In the face of unprecedented changes in the world of work, driven by rapid technological advancements, shifting work models, and the global economy's volatility, strategic workforce planning has never been more critical.

What can we learn from global tech giant, Microsoft, who has been leading the way in navigating these turbulent waters?

On this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, host David Green sits down with Becky Thielen, Senior Director of People Analytics at Microsoft, who has been instrumental in charting the course for Microsoft's strategic workforce planning initiatives. 

This conversation will unveil: 

• Microsoft’s critical ingredients for strategic workforce planning success;

• The strategy behind building a resilient workforce planning framework;

• Insights into the common challenges faced and how Microsoft has navigated these to establish a strong planning foundation;

• An exploration of the tools and data analytics Microsoft uses to drive workforce planning and decision-making;

• The tangible benefits realised from strategic workforce planning.

This episode promises to be a rich resource of knowledge, strategies, and insights for anyone interested in the future of work and strategic workforce planning. 

Support from this podcast comes from global platform leader for employee experience, Culture Amp. Learn more about how Culture Amp can help you create a better world of work at http://cultureamp.com

[0:00:00] David Green: In a world where AI and technology are reshaping the way we work, alongside the volatility of the global economy, it's clear that traditional approaches to workforce planning need a rethink.  Skills are evolving at an unprecedented rate, remote and hybrid work models are becoming the norm, and the demand for agility within our organisations has never been greater.  But while these changes to the world of work may be presented as challenges at face value, in reality they also provide us with a unique opportunity to redefine how we prepare our workforce for the future. 

Joining me today to discuss this concept is Becky Thielen, Senior Director of People Analytics at Microsoft.  Becky has been instrumental in guiding Microsoft through the complexities of strategic workforce planning, leveraging analytics to develop a robust foundation in workforce management and demand planning, which we will unpack during our conversation.  Together, we'll explore the significance of aligning people, processes, data, and technology.  Becky will share some of the challenges Microsoft has faced, the strategies implemented to overcome them, and the lessons learned along the way.  So, whether you're just beginning to think about these topics, or are looking to refine your existing strategies, this episode will provide you with the knowledge and inspiration you need to start building a strong foundation in strategic workforce planning.  With that, let's dive into the conversation with Becky. 

Today, I am delighted to welcome Becky Thielen, Senior Director of People Analytics at Microsoft, to the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  Becky, thanks for being a guest on the show, it's great to see you again.  Can you start by telling us a little bit about your role at Microsoft and your background in HR and people analytics?

[0:02:04] Becky Thielen: Absolutely.  Hi, David, it's lovely to connect with you again, as always, and thanks for having me for a guest today.  To talk a little bit about my role at Microsoft, I get the opportunity to advise our HR centres of excellence leaders and teams, and partner with them frequently on all data and insights focused on helping our employees thrive and Microsoft succeed.  And so with that, I sit in the HR organisation in what we call our HR Business Insights Team, and others may also recognise the acronym that we put on it, HRBI.  Many listeners have heard some things from HRBI in the past or seen some of our content.  But to give a little bit more, our mission is to empower HR in the business to make impactful people and culture decisions using data and insights.

I also had the privilege to be a part of this team for the last 12 years to help build and evolve this team into the people analytics organisation it is today, with many great partners, of course, to make that happen.  But prior to people analytics, I got the opportunity to work in many roles across different industries around HR strategy, planning, technology, processes, of course data, data, data and operations.

[0:03:17] David Green: That's a great background, Becky, and obviously a couple of just follow-ups on that.  Number one, 12 years in people analytics.  The field has evolved a lot during those 12 years.  I know it's evolved a lot at Microsoft in those 12 years, but actually if we think going back, so that's 2012, there weren't that many organisations doing people analytics back in 2012.  If you reflect on how the field has progressed during that time, what are some of your key observations around that?

