How technology is shaping the employee experience

In this episode of the EY Microsoft Tech Directions podcast, we explore the critical role of technology in shaping the employee experience and how it can create a thriving workforce.

Key takeaways:

Improve employee experience: Listen, learn, and act on data-driven insights. Scale what works, abandon what doesn't. Make it a leadership imperative for a better work experience.
Embrace change: Create clarity, upgrade communication and skills, and build a feedback flywheel. Adaptation is key for success in a constantly changing future.
Clarity, communication, and feedback: Essential for thriving in change. Define goals, enhance skills and communication, and analyze data for continuous improvement and better outcomes.

For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.

Susannah Streeter

Hello and welcome to the EY and Microsoft Tech Directions podcast. I'm Susannah Streeter, and in this episode, we're focusing on technology and the employee experience. The world of work has transformed dramatically over the past few years. Tech became a lifeline during the pandemic – and has been a game changer as we've emerged from lockdowns – into a post-pandemic world - flexible ways of working that employees used to dream of – and are now considered a must-have. For years technology has enabled HR leaders to create more efficient and less stressful work environments – and the crisis accelerated this transition that was slowly underway.
Now though, teams are having to take stock – and work out how to assess and refine both hybrid and flexible work strategies. It's an opportunity to think more holistically about employees' experience – whether it's in the office, at home, or on the move. Modeling behavior using data will help position them in the best place for resilience and long-term value creation. But just how that data is collected, analyzed, and used is crucial.
How to keep your people and the employee experience at the center of tech strategy is the focus of this episode—and I'll be chatting to two leaders who'll be providing lots of insights about the options available and the best routes to take given their deep experience in using tech to improve employees' experiences.
But before I introduce them – please remember:
Conversations during this podcast should NOT be relied on as accounting, legal, investment, or other professional advice. Listeners must, of course, consult their own advisors.
Now I am really pleased to welcome Maya Smallwood –EY Global People Advisory Services People Experience Leader– Maya Smallwood – a very warm welcome - where are you joining us from today?

Maya Smallwood

Hi, Susanna. I'm joining you from a very rainy South Florida in the United States.

Streeter

It may be rainy, but I'm sure you'll brighten up this podcast. And also, please welcome Reamonn Stynes, he's director of strategic partner development for Microsoft modern work. Reamonn, where are you? Is it raining?

Reamonn Stynes

It is not. I'm actually joining you from a very sunny Minneapolis, Minnesota. So the world has flipped upside down today.

Streeter

Well, fantastic; it's really great to have you both with me on the podcast today. And Maya, I just want to ask you first. How surprised have you been by the pace of change that we've witnessed in terms of work environments over the past few years? Just how much further down the road are we than you might have predicted pre-pandemic?

Smallwood

It's one of my favorite questions to be asked because the pandemic was a huge accelerator of interest and responsiveness to employee experience as an imperative. Before the pandemic, we saw leading organizations already investing, already prioritizing, and what the pandemic did in its elevation of people against pressing needs of our world and business is it just plugged everything into an amplifier. And to use another analogy drove into the accelerator. So just about every organization that we connect to as EY, that we serve as EY, and that we know out there is responding, is asking questions, and is looking for employee experience technology and services to meet an ever-growing list of needs for their enterprise.

Streeter

So Reamonn, as Maya is saying, there's an ever-growing list of needs. How would you describe where we are right now when it comes to hybrid and virtual work? And how are companies coping? Is there still quite a lot of ambiguity around?

Stynes

Yeah, I think ambiguity is the right word. And it's really going to be dependent on where that company is, what sector it is, what geography it is. But I think if I were to zoom out, I would say right now we're sort of in the middle of a pretty big transition; when the pandemic struck, obviously, everyone that was able to go completely virtual, and people realize that, hey, you could actually be very productive in a completely virtual environment. But then, as the world started to reopen, and as the pandemic went from what was originally thought to be six months to a year to a year plus, people realized that performing in a completely virtual environment is actually very hard. It's very hard on employees; it's very hard on organizations. And so people are starting to snap back to let's bring everyone back into the office. But what has happened over the past three years is people are realizing that probably the correct path forward is not either of those polar extremes. It's going to be a path down the middle, which you could call hybrid work. It's a pretty broad bucket, but I think the reality is no one has really figured it out. And if in the future, when we're looking back on this five-year period, we're just going to see it as a period of transition where people were kind of figuring things out. And I think right now we're three years in. And I think that that would be pretty descriptive of where the general consensus is on virtual versus in-person work, which is, we're about halfway there through figuring out what the end result is going to be.

