Bonus Episode: Microsoft's Chief People Officer on Creating a Data Driven Culture in HR (Interview with Kathleen Hogan)
Of the companies Jonathan Ferrar and I researched and included in our recently published book Excellence in People Analytics. One that really stood out was Microsoft. It is one of the best examples of scaling people analytics to provide value for employees and the business. Microsoft's Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan, was generous enough to provide a perspective in the book. This is an extract of Kathleen's contribution to Excellence in People Analytics. “I think we are just at the beginning of an incredibly exciting time for HR leaders who increasingly have more of a strategic role and are able to use more empirical data to inform decisions around performance, talent management, agility, employee experience and productivity.”
I am especially delighted, therefore, that Kathleen is my guest on this week's episode of the podcast. You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.
In our conversation, Kathleen and I discuss:
How HR is a strategic partner to the business at Microsoft
How Kathleen has worked closely with CEO Satya Nadella, to develop the culture at Microsoft over the last five years
The role of people data in supporting decision-making and busting myths
The impact of continuous learning
How a daily pulse of two and a half thousand employees has helped shape Microsoft's approach to hybrid working
This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in people strategy, culture and inclusion. So that's business Leaders, Chief HR Officers and anyone in a people analytics, learning, talent management or HR business partner role.
Interview Transcript
David Green: Today I am absolutely delighted to welcome Kathleen Hogan, the Chief People Officer at Microsoft to the Digital HR Leaders podcast. It is great to have you on the show Kathleen. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to your background and your role at Microsoft?
Kathleen Hogan: Great to be here, David. Thanks for inviting me. A little bit about me, I grew up in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Ended up a developer and a development manager at Oracle. Then ended up at McKinsey and I have been at Microsoft, boy, I would have to do the math, but at least 15 years. And the last six years I have been leading HR at Microsoft.
David Green: Fantastic. I think the role of the chief HR officer or chief people officer has really been enhanced by the pandemic. It was already important, but I think it has become even more important now. So, maybe it would be good to start by talking a bit about your relationship with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and how you ensure that HR is a strategic partner to the business.
Kathleen Hogan: I think from the very beginning when I took the role, Satya was very clear that culture was going to be a first-class opportunity for us to work on. He was very clear that he wanted to really be clear on the culture and the mission for the company and that those two things hopefully if we could get those right would be long lasting even if the strategy and our worldview would evolve over time. If we could get that culture and service to a purpose driven mission, if we could get that right, then that would make a huge difference. And if you think about culture, it is all about your people and frankly, I think also we know that from a business perspective, it is all about your ability to attract and retain exceptional talent. So I think that connection from the beginning in terms of Satya believing that HR and the HR function was something strategic and something important was there from the beginning.
David Green: You have kind of gone on that journey together since his appointment as well,
Kathleen Hogan: Oh, absolutely. Like I said, I had to remember but it has been six years, but on some level it feels like yesterday. I remember when he called me at the time I was running our services business, our consulting and our support business and I was on a road trip to see my sister for her birthday. And my other sister and her daughter was in the car and Satya called and said, will you help me? At the time it was will you help me in terms of evolving the culture? He had stepped in as the CEO so on some level, it seems like yesterday, but yeah, it has been six years and we have been on this journey to really first and foremost define our culture.
We spent about nine months really defining the aspire to culture. And I could talk more about that, but then I'd say we have been on a journey since then to close the gap between what we espouse and everybody's lived experience. I think we are closing the gap, but there is no perfection and every day you are working hard to make sure that everybody has the experience that we want.
We grounded our culture in this concept of a growth mindset, trying to challenge your fixed mindset and then really focused on three core pillars, being more customer obsessed, diverse, and inclusive. And then really showing up as one Microsoft. On any given day, you are trying to achieve that for all of your employees.
David Green: Yeah. As you said, all 160,000 plus of them as well. We are definitely going to come back to talk a bit more about the culture and how you have taken that journey forward, but how has the pandemic changed or evolved the relationship with Satya, due to the pandemic?
Kathleen Hogan: On some level, it hasn't changed because I think from the very beginning, what I loved about and what I love about working with Satya is he is very engaged and we iterate and we talk a lot. So on some level that hasn't changed, but I think maybe you would say it has even accelerated. As a senior leadership team, we meet every Friday. So that is Satya’s leadership team and that has been great. But then when the pandemic hit, we started meeting daily. So that ability to meet daily, to make quick decisions, to get the diversity of thought from everybody and others were included in these daily calls to be able to make quick decisions.
