Does Employee Experience matter? Yes and we are joined by Karoliina Kettukari of Meltlake to help explain to you why, how employees can make the most of Microsoft Viva to help their experience and what organisations should consider when it comes to adoption and change in the world of employee experience, especially for frontline workers.
As we often do, we would highly recommend checking out the Microsoft Worklab site for more on the subject.
Does Employee Experience matter? Yes and we are joined by Karoliina Kettukari of Meltlake to help explain to you why, how employees can make the most of Microsoft Viva to help their experience and what organisations should consider when it comes to adoption and change in the world of employee experience, especially for frontline workers.
As we often do, we would highly recommend checking out the Microsoft Worklab site for more on the subject.
Hello and welcome to show 42, Part 2 of Grey Hat Beard the Modern workplace podcast. If you haven't listened to part one from last week where we talked about Gary myself, talked about the news and we covered all sorts of things like the hybrid paradox we talked about how you can actually collaborate with power apps now, which is really exciting and how you can use Excel for code, which is slightly strange. But dude, go back and have a listen to or check out the show notes for that because in Part 2 for those watching video may have notice we. Don't have a Gary, but we do have an L back and we have a guest in carolena we're introducing minutes, but we're going to be talking about employee experience with Viva, so carolena. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes, of course. Thank you Kevin and Hial. Nice to be in here today so I'm gonna get ready. I come from Helsinki, Finland. I'm I wanna work late at night like and everything I do revolves around teams, Weaver, connections and all these cool employee experience stuff. We are going to talk like. Talk about today.
Kevin McDonnell:Fantastic thank you and and thank you. I I will try and get your surname.
Alan Eardley:That those big the question Carolina. If everything that you do is around Viva connections and Viva and employee experience, what on Earth were you doing a year ago? Thanks.
Kevin McDonnell:Right?
Karoliina Kettukari:I I have, I have been doing Internets in teams since 2019 without with connections.
Alan Eardley:Yeah. Yeah yeah, so there there, there there was. There was life before Viva wasn't there. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that there.
Karoliina Kettukari:I'm old. Helpful. Was it really?
Kevin McDonnell:No one cared about employees back then. It's only since fever came out that anyone cares about employee only since the pandemic. Before that we will have to fight for ourselves. I think that's right anyway.
Alan Eardley:Yo.
Karoliina Kettukari:Right?
Kevin McDonnell:Before we go into arguing, I'm going to try and cover 3 ish topics so we're gonna get a kick off with. So that's slightly familiar, but a really important topic, which is why employee experience matters. What the the evidence around there is, and if our memories help, which I don't think of some numbers to go that as well, but I'm going to go into about what you as an employee can do with Viva. So it's almost the the kind of experience for yourself and what that helps and then finish. Also no pun there with finish, their apologies, finish with how organized organizations can help manage that. Change because I think it's really important that as you put the employee experience things out there, you actually need to consider the employee experience for them and how that's going to make a difference. Bot will kick off and Carolina gonna throw you into the dragonpit first at. Why does employee experience actually matter?
Karoliina Kettukari:I think this is an excellent point from AL that what did we do a year ago? Because I think a year ago we didn't talk about employee experience at all that much, but I think we did the same kind of projects. We did. Same same kind of things. And now when you have been working in Routley these past 1 1/2 almost two years, too bad. I think they have been noticing.
Alan Eardley:True.
Karoliina Kettukari:Some changes in our work environment, our mental health or physical health, our habits, how we work and that we have. We have also focused on more about well being at work and how can we, for example. Uh, make the line between work life and our free time more clear than before, because otherwise we we would just be working 24/7 here in my my kitchen. So I think the topic isn't.
Kevin McDonnell:Not not all of us out there would be a bit too crowded, but.
Karoliina Kettukari:It could be big crowded 'cause literally like just like 2 square meters smaller.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:But yeah, but the I think, uh, my topic has been her UM behind all time. But now it is evident because of these drastic changes we have gone through during tease tease past years.