Streeter

So we're halfway there. Maya, what does EY research show you about employers' current attitudes toward adjusting to present challenges?

Smallwood

You know, the evolving picture that we've developed since doing our series of work-reimagined surveys, the latest of which was reported in 2022. And, you know, collated 1000s of voices of employers and employees across the world. You know, what strikes me about the evolution, but the consistency, is the gap between employers and employees when asked the same questions. So one of the cool data points that I wanted to pull out that is relevant to today's conversation is, you know, following the pandemic, there has been an elevated interest and investment in the safety and well-being of employees. That is continued. That is just about a majority, 83% to 93% of every employer we surveyed. Flexibility was another one of those data points where there is remarkable consistency in a majority of employers who are committed to offering it. The gaps between those employers and employees, we saw, for example, Reamonn, back to your point about the hybrid, employers believe they are promoting the hybrid to the tune of 78% of them, employees would say yes, but not as much as you think, because 48% of employees feel like the hybrid ways of working are being promoted. And it's that disconnect between the reality of the leadership decisions and the investments. And what happens on the ground that we think is so critical to continue to explore in this space.

Streeter

Absolutely. And Reamonn, Maya highlighted there the gaps; what's your take on this evolving situation?

Stynes

Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, Microsoft, obviously, we conduct our own studies. And what we have found definitely mirrors what EY has found. We refer to it as the hybrid paradox, which is, if you agree, that hybrid is probably the path forward. And I think there are a lot of data points that show that it is; we have found that employees, what they like about hybrid is they love flexibility. They love the ability to decide when to work, where to work. But what they also don't like about hybrid or even virtual is the lack of connection. And so what we're trying to figure out at Microsoft is how do you provide technology that allows flexibility but also provides a connection to other employees or to your organization. We have a product called Viva that we've brought to market to try to address that need. But it's also one of the reasons why we work with companies like EY is trying to bridge that gap between the need for connection, but also flexibility.

Streeter

Yeah, because this really has immense repercussions for productivity and culture as well, doesn't it Reamonn?

Stynes

Yeah, I mean, I think the reality here is, whoever figures this out, is going to have a huge advantage in the market. So in 2023, we did a Microsoft study where we analyzed three million employees across 226 public organizations. And what we found is that the companies that had the most engagement versus companies that had the least engagement from their employees had a 20% difference when it came to financial return. And now, obviously, last year was a tough year all around. And I don't want to say that correlation is causation. But I think if you were to look at a company that is already scoring low on engagement, and then we also connected to this 20% gap in financial returns, whether it was caused by low engagement, or you just happen to have low engagement because of poor returns, that is a huge problem that needs to be addressed by these companies. And so what we're trying to think about here at Microsoft is how do you link engagement to business results because I think that that linkage is a really important driver for spurring the change to act.

Streeter

And I can see you, Maya, really nodding there when you're listening to Reamonn. What's your take on those findings?

Smallwood

So it's very much in line with what we see in our organization, almost 400,000 folks working worldwide on a lot of Microsoft technology, but also the work that we do for clients and the way we're interested in helping to solve for and close these people experience gaps. The piece around engagement and its impact on the top and bottom line is a tale well told and needs to continually be reviewed as organizations have different cadences for measuring engagement, and there's more room to grow with respect to the passive collection and ongoing sensing as a part of your listing strategy. But what I really respond to in this space, and the need to know what those correlations are between things that we've long seen as a bit magical and a bit nebulous, like engagement, it is no such thing when you actually do the research. But there are other aspects of an experience that, at EY, we would say belong to the individual, relational, and environmental factors of experience. So this is everything from how your folks feel a sense of engagement and belonging, but it's also how you connect, and you collaborate and break down and execute against your organizational silos. And if those individuals and teams are in an operating environment with great technology, maybe there is a hybrid, and there's a culture in which you were really seeing your resilient execution. We would love to correlate and analyze how those things interconnect. So that our executives and leaders of these organizations, in particular, can know what the impact on business outcome is, but also be able to dial in and hone in on what those experience impacts are. And this is a data-driven exercise; to Reamonn's point, you have to look at it. And what we see the opportunity to do in our own four walls is use the insights that come from technology and how we use it, crosswalk that with sentiment and our ways of working, and really help to make EY and other organizations a better place. Because we know more about what's going on in that experience in a tangible way.