Now, if I put myself back into the February/March timeframe over a year ago, it is amazing to think that was over a year ago, but I think that, on some level is maybe what has changed is the iteration and spending a lot more time together.
David Green: But it is so important, isn't it? Because this is a crisis that none of us have probably faced in our working lifetime, certainly of this extent. It is the biggest global pandemic for just over a hundred years. So you need that regular, daily checkpoint, because especially in the early parts of the pandemic, things were changing every day.
Kathleen Hogan: Absolutely. And we were trying to make decisions quickly about if somebody does have COVID, who needs to be told? Does everybody in the building need to be told? Everybody on the floor? All of those things that now we have a very extensive processes in place, but at the time we were making all of those decisions real time.
And so being able to do that together as a team, was so important. In addition to that we iterated quickly on benefits. We came out with the pandemic leave and over time there have been a lot of different things. Recently, we came out with wellness days so having the ability to iterate and make decisions quickly, I think has been essential as you said, given this huge pandemic that we have been facing.
David Green: And if my memory serves me rightly I think Seattle was the first major area in the US that actually the numbers started rising quite quickly. I think New York possibly as well, but Seattle certainly was one of the early hotspots. Which obviously is where a lot of your employees are based.
Kathleen Hogan: Absolutely. We had the nursing homes here, and I remember talking to my colleagues or some of my friends in the Midwest. I grew up in the Midwest who were planning a vacation at the end of March at the time during the spring break. Yeah, it definitely did hit us sooner. And then, obviously it quickly hit the others.
But I remember there were a couple of weeks where I was saying, am I the only one living this experience because folks who were in the Midwest, etc, weren’t getting hit as hard that quickly changed.
David Green: Yeah. I remember in Europe, it was really Italy that was the first country to get significantly hit. And then it spread right across the continent, within two to three weeks. You are right, it doesn't seem like 15 months ago. It has gone so quick.
Kathleen Hogan: As much as I talk about us in Seattle, our colleagues in China obviously were hit first. We were watching that and looking at that first and foremost, and then of course it came to, to the west coast here in the United States.
David Green: Let's turn back to culture more specifically. Let's dig in a little bit more to that. Can you tell us a little bit more about the work that you and Satya have done to develop the culture at Microsoft over the last five years?
I think you have talked about it took nine months to define the aspire to culture. It would be great to hear a little bit about that. And then maybe some of the key milestones in that five-year journey.
Kathleen Hogan: At first I would say, oh there is the dog in the background just as we are talking, hopefully you can’t hear that.
David Green: Never mind, it adds to the mix.
Kathleen Hogan: I was going to say that Satya and I have been deeply involved, but I would say the whole company has been deeply involved and I can talk about that. From Satya’s leadership team, to our corporate vice presidents, to our 16,000 managers, to all of the employees, I would say it has been a team effort to evolve the culture. But if I go back, when I came into the role, again, I give credit to Satya for recognising that culture needed to be a key area that we focused on and that we were really intentional about people. I think in the past would have said, there is a culture at Microsoft and you might have gotten different explanations for what that is.
But I think Satya really said, I want to be intentional about defining our aspire to culture and then really being intentional about enabling that aspire to culture. And so, as I mentioned, for those first nine months or so, we spent that time defining our culture, as well as defining our mission.
David Green: Lots of companies are maybe looking at their culture again, and I am sure you are at Microsoft, as we move into more of a hybrid way of working. So I think there might be some good practices that some of those listening would love to hear.
Kathleen Hogan: We did take nine months. So it wasn't something that we just made up.
And we took a lot of time to define our culture and look at it from many different angles. We were talking to experts, Satya read the book mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. So we were meeting with Dr. Dweck and getting input on that. We took the SLT and had deep discussions as a leadership team about our purpose and the culture we wanted to have and really connected as a leadership team.
