Open Access

Tim Jolk

• In a fast-evolving world, technological innovations can disrupt existing processes and behaviors. The rising trend of digital collaboration brings new possibilities through technology and can have a significant impact on organizations and their employees. But during the implementation, decision makers tend to focus on the IT-part, leaving their employees with a new application with a broad range of functions which they don’t know what to do with. The new tool also can have complex implications on the way of working and must be learnt from the technical side. This results in the question, whether an individual end-user activation with a comprehensive change management and learning activities would be necessary for the implementation, which will be answered in this thesis “Collaboration technologies in DAX30 companies - How important is a targeted end-user activation during and after the implementation of Microsoft Teams and Co.?”. In order to cover the different aspects of a targeted end user activation the topic was split up into three research questions: 1. How should the skills and attitudes of employees change, so that collaboration technologies are used effectively? 2. What factors need to be considered in the change management for sustainable activation? 3. What is the ideal design of learning formats for an end-user activation? To answer these research questions in a well-founded and valid way, the method of expert interviews was chosen after an extensive literature search. Therefore, 3 experts from this field were interviewed on the topic and the collected qualitative data critically analyzed on the knowledge basis of the literature. Also, this thesis is written in collaboration with the company Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, which provided information on the topic and experience of experts. The results can be used for organizations to decide on relevance and the way and strategy of implementing a new collaboration technology. They showed, that an implementation can be very complex and that many aspects should be considered for the employees to be able to work effectively with the new technology. Most important is an user centric approach with the needs and expectations of the affected employees at its core, which should be individually developed after a careful analysis of each organization. The skills and attitude toward a new way of collaborating, the mentality in communicating and sharing culture of exchanging work and results should be applied by the employees in order to work effectively. Therefore, a targeted end-user activation is highly recommended during and after the implementation of the new technology.