How Microsoft Transformed HR Employee Engagement
This article explores how Microsoft Human Resources (HR) has modernized its employee engagement processes using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Originally published in 2022, this story reflects updated guidance from Microsoft Digital.
From Email to Integrated Platform
A decade ago, Microsoft HR primarily interacted with employees through email. Today, Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Power Platform power AskHR, an internal employee engagement platform that has revolutionized how Microsoft HR connects with and supports its workforce. Managing over one million inquiries yearly, AskHR plays a crucial role in the employee experience.
AskHR improves the employee experience, creating a more efficient and enjoyable experience for both employees and the HR advisors who support them. Employees can use the platform to submit a wide variety of requests, from simple inquiries like finding drinking fountains to more complex issues such as relocation, job changes, or managing illnesses.
The AskHR System
AskHR, developed by Microsoft Digital (Microsoft’s internal IT organization), supports HR inquiries and manages related cases. A team of HR advisors works to fulfill employee requests promptly and efficiently. The platform handles over 4,500 new inquiries daily through various channels, including email and OData create-ticket API integrations with other HR platforms.
With over 220,000 global employees, these increasing inquiries are being handled by a global AskHR team of more than 1,400 HR advisors spanning 14 HR functions, and organized into 25 support teams. The company has increased its focus on access provisioning, compliance with regional regulations, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and annual privacy reviews. Microsoft broadened request intake mechanisms from email to other channels, including OData create-ticket API and a self-service agent.
Processes supported by AskHR include:
- Global new-hire onboarding and employee transfers.
- Support for former employees’ queries related to their employment history.
- Transactional queries and access management for data-management teams.
- Employee and dependent benefits inquiries.
- Complex employee inquiries.
- Center of Excellence support queries.
Adapting to Evolving HR Needs
The need for AskHR reflects a larger trend in which HR is becoming central to companies. Increasingly, retaining employees requires more than competitive compensation and benefits. Microsoft, and other organizations, must engage employees in critical support scenarios and ensure that engagement is performed in a timely, relevant, and authentic manner.
“AskHR gives Microsoft HR the ability to react quickly to changes within our corporate environment,” says Andrew Winnemore, a vice president in HR Services. “When COVID-19 hit, we were able to organize and prioritize pandemic-related cases, allocate advisors to the proper queues, and shift the focus of our HR support to meet needs on an ongoing basis, whether day-to-day or week-to-week, as different demands and situations came and went.”
Transforming HR Interactions
Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Power Platform are transforming how Microsoft interacts with employees through AskHR. These solutions help build a robust and resilient employee engagement system for both employees and advisors. Dynamics 365 Customer Service delivers a better experience for employees and HR advisors throughout the inquiry and case-management process. With its omnichannel capabilities, it allows the advisors to take customer requests from different avenues, manage multiple sessions simultaneously, and enhance their workflow with productivity tools.
AskHR is built on the foundation of Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Power Platform. HR case management, employee interaction, knowledge-base management, service-level agreement (SLA) management, and sentiment analysis are some of the functionalities hosted in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and supported by other Dynamics 365 components and solutions built from the Power Platform.
Mahesh Sharma, a former AskHR Engineering PM Lead in Microsoft Digital, states, “We’ve built our entire HR support platform around Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Power Platform technologies. We’re using many of the built-in capabilities to better support Microsoft HR. Using technologies including AI and machine learning, Power Virtual Assistant, Power Automate, Microsoft Teams collaboration, and Customer Voice, we’ve enabled Microsoft HR to deliver a highly intuitive employee interaction solution that engages our employees in ways that were previously only equated with customer interactions.”
Additional Capabilities
Additional capabilities in AskHR are supported by several Dynamics 365 services and Microsoft Power Platform–built capabilities:
- Dynamics 365 Customer Voice: Supports employee feedback with user-friendly survey forms and workflows. These changes have increased survey response from 9 percent to 22 percent.
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights and Microsoft Power BI: Provide real-time reporting, insights, and analytics to inform operational and planning decisions. Customer Service Insights uses AI and analytics to identify trends, providing managers with critical information on case volumes and trending topics. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics built into Power BI reports are used to inform most HR-related support decisions.