We went offsite with our corporate vice presidents at the time, about 200. Broke into 17 teams and really talked about the culture. The 17 leaders became the culture cabinet, who then advised us. Then in parallel, we were doing focus groups and coming at it, women, men, millennial, non-millennial us non us engineering, sales, looking at it from lots of different angles to ultimately try to ground our culture in something that spoke to everybody as opposed to just one group at Microsoft, so I guess to net it out, I would say take the time to define the culture and try to get it right. Versus quickly just assert the culture because if you can try to get something that speaks to the broad population, they will then help activate creating that culture.
And I think this concept of a growth mindset is something so powerful, because I think people love it at work. Being more learn it all versus know-it-all. Focusing on failure as essential to mastery and this notion that you can try new things as opposed to you have to be afraid because, we are looking for perfection.
So there are a lot of great things that it unlocks in the business world. But I also think when people try it on at home or use it to help coach their kids it works as well. So I think we tapped into something that in general, speaks to our employees. Even yesterday, one of the things we have done as part of this journey is we have these culture interviews where to become CVP, you go through a discussion around the culture and what the individual is doing to enable our and embody our culture. It is important that our CVPs not only do something impactful, it is the what, but also the, how, how they do that. And this individual was just telling about taking risks and learning and how they were enabling that in their team and I was really inspired by it. So to net it out, we took nine months. Take your time before you just declare your culture, because then there is a lot of hard work after that to really make that a reality. And we are still on that journey, there is no perfection. The other thing I always like to tell folks is based on the research, 85% companies are trying to change their culture about 30% would say they have actually been successful.
So I always like to be humble and say, we have declared our aspire to culture. We are on a journey to close the gap between what we say and what people experience, but there is no perfection.
David Green: Yeah, and I think that is really good for people to hear. And would you say have been the key highlights or learnings over those five years?
Kathleen Hogan: That there is no single lever, that you have to pull many levers to drive the culture change and you have to stay at it.
You can't declare victory and then freeze the culture then come back. It is something that you have to work on every day. But I would say some of the big learnings is the power of a CEO who embodies the culture necessary, not sufficient, but boy, if your CEO can embody the culture, you are espousing, that is a huge force multiplier.
I think we have been very lucky with Satya. I think the power of the managers, very early on, we invested in and tried to enlist our managers and if I could go back in time, I would have tried to empower them, and enable them even more because they play such a critical role. If your CEO is saying one thing and then five levels down, your managers are not saying the same thing, it breeds cynicism.
And so really that investment in the managers. I think trying to do big symbolic changes. So we tried to do big symbolic changes so people would know that we were trying to change the culture, but also small changes. A big symbolic change, as an example, is we used to have the company meeting for four hours.
And instead of having the company meeting where perhaps we were the know it all showing up saying, here is the direction, here is where we are going. We changed it to a one week hackathon where teams around the world could get together the power of the diversity of our teams around the world, coming together on topics.
The best ideas bubbling up. One of the ideas from a hackathon that bubbled up is if you really want to be inclusive, let's have both men and women navigate coming in and out of the workforce. And so let's have parental leave. So not just maternity leave, but parental leave. That is just one example. A huge thing I would say is around communication and making sure that you are communicating about the culture consistently.
I think one of the best things that we have had is Satya has a town hall or a QA every month with the entire company. And that is a consistent drum beat for him to talk about our culture, our mission, obviously also our strategy and our worldview, but that consistent drum beat, I think has been really important.
I could keep going, like I said, there is no one thing. In fact, every year we are trying to do new things to continue to evolve our culture. And sometimes you take one step back and then, one step forward.
David Green: A hackathon at the end of the day, your employees are usually your best source of ideas so why not tap into that?
I think it is interesting, we are seeing more and more companies doing that now. The technology is obviously there to support it, but a lot of it has to come from the leaders being open to that in the first place. Then of course, I know we are going to talk a bit later around data, the analytics and the data you can collect from those hackathons can help to really move the ideas forward in quite an agile way as well.
Kathleen Hogan: And that is why I would be remiss talking to you and not mentioning two things. One is an HR professional, not mentioning that the other key thing was to embed the culture into all of your people processes.
So we changed how we recruit, where we recruited, we changed how we promote folks. We invested in training and development, with a focus on our culture. And so really looking at all of our people processes. And then the other key thing was using data to debunk myths and to help people see via data, what the truth was. One of my favourite examples, I think you even mentioned it in your book. We had this belief that you had to hire from the top schools to get the best talent. We then showed that whether you went to the top school, the B school, the C school, two years later, the performance there was not a material difference. So to use that data to help change behaviours and to help people see that we could go to lots of different schools.