Stynes

Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think it's funny to talk about these things, because there are certain things that are so clear, which is this is a very important topic that needs to be addressed by businesses, but the things where it's a little unclear right now is okay, so what do we do about it? And that gets back to data and analytics and being able to really, you know, test the hypothesis as you drive a change in an organization, and I think that's really where technology comes in because there really is a huge amount of data that you can look at you can analyze and you can you know act against when you start to really think about like what is available to organizations today.

Streeter

Now, Maya and Reamonn there is talking about this real need for change within organizations. Do you think there's a perception gap? But how big a benefit cross-functional planning and communication around technology investment can have on organizations? I mean, I hate to ask if this is all about knocking down silos, but Maya, do you think we do need to knock down more silos to achieve this?

Smallwood

Susannah, yes, we do is my very short and trite answer that I'll expand upon. Enterprise experience management, if you do it in a data-driven fashion, or even if you're not there yet, really requires functional leaders within a global network or across a business to come together and not just see things from their operational lens. Leaders of finance leaders of HR leaders of IT, commercial leaders have important jobs to do and functions to lead, and businesses to execute. But if they do that, without a more holistic set of experiences that cut across their operational silos, if they don't recognize that how we live and work every day needs to cut across those silos. And the work of enterprise experience management is really connecting those dots, finding the opportunity on behalf of people and on behalf of our customers and consumers to have things work better, to really understand what is needed, and to prioritize the right investments. That's the difference between investing in collaboration technologies because it is the thing to do and knowing what you need to execute in collaborative ways. And being able to use that technology, adopt it well, and show the business results of business impact from investing in it. There's going to be much more investment in experience technologies and services just to quote an IDC study. By 2025, there will be north of $100 billion of investment there. But if that isn't done against the right priorities, and if the right leaders don't come together to move across those silos, those investments will not materialize in the impact that we're looking for.

Streeter

So cross-collaboration is absolutely key. But Reamonn, do you also think we need to talk in terms of perhaps a recalibration rather than a revolution of the workplace, particularly if there's some hesitancy about spending more because of constrained budgets?

Stynes

Yeah, I think calibration or recalibration is the right term. You know, if you think about the pandemic, that was a drastic change that caused a revolution, right like that was an overnight change that drove everyone home, and people had to think about new ways of working. I think where we're at now in this post-pandemic world is; it's going to be a continuous series of calibration, or in a different way, it's just going to be a period of constant change. And so companies that are comfortable with that calibration and action process are going to be the ones that are best able to capitalize on this upcoming period. Within Microsoft, when we talk about calibrations are driving change, we use four words. So we say it's understand, analyze, act, and business impact; I guess that's technically five words. When you break this down, the first step is understanding, which is really understanding what information or data is available to you. So there are direct data signals around employees, which are around engagement experience surveys, and then there are indirect signals, which can really come from the technology that employees use. So if it's a Microsoft company, it would be things like email from Outlook, meeting information from Teams, that [inaudible] understand, like, you have this data, it is your data, and you can start to act upon it. The in-between understand and act, though, is analyzed. And that's really where I think companies are starting to upskill. But it's really a nascent field, which is, how do you, first of all, access the data that you have available to you? How do you query it in ways that make sense relative to what your business needs? And then what are the inferences or conclusions you're going to make from the analysis? Because once you do the analysis, then you're going to have to make some decisions, and you're going to act. And that could be through a transformation or reorganization, or simply just rolling out new employee initiatives, building employee communities, or trying to drive connection through various means. And then the final step of that circle, which I think is probably the most important step, as Maya was talking about, what is the business impact. And the key thing here is you still have the data; that data that's coming from the indirect sources is still going to be able to be collected and analyzed. And so what you have is a virtuous cycle here. And I think the idea of calibration or recalibration is the correct way to look at it. Because it's a continuous process. It's not a step and time revolution. This is just the way businesses operate in order to drive change and succeed in the future.

