Accelerate high performance with an AI alliance
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Forging a true partnership with AI allows organizations to leapfrog barriers that slow progress in achieving their goals. As well, through the adoption of cutting-edge tools, employers can attract, engage, and retain top talent – the trifecta of high-performing organizations
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BURNED-OUT or disengaged employees. Inefficient work culture, meetings, and mundane tasks. Stressed managers. Difficulty identifying and addressing gaps in key skills. These are some of the issues high-performing organizations identify as standing in the way of their goals – and it’s more than likely that at least some of these problems sound familiar to you.
The good news is that a recent study from Microsoft found that business leaders identified generative AI as a potential solution to overcoming many of these barriers and a way to help their businesses reach their fullest potential. Though we know embracing technology is a must, the question becomes, How can employers most effectively leverage AI in order to make a significant positive impact on a company’s success?
“As the adoption of generative AI in the workplace becomes more widespread, the true potential lies not just in transforming individual productivity, but in uplifting the capability of the entire organization,” says Carolyn Byer, head of HR at Microsoft Canada. “We’re harnessing the power of AI to double-down on that critical component of employee engagement and to help employers retain top talent.”
Every company has a mission. What’s ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good, and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn’t diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting differences in. When we show up, we achieve more together. Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 passionate employees worldwide.
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Key findings
3x
“As the adoption of generative AI in the workplace becomes more widespread, the true potential lies not just in transforming individual productivity, but in uplifting the capability of the entire organization”
Carolyn Byer,
Microsoft Canada
priorities and size and the market it serves, high-performing organizations (HPOs) exceed expectations. And those markers of success are evergreen: deliver financial results, innovate, and grow. But the paths to those goals, and the tools that help reach them, are ever-evolving – meaning so too must the skills and technologies of the workplace be.
While generative AI is driving efficiency by leaps and bounds, leaving it on autopilot leaves potential creativity and productivity gains on the table. What HPOs are realizing is the power of collaboration: a copilot they work alongside, allowing employees to work more efficiently and focus on what’s high-value about their role, including creativity and innovation. Ultimately, this paves the way for organizations to reach – and ideally exceed – their business goals.
Though the definition might change depending on a business’s
“Across our research, we identified common strengths among organizations that outperform their peers,” says Byer. “The three pillars of high performance are engaged employees, productive teams, and resilient business. AI tools serve as a force multiplier that can drive development in each of these pillars, and organizations that invest in them are on the right track.”
Microsoft wholeheartedly embraces AI’s ability to lessen routine tasks, usher in operational efficiencies, and free up employees to concentrate on value-driven work. Microsoft is harnessing the power of next-generation AI by integrating Copilot into its most-used products, enabling people to focus on the work that’s uniquely human and that will have real
impact on organizations’ ability to achieve true high-performance status.
“Companies can now evolve beyond the traditional job-based talent management mode,” Byer says. “Reaching a level of high performance requires leadership to point in the right direction and a workforce with the right skills to adapt to any challenge.”
Beyond upskilling and reskilling, Skills in Viva provides insights that allow strategic workforce planning and drive impact with communications. The latter is key to developing inspiring leadership that nurtures engaged employees, one of the top indicators of an HPO, and it’s low-hanging fruit for organizations looking to create a culture of success.
when the pace of work has increased exponentially and people are struggling to match it, with 70 percent of respondents reporting they would delegate as much work as possible to AI to lessen their workloads. Without AI to help lift that burden, the tax on individual productivity will continue to compound, undermining organizational productivity and global GDP, while business leaders face ramped-up pressure to increase productivity amid economic uncertainty.
So now’s the time to ask yourself where your organization stands in the transformation. Are you ready to empower your people with an AI alliance?
“Through the adoption of AI, we have the opportunity to transform the employee experience and employee engagement,” Byer says, noting it’s the employers willing to embrace AI who will lift their organizations’ capabilities to new heights.
“They’ll usher in a new wave of productivity growth, promote greater value creation, and ultimately pave the way to the title of high-performing organization in this new world of work.”
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Taking AI off autopilot
Optimism around an AI alliance
Published 15 January 2024
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“Companies can now evolve beyond the traditional job-based talent management mode. Reaching a level of high performance requires leadership to point in the right direction, and a workforce with the right skills to adapt to any challenge”
Carolyn Byer,
Microsoft Canada
Increase in the amount of time spent in Microsoft Teams meetings and calls since 2020
64%
Percentage of people who have struggled with finding time and energy to get their work done; those workers are more than three times as likely to say they struggle with innovation
15%
Percentage of leaders whose organizations are HPOs who reported making meaningful strides with AI investments
½
Proportion of those HPO leaders who said their organizations have invested in AI for specific employee experience use cases
70%
Percentage of Copilot users who said they were more productive; 68% said Copilot improved the quality of their work
Pain point: Identifying and addressing gaps in key skills
82% of leaders say their employees need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI, but learning isn’t keeping up with the pace of change and innovation
60% of people say they don’t currently have the right capabilities to get their work done
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Employee productivity is often hailed as the main indicator of performance, but HPOs are recognizing it cannot lead to sustained success on its own. Relying solely on productivity is, in fact, counterproductive, because it’s shown to stifle creativity, limit teamwork, and increase employee burnout. Successful employers recognize that they need to leverage a new performance equation that hinges on employee engagement.
Microsoft is accelerating this new equation by equipping its employee experience and engagement platform, Microsoft Viva, with generative AI capabilities. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Goals, for example, simplifies goal-setting by suggesting draft OKR recommendations based on existing Word documents. It can also summarize the status of OKRs, identify obstacles, and suggest next steps.
A new performance equation
“It also amplifies existing expertise, taking work from good to exceptional.”
Copilot is designed to manage diverse business tasks through automation, using the latest advancements in generative AI, and users report that, as a result, they are more productive, produce better-quality work, and can turn their minds more often to creative thinking – music to an employer’s ears when trying to level-up an organization.
“And this is just the beginning,” Byer notes, adding that Copilot sets a new baseline – one where every employee can gain the skills to do things like write, design, code, and analyze data.
Finding, engaging, and retaining top-tier talent is a challenge all employers are familiar with, and it’s never been more difficult than in today’s marketplace. To go beyond traditional resume data and identify prospective employees with critical adaptable, flexible, and continuously evolving skillsets, employers need an edge – and Microsoft now offers a dynamic addition to the Viva Suite that provides just that.
Skills in Viva was designed to bridge the gap between traditional work structures and the skills-based future organizations are striving for. Skills gaps can be difficult to identify and address, both individually and at an organizational level, so Viva Skills does it for you. Aimed at upskilling employees, it uses AI reasoning to infer an employee’s skill profile and provide an improved understanding of current workforce skills – a powerful tool in today’s landscape, where job requirements are changing and roles are evolving.
Skill, upskill, reskill – just don’t stand still
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index illustrates that the platform shift to AI is well underway. It is a welcome solution at a time
Source: “Redefining High Performance in the New Era of Work: Learnings and insights from Microsoft on high-performing organizations”
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