[0:03:45] Becky Thielen: I'll just say it's been a fun 12 years.  Lots of changes, you mentioned.  A few things that stand out.  When we first brought the team together, we did so by centralising resources that were doing reporting, some analytics out in our different lines of business in HR.  And so we've moved, I think, predominantly one of the biggest things is move from reporting and just data delivery to true analytics, dashboards that are interactive and in line with the different user personas versus flat, so that big evolution on reporting basics to more useful and impactful targeted reporting and being able to do those true analytics and insights and prioritise that way. 

I would say another thing back when we were building and forming in these spaces, we didn't have a lot of groups to compare to.  As you mentioned, there weren't that many people analytics spaces, but to be able to see how much has grown across our different companies and how valued people analytics is across the different companies and industries has been just a fun thing to watch and observe.

[0:04:56] David Green: So, Becky, the second follow-up was around, your background is obviously analytics, but also strategy and planning.  Those are quite three important things to bring together, I think, because they go together very well, don't they?

[0:05:09] Becky Thielen: They do.  When I started at Microsoft, I actually moved to Microsoft to help enable at the time the CHRO, prior to Kathleen, to build out her strategy and work through what are the strategic planning processes and the prioritisation decisions that needed to happen in there.  And that was a really exciting journey to be on with her, as she was new to role at that timeframe, and being able to use some of my data and technology background and strategic planning background for other companies to bring that to Microsoft.  And I, of course, fell in love with Microsoft.  That's why I'm here now. It's actually 17 years at Microsoft for me.  Here, I've played multiple roles along that way, but strategy and planning is near and dear to my heart.  And then to bring data into it and get to do that every day now is also exciting.

[0:06:00] David Green: As you know, Becky, a number of previous episodes of the Digital HR Leaders podcast have been focused on that kind of important pivot from workforce planning to strategic workforce planning.  Please can you tell us and tell listeners a little bit about what you found as one of the most important ingredients needed to progress to strategic workforce planning?

[0:06:18] Becky Thielen: Yeah, as HR leaders and analytical professionals, we're very aware there's a changing landscape that we have going on with skills and how we do work.  In my own team, I'm seeing this challenge play out and our analytical technologies are changing and evolving, so how we work and the skills that we need to do our jobs are changing.  And so, we're actually using AI, and I'll talk a little bit about that later on.  But however, with the whiplash of the economy and the pandemic that we all just went through, the more strategic conversation you really want to get to, it truly has to start with a strong foundation.  You've got to be able to juggle that forest and trees focus areas.  And for us, that's been a key learning and focus in the last couple of years, to just keep shoring up that foundation. 

What I mean by that is we have to be very aligned on what does our current and our near future look like for headcount and demand planning, and so that affordability versus the business need versus our hiring that's currently in flight and the demand that's needed, and you've got to factor in all the variables of what's going on around us.  And if these ingredients get out of balance, you can't make those quick pivots that need to happen.  And you also are having -- it'll make you struggle to have that more strategic conversation if you're on that shaky sand, that shaky ground that you could be on.

[0:07:44] David Green: I'd love to hear how you managed to get that foundation in strategic workforce planning established at Microsoft.

[0:07:51] Becky Thielen: The high demands and business needs were a big enabler for us to greatly improve the foundation.  And so, I'll start with two years ago, when we, along with many in the tech industry, were at this major growth timeframe just to address the needs of that more hybrid and remote workforce, we really started seeing some cracks in our workforce planning foundation.  We were, of course, in that unique position in the company to have most of our data and reporting that we need in some type of data solution that we could use.  But we were also seeing that it was that strong partnership that was critical, and that while we had a lot of our data, which was good, we didn't have everything, and we didn't know everything that we needed to bring to the table to make that work. 

So, the headwinds shifted and accelerated our need to develop a more robust data and reporting solution to enable quick insights for those businesses who are recruiting for finance and HR leaders to make critical decisions.  By modifying and providing access to some of our existing reporting, such as attrition, recruiting, and to non-HR partners like finance and business chiefs of staff, we empowered others to do some basic self-service critical workforce data decision, so putting that data in the hands of those that are making decisions on the ground in those real-time moments.  But it also selfishly, it freed up some great time in HRBI for us to really go deep and get that next realm of work that we can do in the strategic insights and pulling that data from others across the way to make it more rich and robust. 

