Microsoft’s Game-Changing People Skills Feature in Copilot
Microsoft has announced a significant expansion of its Copilot features, with a particular focus on Agents and personal productivity. However, the most impactful development for HR professionals is the introduction of People Skills, a robust skills infrastructure that could revolutionize the HR Tech market.
Understanding People Skills
The new People Skills feature, part of Microsoft’s Copilot and Microsoft 365 ecosystem, automatically identifies and monitors employee skills across an organization. This is achieved through a skills-inference agent that analyzes user profiles and activity, mapping them to a customizable taxonomy. The resulting data fuels the Skill Agent, which integrates with Copilot Chat, Microsoft 365, and Viva services.
Key Features and Benefits
The Skill Agent offers several key functionalities:
- Leaders and staff can identify experts within the organization
- Employees can understand their colleagues’ skillsets
- Individuals can edit their own skill profiles
- Informed decisions about skill development can be made
- Development plans, project staffing, and skill assessments can be built using Copilot
For LinkedIn users, the skills taxonomy is mapped to LinkedIn’s own taxonomy, allowing for seamless profile consolidation between internal profiles and LinkedIn.
Implications for the HR Tech Market
This announcement has the potential to disrupt the entire HR Tech landscape. Major HCM vendors like Workday, SAP, Oracle, Eightfold, and various recruiting and learning platforms have existing skills tagging and inference systems. Microsoft’s integration of this capability directly into its widely used Microsoft 365 platform could make it a definitive source of skills data for large companies.
Potential Market Impact
Companies that have invested in specialized skills technology platforms may find Microsoft’s native integration compelling enough to reconsider their current solutions. While initial implementations may not be perfect, Microsoft’s vast user base and continued investment could lead to a comprehensive and authoritative skills management system.
Strategic Applications and Future Possibilities
The Microsoft 365 Graph is a rich source of employee data, especially when combined with Copilot usage. This could lead to the development of advanced organizational planning, design, and employee development tools. The potential for strategic workforce planning, job and org design, and career development planning is vast when leveraging this new People Skills platform.
As Microsoft continues to invest in this technology, it may become a central component of HR Tech strategies for organizations using Microsoft 365. The combination of People Skills with other tools like Galileo could create powerful internal mobility and career planning systems, fundamentally changing how organizations manage talent and plan for the future.