Alan Eardley:I think that's right it is. It is the change, isn't it? It's suddenly everybody having to change really highlights what the impact of that changes and organizations when they were thinking about change before, would take a lot of time. They would think about it, they might plan it, or they might just do it, but they wouldn't necessarily measure.
Kevin McDonnell:I I think.
Alan Eardley:They output the outcome of that change in quite the same way, and they've had to actually accept that. An unplanned change had to take place, and it had some really adverse impacts, which let's face it, no. IT projects never have any adverse impacts. Everything is always positive and it's always successful. But getting people to change.
Kevin McDonnell:It's a it's a feature, not a bug.
Alan Eardley:Yeah, getting people to change where they work is is a massive one, and as you say, your your kitchen might be. Yeah two square meters, but you're not going to be comfortable working there day in day out forever. Uhm, whereas a lot of people, I think that's it, isn't it? They they want to be in the office. They miss being in the office. There's so many reasons why people don't want to work at home. And then there are so many reasons why people do want to work at home. And yeah, now we see all of these organisations saying.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah. Yes.
Alan Eardley:We all have to go back or we all have to stay away. It's kind of like, well, actually as a individual I have some choice at this and I can choose to go work for that company over there. 'cause I'm going to be able to work in the office or that company there 'cause I'm going to work remotely and companies need to think about that and they need to think about the experience of their employees and how they retain them, how they invite them and attract them and get that talent. But also making sure they're all happy. And I'm not burning out.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah. And I think there was some great stats. I know we've talked about this a lot on their show and currently you mentioned it for that, but microsoft.com/work lab that the kind of cost of actually replacing someone is it's not just you know you've got a rehire. You've got the time it takes to do all that hiring you've. You've got the the kind of back and forth talking with agents, talking with the people you're hiring themselves. You got people doing interviews, considering all those different interviews, and then even once they join, you've got that time it takes for that new person gap speed. All that while, if there's been a gap between someone leaving and you re hiring, you've got another person who was meant to be doing things that you've got to fill the gap for other people, so you're losing them out of utilization. You can get through your productivity as a company is dipped, and it's a huge amounts that that actually takes place there. So the. It's and I always feel like get hammered. Slight for saying this, but the reality of many organisations you've gotta look at the cost of things. That's what is their kind of way of measuring from any point, rightly or wrongly either. I will happily argue on the different points on that, but to many people they will look at cost and the hit to the bottom line of having to replace people. It's huge and compare that with the cost of considering what people think. Having more happy, productive people. I I think there are so many stats now. That you can quote again, look on the work lab that says if you have happier people, you're going to be more profitable. As an organization, you're going to be more productive. You're going to get the most out of people, so investing that time in employee experience is kind of a no brainer 'cause you can have happier people. You make yourself happier and you make more money as well. Which.
Karoliina Kettukari:It's a win win situation.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, exactly.
Alan Eardley:But it's a. It's a very difficult thing to measure that productivity, isn't it? There's so many factors in in what you've just described about taking somebody on, and you know either replacing somebody or bringing somebody new in. To that, there are so many things that could make that process easy, and there are so many things that people when they join, they'll go. But this doesn't make much sense. Why are you doing it this way? It worked a lot better where I was before, and that's always. That's always an interesting experience to see. You know, having been in the position to hire people and also haven't just changed jobs myself recently, it's. It's a really interesting experience, not one I want to go through very often, but.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah. Yes.
Alan Eardley:There are so many things that I think as an employee experience. Viva is now bringing to the table to make that easier to make that change that transition easier but also to improve life for existing employees and make their daily jobs easier as well. I think that's that's where everything is geared around. Make it simple, make it easy. Make it as as easy as possible to be as happy as possible.
Karoliina Kettukari:I like that that's a excellent girl.
