Microsoft’s Digital Workplace: A Model for Hybrid Success
A successful digital workplace empowers employees to maximize their productivity and foster seamless connections. At Microsoft, this means ensuring that employees, whether in the office, working remotely, or a blend of both, have the tools and resources they need to connect with colleagues, customers, and partners.
Building this empowering digital environment requires strong partnerships. Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) works closely with Global Workplace Services (GWS) to create an integrated experience leveraging physical infrastructure, devices, and cloud services. This digital workplace is deeply integrated with Microsoft products like Microsoft Azure IoT, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365 to boost productivity, streamline efficiency, and enhance accessibility.
Nathalie D’Hers, CVP of Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, emphasizes the importance of collaboration with her counterpart, Michael Ford, CVP of Global Workplace Services. “A commercial real estate leader and a technology leader offer different perspectives,” D’Hers says. “Aligning on a shared vision and then collaboratively planning the path to achieve it is key.” This collaborative approach is vital for adapting to today’s dynamic hybrid work environments, representing a significant investment in employees.
This article explores how Microsoft deploys digital workplace experiences at scale, ensuring they are secure, inclusive, accessible, and manageable, to boost employee satisfaction and productivity.
Catalyst for Adaptability
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need to rethink the digital workplace. Prior to the pandemic, Microsoft was already focused on fostering open communication, transparency, and collaboration and supporting teams in more contemporary environments. The pandemic intensified the need for workforces to quickly adapt and innovate. Interestingly, this crisis strengthened collaboration between MDEE and GWS.
“There’s beauty and power when people work together in a moment of crisis,” D’Hers says. “Prioritizing deliverables and determining immediate versus delayed actions became easier, even budget alignment, because we worked as one team.” As employees return to the physical office and adjust to new hybrid work realities, it’s crucial to create an environment that supports them in the long-term.
Microsoft teams are taking a holistic approach to improve employee on-campus interactions, as well as enabling distributed teams that embrace a “work from anywhere” approach. The nature of collaboration has been modified, and employees need a digital workplace that supports their collaboration, productivity, and feeling of empowerment.
As Microsoft Chief Digital Officer Andrew Wilson states, “The digital employee experience is the employee experience.”
Establishing Priorities
Microsoft Digital focuses on three key priorities for its Digital Workplace investment:
- Employees First: Prioritizing employee safety, ease of access, and efficient navigation of the workplace.
- Compelling Experiences: Creating flexible, engaging, and productive workplace experiences.
- Value Measurement: Tracking the effectiveness and impact of digital workplace initiatives.
Making the Digital Workplace a Reality
The vision for the digital workplace includes investments in infrastructure and physical components that support the three priorities. Here are some key focus areas:
Priority 1: Putting the Employee First
Putting employees in control of their on-campus interactions is key. This includes adapting spaces to support social distancing and focusing on health and well-being, including onsite food and beverage programs and optimizing the campus environment. Health self-attestation apps and optimized environmental factors will play a role in enhanced productivity.
Key initiatives involve:
- Improved commuting through multimodal journey planning.
- Health and Wellness resources.
- Order-ahead dining and seamless payment.
- Clear access to health attestation and environmental controls.
- Touchless visitor arrival and departure experiences.
Priority 2: Creating Compelling Experiences that Matter
The physical spaces employees encounter, especially meeting rooms, are major factors as employees return to the workplace. This priority focuses on workflow, including employee workplace engagements, as well as improvements to meeting rooms to accommodate new hybrid requirements.
Smart recommendations for commuting, parking, and badgeless entry are all part of the evolving employee experience.
Key initiatives:
- Seamless commute and fast parking.
- Badgeless entry and optimized entry.
- Clear and visible wayfinding.
- A move toward smart building capabilities.
- A focus on environmental sustainability.
Meeting room design and function are also being improved by streamlining meeting processes, improving audio and video quality, and driving the adoption of Microsoft Teams Rooms and Microsoft Teams. Microsoft is working toward providing a consistent and reliable meeting experience no matter where people are located.
Key initiatives:
- Deployment of Microsoft Teams Rooms.
- Decommissioning old conferencing technology.
- Improved meeting space reservation time.
- Ensuring inventory accuracy and device visibility.
Priority 3: Measuring the Value of Efforts
In a hybrid environment, understanding space utilization is crucial. Microsoft is using data science and modeling to supply accurate building utilization data so that the workplace occupancy can be well-planned. Improved, real-time data is updated. MDEE is partnering with GWS to support facility and operation improvements. The goal is to improve facilities, and to optimize energy use.
Key initiatives:
- More precise occupancy and building portfolio planning.
- Increased usage of real-time data.
- Enhanced end-to-end facility management.
- A digital twin of a physical building for providing an integration platform for smart spaces.
- Quick onboarding of data from sensors and third-party systems to our Smart Building (digital twin) system.
- Digitized floorplans.
Conclusion
Microsoft is putting employees at the center of its digital workplace transformation. By leveraging technologies and a unified approach, Microsoft aims to create a model for workplace productivity and inspiration for its customers. Continuous experimentation and a focus on employee needs are vital for success.