David Green: That is what data and the insights can do. It can help change behaviours for the better. You have talked about the importance of managers in culture and that is the same in pretty much everything. Isn't it. If you want to change behaviours, your managers are your key population within your organisation to help you to do that.
Kathleen Hogan: No, absolutely. And I think what we have been trying to do is be on this journey from just having data, to truly having insights from the data. Because in the past, you get a lot of data, but not necessarily insights. So now really with our incredible HRBI team, led by Dawn Klinghoffer, who I know you know, really driving those insights.
And then at Microsoft, we have got this unique opportunity to then operationalise those insights into our tools. So when you get this insight, for instance, we have seen this huge correlation between folks who do two connects a year and employee sentiment around wanting to stay happiness, etc. And so then how do you operationalise that in terms of reminding people to do their connects? During the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in the amount of time people were spending on teams in meetings. So then changing our tools to have a five minute break and, so that the meeting start five minutes later.
So it is not just how do you go from data to insights, but then can you operationalise them and somehow institutionalise those insights in terms of your tools, your manager, training, and your people processes. Again, we are on a long journey there, but that is the huge opportunity I think we have.
David Green: Yes, and right to call out Dawn. I feel so fortunate to have known Dawn for a few years now, and have always been amazed at the great work that she and the team are doing at Microsoft. I know that they have been helping a lot during the pandemic and what I have really been so interested to understand is how the culture has shifted since the onset of the pandemic.
For example, how do you ensure the workforce still has access to everything they need to know in this new hybrid work environment?
Kathleen Hogan: Well, I think we on some level have been lucky that as a company, we were using Teams before the pandemic. So at least we had that as a foundation, but I would say we are using Teams in a completely different way. And I think the great news is because everybody had to go home. Those of us who were lucky enough to go home, let me just say for the frontline workers and the folks who couldn't do that, obviously I have such deep admiration and gratitude, but for those of us who were lucky enough to work from home, we all now started turning on our videos.
We all started using chat. We all started using the emojis. We started to fully use Teams in a way that I just don't think we were using before the pandemic. And one of the things we have talked about as a leadership team even is if you think about before the pandemic, the few people who were on the Teams call and weren't in the conference room, did not have a good experience because we just weren't aware.
We didn't optimise for that. But now that we are all on video, it is a much better experience for those who are remote. And now what we are really talking about is when we go back or some of us go back, or some of us are in the office on any given day, how do we have an even better experience? And not go back to the way it was. Recognise that we are all not going to be working from home forever.
And so, what is this new experience? And how can it be even more inclusive and even better? And I think that is the opportunity that we are excited about.
David Green: It is interesting, isn't it? Because we are all equal when we are using Teams, we are all a box on the screen. Whereas you are right, I guess, if you have historically worked remote and let's say there is eight people sitting around a table and there is two of you on a video. It is a very different experience. So how do we take the good stuff from the pandemic about this and be able to have a good collaborative experience together in a meeting and take that to whatever the future has in store for us. Very, very interesting.
Kathleen Hogan: And just to that point, instead of when we go back, all of us will turn our video on. So even if eight of us are in the conference room, we have committed to our team norms that we will all turn our video on. We will all use chat. So it is still a great experience for those who aren't there. But those of us who happened to be there can still be in the same room, connect at the breaks, have all of that, that we have missed. And so, trying to have the best of both worlds, so to speak. But I think that is going to create a new, better, more inclusive experience. We also believe that there will be certain meetings that are actually better done all virtually. There are certain ways that when you have everybody online and you have got the chat you have got the polling and you have got the ability to get everybody's feedback.
There are some meetings that we think will be better done completely virtual. Not all, of them, but some, just given what we have learned during the pandemic.
David Green: Yeah, it is going to be an interesting world when we get into and let's hope we get in to it soon as well. You have touched on this a little bit but I know from conversations with Dawn and seeing Dawn and people in her team present during the pandemic, how are you using data and listening in your work on culture? I guess you were doing it before, so I would be interested in that, but also particularly, during the pandemic and how have you. used some of those listening that you are doing to actually inform your approach to hybrid working as well.
I think it would be great to great to hear about that.