So, playing it forward, we all just went through and are still going through some of these economic downturn components that were issues that we're in right now, we had that increased examination of our headcount and those processes that we needed to go to manage that headcount to ensure that we were precise.  With that examination, it needed that united company leadership to prioritise system and process changes at that enterprise level that we really needed.  So, finance and HR co-led a broad programmatic effort to drive improvement in our headcount management and workforce planning processes.  Also, we were able to kind of use that partnership that we have in that co-led programmatic effort to not only improve those base foundational systems and processes, but to also bring and join data together that we didn't necessarily have joined in the past.  And so you can imagine, we're a pretty complex organisation at Microsoft.  We have things that we've got a workforce plan around that are data centres, sales.  You have gaming studios, our traditional software engineering spaces, and then of course corporate functions.  So, we all have different unique elements that we need to think about when we're doing this type of work. 

But we started at the beginning and identifying our foundational elements that we needed to enable that stronger workforce planning, the position management, the right structures, the forecasting and demand planning.  You've got all these different rhythms that happen based on what business you're in and different variables you may need to add to it.  And then really brokering, like I mentioned, that access to the data and pulling it together to have those insights come to life.  So, we identified those core elements across the enterprise, and that's where we started seeing that rich outcome for evolving the base foundation, but also how we can continue to do more together. 

[0:11:35] David Green: That's really good.  And you talked about that relationship with finance.  I mean, how important was that?  And maybe, for some of your peers listening from other organisations, what guidance would you give around how to establish a strong partnership with finance?

[0:11:52] Becky Thielen: The partnership with finance was just critical.  I think I'd meet with my finance partner, the counterpart on this, at least once a week, many times, two or three times a week, depending on the type of work that we had going on at that timeframe.  But in building that relationship, I think the key thing that I found in here, one, we were united around the problem statement, which is super-important to align first; but truly, really understanding each other's challenges in persona, what we need to get out of our work together.  Once we were able to get, of course, on board with the common problem and understand each other, it was easier for us to meet both of our needs and also developing that longer-term trust in those connections that we need to do to bring our data together.

[0:12:41] David Green: If we look outside Microsoft for a minute, and obviously I know you speak with peers in other organisations, and I know from speaking to many peers that actually getting this foundation can actually be quite difficult, why do you think it is so challenging for so many companies to establish that foundation in strategic workforce planning?

[0:14:14] Becky Thielen: I will say it's very challenging and before we did this project, I would say too we learned along the way that many others had tried this project.  Many were trying it in the areas that they control and own.  They may have tried to connect with others along the way, but you would see a silo of work happening, trying to tackle this problem for one business group or another.  And that then created all these different siloed potential solutions, or processes, or ways of working that people get accustomed to and used to.  And so that really was a crux of some of the big challenges that come into play.  But when we got together on that common issue itself, it became that broad co-led, where you have finance and HR owning it at the senior leadership level of the company and assigning resources on it together itself, it really led for that kind of that broad initiative. 

What I mentioned about identifying the personas, it's not just our finance persona and our HR persona, right?  You have the recruiting persona, you have the business chief of staff persona, you have the different HR leaders in there; and then the individual business controllers, finance controllers in there and central finance, so a lot of different personas that needed to come to life.  And so, anytime you have a lot of people and a lot of different objectives and stuff, it can get kind of messy.  We did pull these groups together, and I think it was a moment that mattered where we spent two days in a room together, and I think I whiteboarded a lot during that timeframe, where we truly got grounded of what we're solving and how we're going to solve it and really locking arms.

[0:16:05] David Green: Let's look at the role of technology in enabling strategic workforce planning.  How did Microsoft technically enable your strategic workforce planning foundation?