Streeter

And Maya, what do you think? I mean, Reamonn, there has been talking about all the different steps that can be taken as a kind of continuum. What should companies be aware of when they're doing this? And what are the keys to success here?

Smallwood

Yeah, and I agree with everything that Reamonn said, and you need a framework to spur you to action, and review of impact and thinking about a client, actually multiple clients in the past year, who have come to us for support in clarifying and validating whether presenting issues in their business, whether it's retention issues, whether it is productivity challenges, whether it is engagement or belonging challenges, first identifying what is the highest best use of our activity here? And what data will we look at, not only the experience data that might be available but the operational data that sort of gives you that correlative secret sauce? Most organizations start there. What we encourage our clients to do and, in this instance, where we took it further, to Reamonn's point is, what's next? How do you take a set of interventions based on these issues, like retention, and really start to scale them across a diverse set of challenges? Even though retention may have a certain percentage when collapsed across your workforce, there may be bright spots, there may be hotspots, and there may be different needs that have to be addressed against that retention use case. What we see as the greatest opportunity to do with our clients is actually industrialize and scale that way of analyzing, acting, doing, and then scaling for impact. And that is what we see as the biggest opportunity to do. Just about everyone knows to do this in an agile, iterative test-and-learn fashion. But how do you take that to the next level as an enterprise and do that in an ongoing, deep, and resonant fashion? That's the great game of experience management. And it's super exciting to see organizations embrace that.

Streeter

And they certainly do seem to be doing just that. But, Reamonn, I just want to clarify as well that there are kind of two types of data that we're, we're talking about here.

Stynes

And I think that's an important distinction. As you know, there are infinite types of data. But when it comes to the employee experience, there are two main ones, which I touched upon a little bit earlier. But here's what I would describe as, you know, traditional employee experience data, which HR practitioners have been mining for a while, which is around the employee experience, surveys, polls, surveys, and you know, that is extremely valuable qualitative data about how employees are feeling in the workforce. But what is newer within the last decade or so is this idea. At Microsoft, we call it digital exhaust, which is in an increasingly connected work environment where people are attending meetings virtually and sending far too many emails; there is a data trail of how employees are performing their roles throughout the day, how they're being productive, and that data is accessible to our customers to analyze and drive inferences from. So, for example, you can use that data to get a sense of employee networks. One of the key findings that we discovered at Microsoft is the size of an employee's network and what we call network velocity. So for a new employee, how quickly they can meet new people and build strong ties with an organization has a direct impact on that employee's engagement. And it makes sense, right? If you're a new employee, whom you know and how you can see whom you can go to for answers as your onboarding is a really important piece of how you perceive yourself within your organization and just your perception of the organization itself. So being able to use things like email and meeting data to get a sense at an aggregate level of the health of your organization's networks is a very valuable tool. And it's a newish tool where that companies are only starting to work into how they operate their business

Streeter

So do you think then, if these tech tools are used really efficiently, it will help organizations cope with this exodus of talent, the so-called great resignation that's been talked about?

Stynes

Well, we could spend an entire podcast on that topic alone, whether the great resignation is happening. And I think the key here is whether talent is really leaving an organization; there are direct signals that talent is thinking about leaving your organization. We have data that points to 40% of employees having either left their organization or thinking about it. And without going down the rabbit hole, are they actually leaving? And because that has a lot of different factors that affect it, such as what industry are you in? What role are you in? What geography are you in? The idea that 40% of talent is thinking of switching roles is something that companies need to address directly. And so to your question of can technology help with that? I think the answer is yes, either from a data perspective or just being able to analyze employee sentiment and get a sense of where people are and how people are feeling about their roles. But also, technology can be a great enabler of productivity, and productivity has a great impact on how people perceive themselves in an organization. So the short answer is yes, it does have a huge impact.

Streeter

Okay, so Maya, can you tell me about your take on technology's place in the overall employee value proposition drawing on what Reamonn just said?