Kathleen Hogan: I think our listening systems were important before to your point, but they are even more important now. We absolutely relied on our listening systems, we have relied on our daily pulse and just the incredible insights that the team has been able to deliver from that. We have relied on the connection between that and workplace analytics and really looking at how people are spending their time and the connection between that and employee sentiment and finding the insights from there. I would say also our employee resource groups have been so critical during this time and really listening to the unique needs of the community over the last year. And those listening system's helping us address key needs during the pandemic.
So for instance, one of the things we came out with based on our listening systems was this 12 week pandemic leave. When things hit and schools, shut down people were finding themselves trying to navigate three kids at home and schooling. First and foremost, we tried to make shift and prioritise and enable and empower people to still get their job done even though their home requirements had accelerated. But for those where they just couldn't make it work, we wanted to offer this 12 week pandemic leave. But then we got the feedback that a lot of folks didn't want to take it consecutively. They needed Thursday off or they needed, Tuesdays off or whatever. And so then we quickly, via our listening systems changed that so you didn't have to take them consecutively.
That is one example. The other example is we were tracking sentiment around work-life balance and productivity. And in the beginning, it almost went up as people were coming together, but then we started seeing that work-life balance deteriorate, so using our listening systems we got input that I presented on a Friday.
The leadership team said let's implement wellness days because some of the other feedback was around vacation and people perhaps not wanting to take vacation or feeling bad about vacation. But somehow, offering wellness days, people have really taken their wellness days. I have already taken all of my wellness days.
But that is just another example where based on the listening systems, we were able to try to do something to address what was happening with our employees.
David Green: I will put some links to this in the publication around the podcast, Microsoft published some great insights into how as you said, that listening showed and changed during the different stages of the pandemic.
So we will definitely put some links to that I think there is some really good learning there for people. I am interested as well, because obviously you talk about the daily pulse. A lot of companies or people we speak to, say they don't know if they want to ask people to regularly how they are feeling because they are worried about survey fatigue. I always say it is not survey fatigue, it is survey inaction fatigue. But in terms of how you set that up, in my understanding you are not getting asked to a survey every day.
It goes to a representative sample of the workforce each day and you track how often people are receiving a request and stuff like that. But I understand the take-up the response rate is pretty good.
Kathleen Hogan: We are very pleased with our take-up on the daily pulse. Like you say, we don't pulse everybody every day but you are able to accumulate the responses. We just did our yearly poll and we had 88% participation. And I think whether it be a yearly poll or the daily pulse, I think the key is that you use the data and you show how hopefully it improves the employee experience. And if you can be direct about that, then people think, oh, there is goodness that comes from taking this pulse or this poll. If you have your listening systems, but you never act on those listening systems or you don't share with folks how, that listening system is driving action then I think you are not going to get people to take it. But one of the things that we did in addition to sharing with employees, we had unique insights that we were gaining for our managers. And so I would send an email to the manager where I would share data and insights and suggested actions for them as we were seeing fatigue, but also what our employees were saying they needed. One of the big insights was as team connection was waning, people thought let's do more happy hours and the virtual happy hours. And of course those are fun, but honestly, that isn't really what people wanted.
People wanted to know that their work was valued. When you are remote and you are not getting to see your manager, you still want to be seen and you still want to be valued. They wanted to make sure that we were prioritising and really being active in helping them prioritise, just given the workload that people were facing, not just at work, but at home.
And those are sort of the insights that we can gain from our listening systems to then better empower our managers, to empower the employees with insights on like, this is what really is going to matter to our employees. In fact, you might want to tone down the happy hours because people are getting fatigued from those too.
David Green: It is interesting, I love that ever since I have known Dawn, which is about five or six years now, how you use the insights from the data to empower managers and employees and give managers insights, for example, around the behaviours that create positive experiences for their teams.
As a manager, that is a great nudge to get to think, well this works, this maybe doesn't work, then you can change your behaviour around that. Obviously thank you, I will say that, for, the perspective you gave in Excellence in People Analytics, the book that Jonathan Ferrar and I have written because I think it really shows the benefit that the workforce gets from people analytics and using data. We have talked about the pandemic around the benefits that people data and listening can have, but you have also used it in other areas certainly around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Particularly, if you think about the other crisis of last year, and also employee wellbeing and performance as well.
