On May 16, the Viva People Science team held the third webinar in its AI Empowerment series. During this webinar, I was joined by Carolyn Kalafut (Principal People Scientist at Microsoft Viva), and Ketaki Sodhi (Senior Analyst and Program Lead, Employee Listening at Microsoft).
Our discussion centered around preparing organizations for the integration of AI tools, using Copilot in Viva Glint as a practical example. The webinar provided a rich tapestry of perspectives, from the scientific underpinnings to our own internal experiences at Microsoft.
The presenters highlighted several broad takeaways for the audience:
- AI is not coming; it's here reshaping our work and demanding thoughtful organizational strategies for integration.
- The adoption of AI tools like Copilot is being driven by employees' enthusiasm, underscoring the need for organizations to match this pace.
- The value of AI extends beyond productivity gains; it's about seamless integration into workflows, democratized access, and enhanced decision making capabilities.
Ketaki and Carolyn also shared key learnings from the roll-out of Copilot in Viva Glint for Microsoft leaders, elaborating on the thought process behind this initiative, the decision making, and the approach to change management. Here are three key insights from this discussion:
- Consider taking an iterative approach to deployment, before ramping up to full utilization: With Copilot in Viva Glint, you can provide access to this functionality to your Glint admin in the first instance, and take learnings from the experience before ramping up to give access to a small population of managers, and then all managers in the organization. Things to consider when deciding which type of deployment is best for your organization include current manager usage and habits around Glint data and AI, the number of comments managers receive (the key value of Copilot in Viva Glint is to save time on reading through a large number of comments), survey timing and adjacent organizational changes that might be underway for managers.
- Identify use cases that will be an easy lift, low risk, but high reward. With the example of rolling out Copilot in Viva Glint for all people managers at Microsoft, there was underlying infrastructure that had already been built in terms of the data structures, the data permissions, security, and managers already using the Viva Glint platform. These were components that could be carried over to the roll-out.
- Developments in Gen AI will be continuous, so we also need to think differently in terms of our change management and roll-out. Ketaki mentioned, “With the roll-out for Copilot in Viva Glint at Microsoft, we needed to build the muscle to experiment and learn to actually get the value from these tools. So our approach has been fast cycles of building, testing, piloting, and roll out – with the expectation that capabilities will continue getting added, as opposed to waiting for the final buttoned up product.”
As we continue to navigate the AI landscape, it's crucial to foster a culture of experimentation and learning. AI's potential is vast, and its successful integration hinges on our collective curiosity and willingness to evolve.
We invite you to watch the recordings from our previous events in this series below. Discover more, engage with the content, and let's embark on this journey together.
AI Empowerment: Introducing our Viva People-Science series for HR
A conversation with Alexia Cambon (Modern Work Senior Director of Research at Microsoft): AI and the...