[0:16:13] Becky Thielen: Well, I'll go through there a few iterations, but I would say, as a part of bringing all that data we just talked about together, originally when we brought it together, it could take a minimum of six hours to refresh this data, to just supply the data and the insights.  Actually, that's just the data.  Then it's the analysing and insights, to just supply that reporting and insights to our senior leaders across the company on a weekly basis.  So, if you can imagine, my team didn't love six hours of data work.  They would have much more enjoyed the analytics or the modelling components of it.  And so, I would say the thing that got me really excited and why I wanted to talk about this with you too, one of the reasons, there's many reasons, was we were able to then start using this new product that came out from Microsoft in the recent Ignite event, and that was a few months back, called Fabric.  And this is something that I think people analytics organisations will get a win out of.  For us, we were able to take that 6 hours and turn it into about 15 to 20 minutes of refresh and joining across multiple systems and data sets, without having to copy and recreate data multiple times, which was beautiful.  And as you can imagine, my team may have jumped for joy in hearing that timeframe. 

I have to give you a little bit around what is Fabric itself.  So, we haven't used all the aspects of Fabric, all the great features.  So, I'll tell you a little bit about the features itself.  But I would say we dipped the toe in the water.  This was one of my first projects working on Fabric in here.  And so, what it did was neatly join that data and cut out that manual time on there for my team, who were starting to use those next product offerings.  So, Fabric itself, it is using best-of-breed engines for ETL and ELT with Spark and data engineering, data science, machine learning, data warehousing, real-time analytics, BI, and reporting, as well as it has this new thing called Data Activator.  I haven't used it yet, but this is something I'm super-excited about, and this is what I want to move to very quickly.  What it does is it enables users to get notifications and build workflows if there's a change in data.  So, think about those.  We've talked about nudges in the past, so we use different things for nudges, but being able to kind of see, in a fast way, when your data has some type of shift with parameters is something I'm excited about. 

The other piece to it too, it integrates with Microsoft Office.  So, I don't know about everyone here, but I would say for me and our team, we do a lot of time at delivering reporting and analytics through PowerPoint, through Excel, a lot of times PowerPoint, right, for meetings and such.  It can refresh itself, which is one of the things that I get a little bit smiley about on that one, because it would cut out a lot of time for us to really redo those PowerPoints all the time.  But I think the other thing I would say to it as well, we haven't started using all the different pieces of it, but I am starting to really look at the AI pieces that it utilises, such as generative AI and classical AI.  I think it will help us with forecasting and being able to play with those different variables that may come into play.  So, right now I feel like our foundation is strongly looking around the corner of what could happen next, but I think it's just going to get better.

[0:20:02] David Green: Yeah, and it's a great example, I think, of how people analytics, all the work of the analysts in the people analytics team, is going to change as more of this technology comes in.  Now, obviously at Microsoft, you get the advantage to play with some of this stuff maybe before some of your peers in other organisations, particularly non-tech organisations.  But I guess we can see that a lot of that timely, repetitive work that analysts do, I mean you said your team, obviously it's frustrating, it used to take six hours to do maybe not the most exciting work compared to some of the other analysis that they'll do, but now that's got that down to 20 minutes.  That's quite a significant change, isn't it?  And not only that, it sounds like you're able to automate the updating of the PowerPoints that you push out to your customers in the business around the workforce planning piece as well.  So, that's a big improvement, a big time saver.

[0:21:00] Becky Thielen: It is, and we talk about it in our team.  We are currently working on -- and these types of technologies help us take out some of those pieces of work that are not our favourite.  We're analysts, we want to be analysing, right?  Then, what can we do and what are our next steps?  I think, for us, we get to do more analytics and also really dig into the other questions that we haven't been able to in the past of disparate data, or difficult-to-join data that we just didn't have the bandwidth to do so, because we were lifting up other critical things.

[0:21:34] David Green: For you, as someone that's been working in this area for a long time and also has that background in strategy and planning as well, what are the key business benefits of effective strategic workforce planning?