How do you balance these sets of outcomes from providing value to the employees and managers, but also providing value to the organisation as well?
Kathleen Hogan: To your point, and I was lucky when I stepped into this role to already have this incredible people analytics team that was already established.
I have talked to a lot of my peers who don't have as rich of an organisation, or don't have an organisation and are starting from scratch. So to step into this role and have this incredible team, I would say data is used in everything. And in fact, I am Holding together a deck for the board in June and for our exec staff where I do my annual people update.
And I was just reviewing the deck yesterday and it is all data data then leading to insight. I mean, truly the way I am organising the deck is to say, what is the insights we are getting around recruiting and our ability to attract talent especially versus the competition what does the data say? What is the insight? What is the so what for the board? What is the so what for our exec staff? What are we seeing around manager excellence and what our employees are saying around what works with managers? What are the behaviours that are most valued? What are the behaviours that are the biggest detractors and how do I share that data? What are we seeing with diversity and inclusion and what are the insights, whether it be diverse slates or other levers that we are pulling that make a big difference? Without going through my whole board deck, I would just tell you that data and insights are essential to everything that I am talking about around Hybrid.
What are we learning about hybrid? What is working in this current environment? How can we marry workplace analytics with people, sentiment and insights that then drive what we are doing in terms of how we are setting up the new hybrid work environment, both around policies, around people, but also the physical environment.
So, data is, is absolutely key to everything we are doing. It is not just related to one dimension of the function. I would say it is needed in all areas and fuels the insights and helps us make better decisions in all aspects of the business.
David Green: You said at the outset of our conversation when Satya phoned you and asked you to take on the leadership role in HR, you weren't working in HR. You were probably working in an area of the business, I am just guessing, where you use data every day to drive decisions.
HR seems to have been, not in Microsoft, but in lots of organisations, the last big function to actually embrace data and analytics. I bet you were pleased, as you said, that you arrived and this capability was already there because I am sure some of your peers, particularly in the last year have probably been in the dark a little bit as to having that data to hand, to help drive decision-making communication on the daily basis.
Kathleen Hogan: I do think that when I talk with my peers, people are using data, they understand the power of data. People are trying to build their own, HRBI equivalent capability. Also, looking to pick the right tools to enable a hybrid work environment. But certainly as the CHRO being at Microsoft where we have data scientists, etc, I, am definitely lucky to be at a company where tools and technology is our business. As opposed to peers who that isn't necessarily their business and they are trying to build that function. But yes, coming from services where I was leading a business with 20,000 people, even though I didn't come from HR, I knew that your ability to attract, develop and retain exceptional talent was the key to being able to deliver business results.
So it all comes down to people in that regard. And then the more you can empower people or managers with data and insights around the behaviour, that is going to help them be successful. That just is a force multiplier in terms of driving the business and changing the trajectory of the business.
So I think it is very linked. People drive the business, empowering people with people analytics empowers the people to empower the business.
David Green: It is interesting. I know Dawn said to me before the financial crisis of 2008, put people analytics on the map at Microsoft and it did so in other organisations that had developed this capability earlier. But at Insight222, we are seeing that the pandemic is putting those people analytics functions that were born in the last two to three years on the map because of all the reasons that we spoken about. You have talked about tools, you talked about some of the tools you have got access to at Microsoft.
Obviously this year has seen the launch of Microsoft, Viva, it has been dominating a lot of the headlines in the HR tech space. I would love to hear a bit more about the goals and ambitions of Viva, in terms of productivity, well-being and inclusion and how you are adopting the platform internally at Microsoft.
Kathleen Hogan: Well, I am really proud to be customer zero for Viva, but also having connected with my peers over the last six years, really understanding what are some of the key areas that we all want in terms of having this great employee experience that can empower our managers to empower employees and it can just empower employees. And Viva rests on top of Teams, which I think is already this incredible platform that has saved us during the pandemic. I can't tell you how many times people have said, can you imagine if we did this without Teams?
Teams also has got better throughout the years. We realised what we needed being able to iterate with the product groups, to be able to build features and functionality into teams, to make it more inclusive and to make it a better platform for us. On top of that, from a Viva perspective, they are really four key modules.
One is around insights and really a lot of what we have talked about trying to share that more broadly. How do you take employee sentiment, workplace analytics? What are those key insights that you can deliver for employees and managers to better empower them? Another key thing that we really haven't talked about as much is learning.