Alan Eardley:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:I I'm with because you you mentioned productivity and of course we all want to be more productive and under organizations want that their employees or more productive. But it's. It's a very difficult thing to really measure. And I I think it was also one of the work lab work trained studies that showed that we are being more productive, productive than ever. But also we are being exhausted. And a feeling doesn't fill because our productive ways. Or for example, having 10 meetings in a day.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:Oh, it's not productive.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Kevin McDonnell:Quiet sounds like a nice. Sounds like a nice quiet day.
Karoliina Kettukari:It it. Yeah, I'm I'm very busy, but I'm a I'm a I'm I being productive? I don't think so.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, yeah.
Alan Eardley:Yeah, busy is not necessarily productive.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Alan Eardley:Uh, and I think that's I think that's it's an interesting. Fact that we've got all of this information, and you know, we quit talking about work lab. There's so much data and science there, and the fact that the pandemic has brought all of that made it all bubble up to the top so that we can see it and help shape Microsoft shape, what they're doing and how they're delivering some of these services means that we're suddenly thinking about it very differently, aren't we? We're looking at. We're looking at data very differently, but then we're looking at the products that are coming out of that data and going. Couldn't have seen that coming 18 months ago. We probably wouldn't have thought there would be having you know Viva connections or Viva learning, or you know it. It's just not not the sort of thing that we we would have expected and not combined as an employee experience platform.
Kevin McDonnell:Why?
Karoliina Kettukari:Huh?
Kevin McDonnell:Ah, now that that I agree with I, as I say, I, I think it's always the the kind of bad thing about VR that people say from technical point of view. There's nothing. There's not nothing. But it's not so much that's particularly new that there's using Intranet switches. Care leader said, there's been intranets and personalization with SharePoint for quite a while, I think, and obviously it differs somewhere. Gazing off, I was kind of thinking there. What what has changed? Because when it comes to the pandemic, and I know in the work habits talked about, yes, we've had more meetings. But I think actually before then I was doing a fair few meetings and certainly when I worked came from financial services, there would be joking aside, 1012 meetings a day would be fairly normal and that kind of burnout was was fairly resident there. Why? What is it about the pandemic that's actually surfaced? That is it because people have kind of broken that routine. It is that actually the change that's happened. It's not that any of this is new. There's a things have been going on for a while. But suddenly that routine is broken. We've had to stop and think about the way we do things in. It's given the opportunity to kind of get you know, these things really are bad. We have the opportunity to do things better. You know, we keep talking about hybrid and that. But suddenly people have been talking about that ability to work anywhere there with their remote working has been going on for a while. Suddenly, that opportunity has come to make those differences, and we should grab it as as much as possible. And that's why Veevers come about, because it's pulled all those elements which actually. Sense to deliver into a common brand and said This is why it's not different reasons for each of these different things it is employee experience. That's why you're looking to do these. And here's why you should do that. And trying to make that story a lot better to people as well.
Alan Eardley:I think it's it's not that there's necessarily new things, it's different. It's the difference between being office based. And being able to. Uh, you know book a meeting and go, oh it's in. I mean I, I remember one client in particular was hilarious. They worked in a very old building in the center of London and they literally built in about 15 minutes between every meeting 'cause you had to try and find a room. And it was an absolute maze. And so you had that transition between meetings. So when soon as you get online, well, it's easy. Yeah, back to back meetings all day, and I think it's the change.
Karoliina Kettukari:Ah.
Alan Eardley:Where you don't have that transition, you don't have the same interactions. You don't have the same mental breaks between and concentrating on this screen. Now I'm going to go and sit and face these people. Now I'm going to go and wander across and get a coffee.
Karoliina Kettukari:Well.
Alan Eardley:That experience mentally is very different than I'm gonna just sit here for 12 hours straight and have my 24 meetings and they're all going to be back to back and and I'm going to be in quotes productive all the way through the day.
