entity relationship diagram. Through these user-generated prompts, users can also iterate and update each specific aspect of their AI-generated diagram until they have the exact visual they need.
As an example, UX/UI teams can auto-generate a flowchart for unique customer support systems by personalizing their prompts with the specific steps and visuals they need the end product to include. This could include adding terms like “assign support ticket” or “escalate complex issues” to the prompt. Lucid’s generate a diagram functionality will automatically build out the flowchart to account for those steps, saving the team valuable time to start executing.
The introduction of the Microsoft Copilot plugin with Lucid also brings AI right into a teams’ collaboration workflows. This integration allows teams to retrieve Lucid documents and create AI-generated summaries of those documents. For example, suppose a couple of teammates can’t join an important brainstorm. In that case, they can access relevant Lucid documents directly on Copilot and ask for AI-generated summaries to help them understand where projects are at, what their team is thinking, and what next steps are.
Coordinate in a shared space with team hubs
According to Lucid’s recent survey, 75% of employees say ineffective communication or collaboration is a barrier to innovation within their organization. To overcome that, Lucid brings teams together into a shared, centralized place called team hubs, a new team experience that allows team members to easily track progress, initiate and discuss work, and make decisions faster.
Team hubs offer a one-stop shop to access all team documentation. A team manager can create a team hub and add their direct reports to provide them with full access to critical documentation and helpful resources needed to move projects forward and get the latest updates more easily. Users can even create team hubs for specific project groups or scrum teams to improve cross-functional collaboration.
Within the team hub, users can also pin a team space, the team’s home base for coordination. For example, a scrum team might pin their sprint planning board since the team would regularly return to and collaborate on that document to understand what goals they will accomplish during the sprint.
By powering AI-enabled collaboration and streamlining team communication, Lucid is leading the way in determining what effective collaboration looks like for hybrid teams by building the advanced capabilities teams need today to stay aligned, innovative, and productive across their workflows.
To learn more about how Lucid helps teams align to build the future faster, visit lucid.co.
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