If you just look at the need for employees to continuously learn, and yet, how do they do that in the most effective way, being able to do just in time learning to have those modules show up in the moment. That is the key element of the Viva platform and then connections and knowledge are the other two key things that I could talk a lot about. I think the one thing that I am excited about for Microsoft from the knowledge perspective is we are really looking to aggregate all the institutional knowledge of every employee and make it available anytime, anywhere. That is a bold, bold goal, but we have got all of this incredible knowledge and with our technology, how can we serve that up to our employees when they need it?
That is part of the aspiration of the Viva platform as well.
David Green: That is a great aspiration to have. And I think you said early in that, answer, where would we be with out teams and the technology that we have got? It is not good that we have had a pandemic clearly, but as you said, imagine if we had had something like this 10 years ago with the technology that we had, then, it would have been a much less collaborative experience, I think, from a working perspective. You won't be surprised to hear that my last question is going to be about, analytics. with regards to analytics, in the people function in HR, what is next for your team at Microsoft?
Kathleen Hogan: Well, and again, back to your last comment, as awful as the last year has been and heartbreaking, etc, on some level the silver lining has been, that I do think it has accelerated our tools and the innovation from a tools perspective, but I think even more importantly, it has accelerated the flexibility that we can provide to employees. And again, it is going to vary based on roles and situations, but I think the ability for folks to have so much more flexibility with this new way of working this hybrid model is something I am really excited about. Even for me doing this podcast from Wisconsin and having the flexibility to be visiting my mum and still working. There is so much that I think is pretty exciting about this new world, and new way of work.
In terms of what is next? I think one of the biggest things we are focused on is talent architecture and really being super clear on the key roles within Microsoft. What are the skills, what are the learnings that you would need for each of those? And really trying to with all of the amazing data that we have with LinkedIn and the amazing data that we can have for employees within Microsoft, how do we better facilitate this marketplace, if you will, for our employees to navigate their own learning their skill development and what is needed for their career development. A lot of that happens today, but again, using tools and technology and AI, etc, can we deliver even more insights to our employees from a career perspective and more targeted learning in terms of skill development. So that is certainly one key focus area. In addition to continuing to do what I already talked about in terms of insights, learning connections and knowledge.
David Green: And as we said at the start continually evolve the culture. It's interesting that the analytics and technology is almost providing the glue between what traditionally were quite siloed parts of HR, career development, learning, promotion, recruitment, all those things technology and data is the glue, that pieces it all together and personalises it, which is much more valuable for the employee, but it is also for the organisation. The better understanding you have got of your skills, what gaps you can close either internally or through recruiting or even
through mergers and acquisitions the better. And that helps to obviously deliver on the business strategy as well. So it is that wonderful thing that analytics is actually providing benefits to each and every member of the company, but also to the company as a whole, in terms of helping you deliver on your business goals as well.
Kathleen Hogan: Absolutely. And as you said, the integration, if you can take insights from workplace analytics and what are people actually doing with employee sentiment, then even to look at learning and given those insights where you have applied learning assets and then measuring, if those learning assets even worked, it is connecting the dots across all of those.
Having that integrated people analytics, I think is where you can really deliver huge value to your employees, to your manager and ultimately to the company as a result.
David Green: Great. Well, Kathleen, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you very much for joining us, especially joining from Wisconsin.
Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you? Follow you on social media, maybe the blog. I know that wrote on the Microsoft site, how people can stay in touch.
Kathleen Hogan: Yeah, that is a good question. I think the best way is to find me on LinkedIn. So that is where I post everything.
David Green: That is good. that is nice and easy for people. so yeah, thanks very much, Kathleen. And thanks again also for your contribution. in the book. Jonathan and I really appreciate it.
Kathleen Hogan: Thank you for all that you have done to really raise awareness of the importance of people analytics.
I think it also helped a lot of people have gone into the people analytics business, because you have elevated it, and the importance. And so thank you for that.
David Green: That is very kind of you Kathleen to say that.
Kathleen Hogan: It is true. And really, you have helped elevate. rightfully elevate the important role that people analytics has and we are getting just incredible talent in that area as a result. So thank you for that.
David Green: Thank you too. Thanks everyone we love a bit of mutual appreciation at the end so thank you.