Enid Lizamore is head of HR at Microsoft South Africa
Cloud-based productivity services and mobile devices offer fresh scope for team members to collaborate across time zones and access information on any device or platform from anywhere, anytime. Flexible workstyles are liberating everyone from university graduates to working parents balancing family and career.
Employers are migrating their IT architecture online and harnessing real-time data and analytics to improve performance, bringing actionable insights not only to the C-suite, but employees who are looking for a heightened work experience with a greater say and control over their career development.
For Human Resources (HR) this means pulling off a tough balancing act. Businesses expect to compete for the best talent from around the world, but also need HR to better support business objectives, and inspire as well as manage employees in ways that create value, both for employees and the company.
Empowering staff to take ownership of their careers
At Microsoft we have a heightened level of employee expectation, because the type of people who we hire are incredibly driven and very entrepreneurial in terms of how they think and operate.
They are determined to succeed and want to play a central role in their development and in forging a career path for themselves. This is why we treat our employees the same way we treat our customers.
Microsoft aims to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more.
Reaching that goal starts internally through the way our people are able to navigate local and international learning opportunities to obtain the benefit of new and interesting experiences, overseas conferences and massive open online courses, all of which are readily available to them.
For example, our Modern Marketing University is a one-stop shop, functioning as a unified social and learning platform for driving our collective marketing transformation and modern marketing professional development. It is targeted at our marketing and sales teams in particular, but any employee in the company can register for courses and sessions.
Our line managers are responsible for informing their employees of all the opportunities available to them; they create the right environment by promoting a culture of development and ownership, enabling staff to maximise these opportunities, expand their skillset and grow their careers.
Culture is the driving force behind success
Today more than ever people want to work somewhere with a sense of value and purpose. Culture plays the most important role in driving our success as a multinational company.
We fundamentally believe that we need a culture founded in a growth mindset. In order to develop organisational leaders from within the business, the company needs to believe that everyone can grow and develop and that potential is nurtured, not predetermined.
This growth mindset enables the company to transform while our people keep delivering impact and perform at optimal levels. This is achieved through continuous learning, as well as finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
They are self-reflecting, really focussed on taking in feedback from others, embracing challenges, taking calculated risks and using missed opportunities or failures for greater levels of success in the future.
Fostering culture through technology-enablement
Because the employee’s success builds on the work, ideas and efforts of others, HR needs to help create a workplace where flexible work styles broaden the talent pool, boost morale, and allow employees to address their work in ways that can create inspiration and insight.
A solution called MyAnalytics, for example, connects employees to projects that their peers are working on, aiding collaboration and helping to build connections within the company as well as other offices around the globe.
HR needs to manage workplace teams so that everyone has a chance to participate and share their insights. It needs to create a corporate culture in which flexibility, benefits, and meaning trump money. It further needs to find new ways to mentor employees so that valuable knowledge is spread to many, rather than kept in the hands of a few.
For Microsoft, using technology and data to learn more about our employees, engage with them more effectively and treat them like customers is part of a commitment to developing a more satisfied, focused workforce. But it’s also built on the fact that Microsoft must try to hire talent that is sought by competitors within and outside of our industry.
Data is changing the nature of work for the better. It’s leading to more insight, faster responses, and deeper understanding of how to find great employees and keep them happy and engaged in their jobs.
It’s very competitive out there, so if you can use data to give you any kind of competitive edge, it’s wise to do that. To attract and retain top talent, businesses need to develop a close understanding of the employee they’re looking for and communicate the values they have in common.
In addition, by using communications, collaboration and social capabilities to connect people, information and resources, businesses can reduce onboarding and training costs. This people-centric approach to our digital workplace strategy allows us to improve both productivity and satisfaction.
As a company which uses technology to affect change in the world, we have embraced our skills and used to them build an environment where our employees can thrive and succeed.
Empowering employees through innovative technologies not only enables them to conduct more strategic and value‑added activities, but also aligns their personal values and interests with that of the organisation, ensuring that they become valuable agents of organisational change.
This has boosted Microsoft’s growth and put the business in a position to be the leader in innovation in areas ranging from cloud computing to office productivity and consumer technology.