Smallwood

Absolutely. And I want to go a bit broader because Reamonn has laid out a great case for technology and how it enables and drives insight. What I wanted to return to is maybe the macro picture of humanity and what we do every day to work and grow various businesses. We know that there will not be enough people to sustain growth as it is currently projected; the digital transformation imperative and the use of technology is absolutely going to be enablers that make that a little less painful than it would be if we didn't have it. That said, we will not have enough people in the future to do the work that we anticipate will need to be done. And even if we did, they are not distributed in the right places. And they may not know how to do the things that we need them to do. And we at EY in our people advisory services business. This is a juicy, ongoing set of challenges and opportunities that we love to help with. How technology really factors in from an experience perspective is to Reamonn's point, it gives you insight on sentiment, it gives you insight on behaviors, it gives you insight on networks, and it gives you insight on performance. And if you can take these data and feed them into a process and a set of questions that you ask an answer about how they influence ways of working, how you might predict or anticipate or deal with challenges, or, and this is something that we should not forget, what are the ways in which we're doing things right, that we can amplify and strengthen. This moves us from today's questions around. I'm not sure if my high performers are at risk in the recession, so I know which high performers I need to better connect, better enable, or maybe offer a different opportunity so that they stay. And it's that proactive deep analysis and ongoing practice of staying connected with your workforce. That is going to be the difference between growing despite some of those headwinds, and being subjected to lots of reactive fallout, even when you have the data, even when you have the technology, if you're not proactively engaging with it, using it, and then baking it into your people practices, you will still miss the opportunity that we see for many organizations ahead.

Streeter

So there is a huge potential for improving the retention of key employees. But Romo, do you think this more flexible strategy will also widen the talent pool to improve recruitment?

Stynes

Yeah, I mean, I think whether it's a flexible strategy or just technology in general enabling this, I think the talent pool is going to expand. You know, at Microsoft, we think about as a global talent pool, which is, you know, we are a multinational organization, we are around the world. And so we are willing to go anywhere in the world to look for the best and the best talent for a particular role. What I think is really interesting, though, is that this hybrid work, or virtual work, acceptance is it not only broadened the talent pool from a geographic perspective, it's also broadened it from an accessibility perspective. What we have found at Microsoft is there are a number of people, for various reasons, who could not or did not want to work a nine-to-five job; if you think about folks who may have young children or have, you know, various accessibility needs, coming into an office every day could be a barrier for them to do a role. And what we've found is now that we're in a more hybrid world and allowing our
employees to have more flexibility, we have very qualified people who are performing in roles that were originally unavailable to them. And so I think that's overall a great thing. But it just goes to show you that the talent pool is expanding when it comes to accessibility. But now, to Maya's point, there may not just be enough people, but as far as being able to fill roles with people anywhere around the world, I think that's just going to be a fact of the future.

Streeter

Maya, let's look at this from the employer side as well. I mean, how can they keep a strong talent pipeline with so much flexibility when there is an argument to say it can go too far? Do you think, I mean, if employees are all over the place, how can you effectively rescale and upskill to protect core skills?

Smallwood

I mean, I am not sure I agree with the notion that there can be too much flexibility. Because to Reamonn's point, you know, the speed of transformation, the disruption that we can continue to experience, the pandemic was just one type. Financial crises and recessions are others. We've got to find a way to roll with those punches. We've got to build resilient organizations that are attractive to people. And we've got to do work in such a way that is, it is accessible, no matter where I might live, and work that can upgrade itself and upgrade me and change me. So that I can continue to build my skills, that requires a massive amount of flexibility. You know, going back to our favorite conversation on silos that requires an organization design that can flex with that, that requires a strategy and an operating model around that word design. And it requires people practices and operational practices that can really offer that flexibility. So, you know, I think in the future, we may ask ourselves, you know, do we need jobs as they are designed? How can we look at skills as currency? You know, employment models are going to shift. So I think the more flexible we can be, and the more focused we can be on that impact and the ways in which we can drive those outcomes, to Reamonn's point, the talent pool can expand and offer value in ways that we will be able to meet. But we can't do that if we are too rigid and too wedded to what we have today or what we might have tomorrow when we envision that future.

Streeter

At Microsoft Reamonn. How are you addressing this in particular?