[0:21:45] Becky Thielen: I could go on and on on this one, but I'll just name a couple.  But first, I'm just going to highlight the help that it's doing for our global talent acquisition organisation, and that's near and dear to my heart.  They're one of my clients since I have the centres of excellence.  And so, just allowing that longer term, stronger hiring demand and capacity planning models out there has already started creating a better experience for our talent acquisition teams.  Being able to see what that volume looks like, where it may be geographically, etc, is so important for us to be able to plan and set that team up for success.  Hiring managers, right?  So, if the volume's managed well in the talent acquisition teams, then it's a smoother process for hiring managers and such along the way.  I'm sure chief of staffs are quite happy with also having that foresight and view around what's coming as they're planning for their businesses and then finance, you name it, right?  Then in general, it'll impact our candidates.  If talent acquisition is running smoother, our candidates have a better experience as well.  And so, I know that's kind of a big end-to-end piece, but I do see how that affects so much of just being able to properly plan the best way we can here. 

The other thing that I call out to, just having this deeper accuracy for headcount and hiring and being able to look around that corner and share those thoughts and those models out with others, it gives that ability for finance to really test and play with their forecasts and affordability.  It gives folks even within our HR organisation to think about, we have onboarding, right?  And so to be able to plan for who's coming on board and how many and where they're coming into in a longer term way, there's so many different factors that have been able to be realised and impacts that have been able to be realised since we've been able to increase our foundation accuracy.

[0:23:43] David Green: We hope you're enjoying this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  If you are looking to continue your learning journey, head over to myHRfuture.com and take a look at the myHRfuture Academy.  It is a learning experience platform supporting HR professionals to become more data-driven, more business-focused, and more experience-led.  By taking our short assessment, you will see how you stack up against the HR skills of the future.  Then, our recommended learning journeys guide you every step of the way, helping you to close your skills gap, deepen your knowledge, and press play on your career.

Becky, if you reflect on the journey that you've been on and the experience, what are the key learnings and guidance you would share with listeners?  We have a lot of HR and people analytics professionals listening to this podcast, many of whom maybe are working on strategic workforce planning in their own organisations, maybe struggling with it.  So, I'm sure that they'd welcome any key learnings and guidance that you can share with them.

[0:24:59] Becky Thielen: For that one, I've already said it a little bit, but I'll say it again because it's so important.  This is not an HR project, this is a cross-enterprise project, and that partnership across the board is just by far the most critical, right?  And then, I would also say a learning that we had, as we saw the different siloed motions not working and failing or creating these data islands and process islands, when you brought it all together, that broad coalition of people across the enterprise became the natural change champions.  And my family, we use that "Many hands make lighter work".  It really meant that way.  It was a lot of work up front to get everybody aligned, but once everybody was aligned and we had that vision of where we were going, I really -- I'll use the chief of staff for each of the business groups, they became some of our strongest partners to help us roll this out and also maintain the integrity of what we wanted to accomplish with technical management.

[0:26:03] David Green: Yeah, it's such an important point because as you said, this work is complex, it's difficult, you need to align lots of different stakeholders to it.  If no one's going to do anything with it, then you're kind of wasting your time.  So, I think we can apply that to all analytics really.  It's not just about doing the work, getting the insights, it's about how can we use the insights to drive decisions and then drive change and then measure the success, or otherwise, of the initiatives as well.

[0:26:33] Becky Thielen: Very true, and I think about that too.  When the team came together, as joining our different voices, we took away territory, right?  It wasn't like that wasn't a part of the conversation, we really stayed very focused around what we needed to accomplish and listening to each other in that process.  And also, to be honest, there's a lot of pain going on with headwinds changing and coming off of big, big hiring timeframe to, "Oh, let's pause, let's see what's going on with the economy".  It is a bit of an unsure time in some of those moments.  And so I'd say anytime you're working on a big change, it's easier to ignite when you do have some pain in the system. 

