Madrid, Athens and Lisbon... these where my stops during my tour through the market centers with the aim to increase the productivity of our staff members in the Metropolitan Market Centers and to further promote the use of the G Suite products.
I was privileged to meet about 100 employees in our Metropolitan Market Centers and to introduce them to the Google products within the Engel & Völkers cosmos. Make them experts so that they can better support our new real estate agents in the Metropolitan Market Centers with their integration and work.
Our topics were Hangouts, Drive, GMail, Calendar, Keep and Co.
Another goal is to make our day-to-day work better, faster, more independent and more efficient. This is what enables us to switch to the G-Suite and use these products. And this is what the approximately 200 employees of the MCs Madrid, Athens and Lisbon can now put into practice in their daily work, as they have got to know the products and can now use them for their own purposes.
After many Ahhhhhs and Uhhhhs it was clear... I had all of them on my side, because.... "When I use Google Keep, I no longer need my Excel spreadsheets for meeting notes".
"We can work together on a Google Doc and everyone can see the history and versions of the document". These are just two of the many positive feedbacks I received during the training sessions.
Hangouts and Hangouts Chat gives us the opportunity to talk to everybody even if we work in different time zones. The fact that I can easily adjust my calendar and see two time zones increases my work efficiency enormously. Share files and folders in Google Drive without downloading and uploading. The G-Suite products help us to work more efficiently so that tasks can be completed quickly.
Skype and WhatsApp? Not necessary as we have Hangouts, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet even on our smartphones. Due to the login into Engel & Völkers World we have access to our Engel & Völkers Google Account and can therefore work independently from the our desks and computer.
The On Site G Suite training showed again that it is important to get in touch with the colleagues of other market centres of different countries, to have a direct contact person and to get to know each other in order to encourage the employees to include the advantageous G-Suite tools in their professional work context, to use it and furthermore to convince other employees of them.
The most important thing about the training sessions was to give concrete answers to all the individual questions. I was therefore able to address individual questions in the drive and their structure and create workflows with the employees in their familiar environment. Getting to know each other personally and communication is one of the most important aspects of our work.
In the end, these on-site trainings in Madrid, Athens and Lisbon also proved that in our digitised working world, face-to-face communication and the opportunity to discuss and learn together - for example via Hangouts - is the key to change. And, of course, it's great to get the direct feedback from your colleagues and see how they all enthusiastically use the G Suite tools and work more effectively after the training.
I'm already looking forward to the next training sessions and getting to know other Engel & Völkers colleagues worldwide. Thank you Engel & Völkers Technology for these experiences.
Antonina Blohm