Stynes

Yeah, so we're addressing it in a number of different ways. We've actually launched a new product called Microsoft Viva. And we look at it as an employee experience platform. Now, that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But if we were to take it from the lens of this flexibility conversation that we're having, in a world where we're going more toward flexibility, that has pros and cons. So we've talked a little bit about the pros. Some of the cons are, as we mentioned, is, you know, in a world where people are working all over the place, they may not come into Redmond for their new hire orientation, they may not have a strong tie in a physical way to their team. And so, what can we, as Microsoft, do to improve that experience using technology? And so, within Microsoft Viva, we have four different what we call employee experience areas. So these are the experiences of an employee. So the first is insight. And really, what this is, is its insight for an organization on how people are working. So it has that digital exhaust aspect that I talked about already. But then also this is where we have the employee feedback tool. So at a company's level, they can perform pulse surveys and figure out how the organization is working. But also, we've now expanded that down to the individual manager level. So a manager can do a pulse in an anonymous fashion with their team. And it allows that managers they get direct feedback from their team members in order to perhaps drive a change within that specific team. The next employee experience area is what we call connection. And so this is around employee communications and communities. So in a hybrid world where, you know, people aren't going to be on a physical campus per se, it's a way for us to create a community for people who work with Microsoft, and any of our customers, they can create a community and they also it has tools in order to drive corporate communications to the right targeted audience in a way that drives engagement. The third employee experience area is what we call growth. And so this is a really important topic because it has to do with learning and knowledge management, and really trying to make sure that employees who are at an organization not only have the skills they need to do their job today but have access to training and learning materials that allow them to do the jobs of tomorrow. And then the final one is purpose. And this is one of the newer employee experience areas that we're going after. But it's around goal setting. So in a large organization, strategy is often driven, you know, from the top down, but what's happening is for an employee who may be hybrid, or maybe you know, remote, they're not feeling very connected to that strategy. And so what it allows an organization to do is use the OKR framework; it allows all employees within the organization to have visibility into organization strategy, but then how it trickles down to them as an individual. And then it provides visibility to everyone within the organization about, you know, what my goals are, how they ladder up to the overall company goals. What we have found is it really does foster a very interesting conversation and collaboration patterns across the company. Because when I reach out to someone whom I may not know very well, I can see what their goals are. And I actually already know if my request is even relevant to what they're trying to do. It changes the dynamic of how we work together. Because that goal of transparency really does help to drive people's behavior.

Streeter

So Maya, as Reamonn's been explaining there, the tools are available. How, in your experience, have you seen tech really best employed to enhance the employee experience?

Smallwood

This is such a wonderful area of opportunity and exploration, and application. I want to think for a second about our frontline workers. So that part of the workforce that works away from laptops and desks and drives trucks and makes deliveries and sees patients. The application of mobile technology is well established. But even thinking about how we can help them to connect and collaborate, recognize one another, as they're on the go, establish online communities of practice where they can share information and connect, you know, between hospitals or between locations is a hugely interesting application of digital and mobile technology. And then finally, just helping this part of the workforce that, you know, does not have the usual enterprise connectivity behind the desk sitting that our knowledge workers do to do their jobs better, to reduce the number of tools that they need to use and the systems they need to connect to. That's a pretty challenging area to enable the experience. But as many clients that we work with know, even if you think about my client, who is enabling a salesforce in this way, and continually challenged with giving them more time with their customers. This is the place to impact experience. Folks who are on the front lines, who need technology, but need it to be simple, need it to work and need it to help them to do their jobs but also put it away when it is time to come off their shifts or time for them to come back into the office. And so, for me, that is a very exciting place for employee experience to enable because the challenges are multivariate and real.

Stynes

Yeah, I think Maya specifically mentioning the frontline workers is a really important call-out. What we have found at Microsoft is that it is an area of huge growth for us. And it's also an area of just understanding that we've been on a journey with over the past, you know, five to 10 years. One of the things you know is Microsoft is traditionally around knowledge workers, so people who sit behind desks. But what we have experienced as we've gotten more toward the cloud and reaching workers, wherever they are in the world, is that idea of providing information and technology in the flow of work is hugely important. Because a frontline worker is not sitting in front of a computer like I am all day, you know, they have other roles who they're seeing patients or working with customers. And so being thoughtful about what that flow of work experience is, and what surface like so what device, is that employee specifically going to be accessing this information or doing the role is a very big focus area for us. And I think it's going to be a huge part of this future of employee engagement as we think through it.

Streeter

I mean, the world of work is changing so fast, isn't it? I mean, there's been lots of developments in AI recently. How will they move the data when it comes to the employee experience? Just how big do you think the incoming changes will be?