[0:27:18] David Green: And in terms of measuring success, I appreciate it's difficult because you're going across a whole gamut of the organisation, and obviously you gave the example of talent acquisition, "Are we recruiting to plan a bit more often?  Have we got the right number of recruiters in place?" etc, you can measure candidate experience, and you mentioned obviously the feedback that you're getting from the chiefs of staff.  What are the ways that you measure success and learn and then iterate as you move forward?

[0:27:44] Becky Thielen: We have a slew of success measurements related to this work that we did, but a couple of just very, very high-level ones, right?  And so with senior leaders, do they understand what the plan is; do they agree with the plan; and are we operating against that and achieving success?  And so, they will tell you quickly if we're not.  And so, having that accurate data, to be more of a conversation around executing on the plan versus debating the plan, because we're all speaking the same language of the numbers on that, which is a very high-level one.  Our goal, right, is to enable the business to succeed in there, and so ensuring that we're able to fill the roles when we need to fill the roles and they can get hitting the ground running, because we planned for them from an onboarding perspective, you name it.  So, there's lots of high-level measurements in there.  And then there's more detailed measurements around the exact kind of percentage, like if we predicted this, how did it actually land and what was different?  So, if you keep tuning the variables of the model, that's the piece that's never going to be that complete, exact science.  We can't always predict everything that can occur, but we can always get smarter and get closer and closer to the pin.

[0:29:02] David Green: So, what's next?  If we turn to the future, what's next on the strategic workforce planning journey for Microsoft?

[0:29:09] Becky Thielen: I want to optimise the current state still.  So, before I talk about some of those cool, fun things in the future piece, I'll say optimising the current state.  I already mentioned that refining and tuning the models, getting closer and closer to as accurate as possible.  Definitely going to dip our toe in the water further and further with Fabric and our latest and greatest technologies that we have available.  Fabric also has multiple copilots, and so it has been easier to learn it and adopt it at this point, but there's more that we can do and explore, and so we will be doing that.  And then, of course, there's advancing the future.  And so, we talked about the importance of a strong foundation, but now we have the momentum and we have the data to better enable more talent management conversations and decisions, more skilling assessment conversations and decisions, redeployment of talent as we ship businesses around, and then ultimately continue to impact hiring outcomes in here.  And so, I think for some of those pieces too would be those important decisions and principles around geography and even hybrid and that part of the conversations, which we know many organisations are having discussions about hybrid.  But when you have that base and understanding, you can also bring that conversation to light in a new way.

[0:30:29] David Green: It's so important.  I mean, if we talk about the importance of strategic workforce planning, it certainly seems, talking to many organisations around the world, there's more focus on this at the moment.  It's partly because, as you said, the ways in which we work are changing and that's been accelerated by the pandemic.  And I guess we're also facing, if you look at talent demographics in most of the major countries or major developed countries around the world, actually the size of the working population is shrinking as well.  So actually, workforce planning just becomes more and more important with all those elements, doesn't it?

[0:31:07] Becky Thielen: It does.  All of those things that you mentioned and the conversations and the decisions and strategies, and as much future-proofing and planning that you can do, the better off we're going to be, right?  I think also the better experience and how our employees can thrive in how our jobs are evolving and changing and what's next around these different quarters can make a big impact.

[0:31:33] David Green: That sets up the question of the series very well, Becky, there; it's almost like we planned it and we hadn't planned that at all!  So, this is a question we're asking every guest in this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  What are your top three ways, you don't just have to have three, you can have four, you can have two if you want to, what are your top three ways in which HR can play a pivotal role in creating a thriving organisational culture?

[0:31:54] Becky Thielen: First, I have to say, I love that you used the word "thriving" when you asked that question.  I think you've seen some of our content, but unaware in Microsoft, we are measuring thriving for within the organisation, and we break down thriving into three components.  And so, we measure in our listening systems these three components around meaningful work, empowerment, and energised.  There are many things that we analyse around that, but we share those insights across the company and help support and enable our employees to thrive.  I mentioned it as a part of our mission, that's one of our key things. 