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Knowledge Management: Enables HR teams to curate, maintain, and govern responses to thousands of common requests using a single point of management and a common feedback loop, eliminating duplication of materials, and minimizing the amount of conflicting information.
Leveraging AI for Enhanced Agent Support
AskHR advisors efficiently resolve multiple employee cases quickly, leading to potential burnout and decreased customer satisfaction. To address this, the new Copilot within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers advanced AI capabilities to provide solutions, including Case Summary, Case Highlights, Ask a Question, Write an Email, Inline Email Assist, and Knowledge Assist that provide personalized service to demonstrate their commitment to resolving issues efficiently.
UX Enhancements for HR Advisors
- Customer Service Workspace: Dynamics 365 Customer Service workspace helps HR Advisors increase productivity with a browser-like, tabbed experience. It allows HR Advisors to use this modern, customizable app to work on multiple cases and conversations simultaneously.
- Power Platform AI Builder: AI Builder is utilized to analyze user sentiment, predict actions, and route the cases to the appropriate queues. AI Builder provides custom models that support various scenarios relevant to AskHR. These models refine their behavior using AskHR data, informing aspects of employee engagement, including case routing, sentiment analysis, spam filtering, and automation activities.
- Power Automate: Simplifies and expedites communication and process workflow activities throughout AskHR, alerting an advisor when a case is assigned, sending acknowledgements, or generating notifications.
Achieving Business and Technical Value
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform enable Microsoft to achieve improved quality. The vast functionality is based on native, out-of-the-box features supported by Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Services, which provide solutions from managing onboarding to answering questions about benefits and resources. Microsoft HR and Microsoft Digital work closely with product groups, enabling them to implement features that meet both internal and external customer needs.
Monitoring and Proactive Alerts
Microsoft has created alerts for numerous scenarios in AskHR and can audit and consolidate these alerts. The alerting system connects directly with operations management and ticketing systems. Key examples of monitoring include intake activities that aren’t converted to tickets, emails that aren’t sent, and employee information mismatches. Alerts ensure employees and advisors have an optimal HR experience and notify engineering teams of potential issues.
Data-Driven Insights
Built-in data insight capability allows the usage of all data sources supporting AskHR, including Power BI. AI and machine learning capabilities support in-depth data analysis that helps advisors and leadership understand all aspects of employee engagement. Sentiment analysis has flagged more than 250,000 inbound conversations to date, and an Escalation Management dashboard aids in discovering urgent requests coming through AskHR, helping to proactively address needs before they escalate.
Driving Dynamic Case Management
Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Power Platform support seamless, interactive AskHR activities. Case-management activities include:
- Intake: Employees submit requests using channels such as the web portal, Virtual Agent, email, and API.
- Handling: HR advisors categorize incoming requests.
- Assignment: Cases are triaged properly, and assigned to appropriate team members.
- Response: Advisors engage to provide answers through automated knowledge base articles, AI-based intelligent searches, and sentiment analysis.
- Escalation and Routing: Automated escalation and routing across many scenarios, based on employee sentiment, case classification, and case lifecycle.
- Resolution: Cases use Dynamics 365 case categorization and the PowerApps control framework.
- Survey: Automated surveys are sent to employees to collect feedback.
Continuous Improvement and Future Goals
Microsoft is focusing on improvements in advisor productivity, process automation, and live assistance. They’re also collaborating with product groups to enhance Dynamics 365 Customer Service capabilities, including unified routing, improved knowledge management, and natural language understanding AI. AskHR’s adaptability will continue to improve as Microsoft aims to increase employee engagement and support its advisor base.
Abhinav Jhingan, an AskHR HR solution lead in HR Services, notes, “The HR advisors and front-end line managers love the low-code flexibility that Power Automate provides. It helps them support complex business processes, while still working within the constructs of a well-defined case-management lifecycle.” Continued adoption of these features has delivered significant benefits. The streamlined interface has saved advisor’s more than 3,000 hours each month. AI is also used to interpret a large volume of user sentiment data.
Benefits include:
- Reduced case resolution time.
- Improved NSAT ratings.
- Improved advisor productivity.
- Increased first-time fix rates.