Stynes

in short, they're going to be huge. I would struggle to overstate the impact that AI is going to have on the future of work. And it's going to be happening relatively quickly; I think the pace of change and the pace of impact is going to be here. You know, very quickly. We're already rolling out capabilities within the Microsoft technology stack. Things like co-pilot that we've recently announced will be available to customers in the near future. And the key thing here is, it's going to really just unlock productivity for employees. There are a lot of things that we do in our day-to-day that take up time but aren't hugely valuable from a productivity standpoint, and being able to offload those types of tasks to AI or co-pilot interface is going to unlock a huge amount of time for people to focus on more important things. And I think really where AI is going to drive and underline is the need for expertise. Because AI when you think about it, AI can really excel at the things that have been done before. But what it always needs is a human overlay to make sure that what is being done is correct. And that overlay, that human is going to be relying on their expertise that is developed through years of work in that field.

Streeter

Maya, what's your take?

Smallwood

Now, Susannah was speaking recently to a CIO, to whom I felt I could ask my uninformed, nerdy questions about AI. And we got to talking about chat GPT and what AI is and what it isn't. And his analogy was to the movie Limitless, which is about a drug that, when you take it, expands the capabilities in your mind, in your thinking that you already have, as opposed to giving you superhuman powers that you don't. And what I liked about his analogy, and I understood it immediately, is that you know, AI, as a human creation, is still an enablement of human development. But it isn't about making us into something that we aren't or about ignoring who we are because there is something better. It's about expanding the capability that we each have inherently with new tools, with better-connected insights, and with rapid delivery of them so that we can use more, if not all, of our full potential aggregate level.

Streeter

Yeah, it's exciting. And that really is a great analogy, Maya. So in what ways do changes need to be made to a company's culture to ensure the success of all of these new ways of working?

Smallwood

So you know, if we're speaking broadly about culture, it's really another favorite question of mine because what it comes down to is considerations of how we treat one another and what is real about who we are. And that matters so much more than any stated organizational purpose or set of values that you might put on a website or hang in a break room. If we consider culture to be who we are and how we treat one another. If we can get a set of leaders to really define and model those behaviors so that the ways in which we work day in and day out really align with what we say the culture is, those are the changes that need to be made. It's not just defining the culture; it's living and doing and executing against it. And making sure that leaders are walking the walk and talking the talk wherever work is done. That's how much culture matters.

Streeter

So Reamonn, how can tech, then, contribute to that really important culture shift?

Stynes

Yeah, and that's a great question. And within Microsoft, so when Satya Nadella took over as CEO, he described the need to shift Microsoft from a know-it culture to a learn-it culture. At the time, that was really meant to show that we as a company need to change, and in order to change, you need to learn new things. And in order to learn new things, you need to be willing to accept that you don't necessarily know everything. And so we, within Microsoft, have been on this journey to shift over to this learn it at all culture. And that, I would say, describes how we think about culture in a, let's say, a mental capacity. But there's also a tangible aspect to culture, especially in a hybrid world. And that's where, you know, a product like Viva can come in really handy. Because when you think about culture, there's the messaging of, like, what our culture should be. But then there's also just the experience, like how do you drive that cultural change? How do you make sure that employees have access to the information or to the learning materials in order to really complete that change? And thinking through what is the technology that people will be using, hopefully, in the flow of work in order to make the aspirational cultural shift into an actual, tangible cultural shift? And so from a technology standpoint, we look at it in terms of, you know, what are the things that people will be physically touching or, you know, working within their day-to-day work? And then how do we create those tools in a way that is the least disruptive to the productivity that that employee is trying to do as part of their role?

Streeter

Would you say that this is super important, given that there is a risk that frustration and disillusionment could intensify in hybrid or remote roles due to a sense of isolation, but then at the same time, super flexibility can risk leading to burnout? So how can all of this be managed?

Stynes

That's a great question. And I think there are almost two altitudes to approach that question from. So firstly, there are just things you can do in your Microsoft tools in order to help manage that constant flow of information toward you. So, for example, you know, I use Viva insights to block focus time on my calendar, and it allows me to just preemptively block off time so that I can make sure that no one is scheduling meetings or people are aware within the organization that I am trying to do focus work, and that creates space for me to do my role. There are other things that we've built into the tools. So, for example, Teams now because it has visibility into where people are working through the company's active directory logs; teams can now indicate to me, when I ping my colleague in Australia, it will send me a message saying, would you like to delay this message until, you know, your colleague is awake, for example, you know, those are, I would say, low-level technology implementations that you can do to help manage the shift. At a higher level, though, and Maya touched upon this, leaders really do need to model the change. And so when you think about what technology can do, there's obviously the actual technology side of it. But as an organization, leaders really need to think through these changes, things that I can model to my organization. Because that has a much bigger impact a lot of times on individual tactical changes.

