Morning adapts to the new world of work with Asana

With its strong belief that wellbeing is no longer optional, Morning, a specialist in work and coworking spaces in Paris, values employee empowerment and autonomy.

In her role as Director of Operations at Morning, Tania Boros is responsible for hiring new talent, motivating individuals to advance their own skill sets, and coordinating the teams of workplace managers - who oversee everything from day-to-day management and maintenance, to marketing and events. Tania believes that with the right tools in place, Morning can drive efficiency, create an inviting workplace, and achieve its critical success factor: employee wellbeing.

Set up for success

Morning has used Asana to manage its daily tasks since 2015. However, when COVID struck, which required people to work together remotely, everything changed.

According to the Anatomy of Work Index, one of the top factors that fuels burnout is feeling overworked from a lack of clarity on tasks and roles.

When each of Morning’s teams had its own way of operating, the company knew it needed to enhance the way it used Asana to help its teams collaborate and standardise processes for opening coworking spaces. Immediately, the company embarked on an extensive training programme for its 140-people to set them up for success with remote working.

A work management tool you can’t be without

From the teams working on building, designing and managing the spaces, to communications, support and IT, Asana is now the tool no team can live without. Used everyday within and across teams, it has proved to be beautifully simple and incredibly useful.

Even though Tania exclaims that, “Asana can be used for everything!”, Morning has found the best uses for its operations are as its main channel for communication, as a project-management tool and to support onboarding:

Streamlined communications

Before, every team used its own industry specific tools to communicate and stay connected. But when remote working, the challenge that comes with a complex multi-tool system is the constant toggling between apps. It risks missing actions and affecting prioritisation, as well as becoming a distraction and draining mental energy. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, on average people switch between 10-25 apps per day - with 72% feeling pressure to multitask.

Morning's new philosophy was to place Asana at the core of all communications to facilitate cross-team collaboration to develop joint projects.

For the teams, the use of templates has helped prioritise what needs doing when opening new spaces. Social media functionality, such as the ‘Like’ button, has proved popular to confirm receipt and acknowledge messages, rather than spend time typing out unnecessary replies. And the follow-up tasks in the Asana inbox ensure nothing is lost or forgotten if the action can’t be handled straight away.

Morning now sends 90% of its internal communications in Asana.

Efficient project management

Although many workers have appreciated the lack of distractions when working from home, the change to our working processes now drains our time in other ways to impact productivity. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, casual chats and quick-questions have been replaced with unnecessary meetings, which cost individuals 157 hours in productivity over the past year.

However, Morning has avoided this risk despite experiencing a higher number of questions on an increasing volume of joint projects, because of Asana.

When opening a new space, it requires coordinating input from 50 people. “I couldn’t imagine opening up a space now without this tool,” says Tania. With Asana, everything runs lightyears faster because the templates ensure Morning is always working to an efficient plan.

Empowered onboarding

It’s important to instill a sense of purpose, confidence, and clarity to help new employees thrive from the very first day. 

To support its onboarding process, Morning uses Asana. As Tania explains, “We created a month-long onboarding procedure in Asana, in which Morning employees are given tasks to complete, like learning functionalities or viewing a document in Asana Academy, and then we add our own HR onboarding or operational tasks.” 

For new hires, the pandemic has increased instances of imposter syndrome - where a person suffers feelings of inadequacy. The Anatomy of Work Index shows that 80% of new hires suffered from imposter syndrome, compared to 57% who were in their role prior to 2020. 

Morning has used the templates functionality within Asana to good effect - making sure new hires have day-to-day tasks carefully mapped out so they don’t need to worry while they’re settling in. “We noticed a real difference in onboarding before Asana and after,” says Tania. “It hasn’t even been a month and our employees are already fully operational on the programme. It doesn’t take long to learn the functionalities.”

A great place to work

Morning now has the tools it needs to drive efficiency, create an inviting workplace, and deliver employee wellbeing.

My goal is enabling teams to stake their place in the company by giving them reliable guidance and the best tools for the job, all while protecting their wellbeing.”

Thanks to Asana, employees are empowered and have autonomy to complete their work to the best of their ability, and maintain productivity - regardless of where they need to work.