But there are multiple ways HR plays such pivotal roles in creating a thriving organisation or enabling a thriving organisation.  But first I'll start with near and dear to us is people analytics.  And so, when I think about our pivotal role in people analytics, we do play an important role to measure and provide data and insights and to enable HR and business leaders to prioritise actions, coaching that may need to happen, processes that may need to evolve, you name it.  I think that's a key part of what we do in people analytics, to enable the organisations to thrive.  And then, next I'll pivot to more HR leaders in general.  One of the things that I've learned as I think through the analytics I want to provide and what my team is doing related to this, I think first about, I need to role-model the behaviours that enable a thriving organisation, and I think HR leaders have to do that because we are really -- we need to help enable this broadly.  So, to do so, we have to do that cliche thing and put our own oxygen mask on and live it and breathe it ourselves so we can help and coach others, right?  And so, I think that helping coach and enable others is important for us. 

Then I'll speak broadly from an HR function perspective and more targeted to the COEs, because that's where my focus has been so much for a while.  But I would say for our COE leaders, centres of excellence leaders and programme owners, they're really leaning into the data that's provided by your people analytics team and really understanding how your programmes, your processes, your services, you name it, are truly impacting or enabling thriving in the organisation.  If you don't have that connection, then that's a good question to ask to your people analytics team to help you think through that.  I do feel strongly that we in HR have an ability to impact thriving in each interaction that we have with employees and candidates.  And so, what I mean by that is every question that they bring, an employee may raise into whatever funnel that you have for employee support and questions to your manager, in development trainings and performance management process, leadership development paths, you name it, each interaction has an ability to make that impact better for everyone.

[0:34:52] David Green: Perfect, yeah, and it's about action, isn't it?  At the end of the day, we can have the most sophisticated listening technologies, we can use active listening, as I know you do at Microsoft, do a pulse every day to a proportion of employees, and we can do some great analysis on it, we can look at passive data, obviously we can anonymise and aggregate that and look at some of the trends around it, but if people don't act on the insights and we don't communicate that we're acting on the insights, then creating that culture of thriving is difficult.  Understanding what causes thriving and actually trying to industrialise that, if that's the right word, within the organisation is important, isn't it?

[0:35:34] Becky Thielen: Yes, absolutely.  And I get the opportunity to work with some amazing leaders in HR that will take action, and of course, business leaders that are very data driven and want to take action as well in there.  I think if I was to call out anything to our different HR leaders, just really keep pushing on those actions that you can drive in here.  The insights, as you mentioned, are wonderful, and being able to measure is wonderful, and our team really enjoys doing it, but they would not get the satisfaction also that they had, that they get today, without seeing those insights turn into action and then also seeing the success happening in the company.

[0:36:11] David Green: Well, what a great way to end our conversation.  I can't believe we've already got to the end, Becky.  Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast and sharing some of the work that you're doing at Microsoft around strategic workforce.  I think it's really going to help many of our listeners that are trying to struggle with some of that work in their own organisations.  Can you let listeners know how they can connect with you on social media and find out more about your work at Microsoft?

[0:36:36] Becky Thielen: Absolutely.  First, I'll say thank you for also having me today.  As always, David, it's a pleasure to chat with you.  For anyone that wants to connect on this opportunity or other things in people analytics, feel free to message me on LinkedIn, or send a connection request.  Happy to chat and share more.  And at times, we do publish sometimes publicly on LinkedIn or HBR articles, etc, some of our work that we find.  We do have one on thriving that we published last year on HBR, if anybody wants to take a look at it.

[0:37:10] David Green: Thank you, Becky, and we'll put the link to some of those resources in the show notes as well for people.  Becky, thank you very much.  I look forward to hopefully seeing you at a conference or an event, an Insight222 event maybe, around the world at some point this year.  Take care and speak to you soon.

[0:37:25] Becky Thielen: Sounds great, thank you.