Streeter

Yeah, and Maya, how would you assess these kinds of different altitudes out there right now?

Smallwood

I mean, I think it's a great analogy for the space in which we can drive transformation and really help everyone to work in a more effective and harmonious way. We have a lot of the means to fly low altitude, meaning we've got enterprise technologies, we may or may not be using the data and insights that come from them, but we've got them, and we will continue to invest in them. We've got the means to construct work days, and schedules, and design teams, and all of this work are hugely important with respect to designing it and enabling folks to execute. But the challenge really is when you fly at those higher altitudes, around strategy and purpose, around culture and leadership, and around the design and execution of transformation programs. You almost need to have a flight plan, if you will, because thinking about it low to high and everywhere in the middle doesn't really allow you to move forward. But if you recognize that there are many altitudes at which one can look at the challenge, let's pick a flight plan and fly it 33,000 feet and let's descend down, or, you know, ascend up according to an outcome that we're trying to achieve. That is, in our opinion, a much better way to go about transformation and execution with humans at the center.

Streeter

We are flying to the end of this podcast now. There's been so fascinating the debate, but as we come to this end, can you just let me know what your big takeaway would be for those people who are listening and who are really keen to improve the employee experience? What is your takeaway, Maya?

Smallwood

Thanks, Susannah. And this has been a great conversation here with Reamonn. If I could give one piece of advice around the importance of this topic, the experience lens looks at a kaleidoscope. It looks at the individual, relational and environmental factors that make up our work days, our careers, and our time away from work. Should we be so lucky to have that? One piece of advice would be to learn, sense, and listen as much as possible to your people, gather that fact base that is data-driven, and then act, make improvements, changes, and scale what works, and abandon what doesn't. If that becomes a practice of the organization and a leadership imperative, the experience of work can only improve.

Streeter

Maya, thank you. So Reamonn, what's your big takeaway?

Stynes

Yeah, I think my big takeaway would be that organizations, they need to embrace change as a constant in the future. And if you embrace change in the fact that the business environment is going to be in a constant state of flux, then the question is, what do you do about that? And so, I would say the three steps to really kind of embracing and capitalizing on that state of flux is one, as an organization, you can create clarity for your organization. So that's things like being very clear on what is your organizational strategy, what are the goals for the different teams, and that allows employees to just really understand where they fit with an organization and what they need to do in order to contribute. The second would be to really work on leveling communication within an organization and leveling skills within an organization. And so we've talked during this podcast around the different technology that's available to help enable that. But I think if companies were to just embrace that as a continuous need going forward, highly skilled communication and just embrace some skills overall, that's going to be really important to their future. And then the final thing is, work on building that feedback flywheel. So use data, use the various means of collecting the direct and indirect information that's available to you, and then analyze it, act on it. And then most importantly, understand what the business impact is, and then start the process. And so I think those three things, clarity, communications and skills, and a feedback flywheel, if embraced well, will go a long way toward companies being able to perform in the future.

Streeter

Well, thank you so much, Reamonn and Maya, for honing in on data, embracing change, clarity, and communications, and making the most of all that feedback. It's been really fascinating to have your insights; really useful to help understand how business can propel their sustainability drives using tech and data. Thank you so much for your time.

Stynes

Thank you, Susannah, and thank you, Maya.

Smallwood

Thank you, Reamonn. Great conversation.

Streeter

But a quick note from our legal team, the views of third parties set out in this podcast are not necessarily the views of the global EY organization nor its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time in which they were made. I'm Susannah Streeter. I hope you'll join me again for the next edition of the EY Microsoft Tech Directions podcast; EY and Microsoft work better and achieve more.

Presenters

Maya Smallwood

EY Global People Advisory Services Employee Experience Leader

Reamonn Stynes

Director of Strategic Partner Development for Microsoft Modern Work

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Episode 12

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48m 48s

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EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.

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Maya Smallwood

Reamonn Stynes

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