Kevin McDonnell:Here.
Karoliina Kettukari:And then one thing we are missing is spontaneous. Uh, spontaneous meetings under Altys boltok we usually have, which is after when we are having having to coffee or before to meeting starts. Now when the meeting starts, we go straight to business and then it's business day. How 30 minutes, 45 minutes and then it's the next meeting and everything is just about business and alter like even though we are at home the like normal conversations. How Steve better? Oh you have a nice dress.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah. Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:Those are our gun.
Alan Eardley:And it's done. This is where you know a lot of what we're talking about. With Viva. It has its foundations.
Kevin McDonnell:So just create I. I mean I I disagree on that dress comment 'cause you were commenting me wearing pants just before we started recording curliness. So yeah, you know those those conversations do happen remotely, but I know what you mean there.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Sorry al.
Alan Eardley:So let's say most of the technologies that we're talking about have their basis in things that were happening beforehand. Workplace Analytics was telling us about meetings was telling us about our collaboration and our network telling us about quiet time, but it wasn't really. At the forefront, and I think that's what papers really done is. It's pushed a lot of this and made it front and center with science to back up why it's important, and I think that's really the fundamental difference is that we're now talking.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:About scientifically backed. Reasons to do some of this rather than all. It's a big software company and they're just trying to sell us more.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:But I think lots of this has been there already that the difference now is we've stopped and kind of things have changed then when there is change, there's the opportunity to look and do things better, and I think that's. I, I think things have actually absolutely changed with the pandemic, but that's the opportunity to look at things we were doing before as well as during the pandemic. And and do them better now.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, and I also think the thing we were is that it simplifies things, so it's not just like for new solutions for new applications you have, but it's actually just bringing toast capabilities inside your one window, which is teams in in Windows. So basically it gives you the same information, but you can find it more easily. It's brought to you in more centralized ways.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:So instead of having to go to office.com, click my my analytics. You can just be in in your teams and then click on the insights button and you have all the same things things directly in there.
Alan Eardley:And I think that's one of the things that you know. Viva Insights, bringing that you know the virtual commute is bringing in other things into that mix. You know it's over and above some of the things that were in my analytics. You know, being able to say, actually, I can praise people in there. I can schedule my quiet time in there. I can also see if I'm using to do my tasks from my day and and make sure they're all tired off. See any other tasks that I might need to do. It's really bringing even more together and using that as a focal point to bring that.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:That experience together bring those capabilities into one place so that I can switch off at the end of the day.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah. And and and it's about so super simple and small tasks. For example, reserving focus time from your current calendar. Of course you can do it by yourself. But when you can just click one button and it does it for you, it's super simple and super effective.
Alan Eardley:Well, I don't know about supereffective 'cause I know a lot of people who look at focus time and think it is just put aside for them.
Karoliina Kettukari:Oh no.
Kevin McDonnell:I I get that so not that I do that I'm putting my hand up. I suffer from that greatly in Charlie. If you are listening, I keep telling you should listen to Gray happy and you need to stop working my focus time for your own projects.
Alan Eardley:You know?
Kevin McDonnell:But yeah, I I I. I think you really hit the nail on the head there currently. The a lot of this is things that you could have done before manually and should have done. I know we've talked on the show Al about atomic habits, the book and building up good habits. But they're often hard to do so by making them easier to do, but put them there, front and center people are more likely to do those things that actually help. Those habits. Stick with in there like the virtual commute, taking that little bit of time at the the end of the day to kind of wrap up finish and step away. You know it's it's fairly obvious when you sit down and think about it, and when you have those five minutes, it pours you go. Yeah, so really should do that. Viva is about trying to get those things that should be good habits, and encouraging you to do that help building up. That habit on a common basis, both as an individual and an organization on there, and I it. It's funny, it's it's easy to think about Viva as being that that kind of org wide push for you, but it's not. It's about the capabilities for you as an employee as well. I. I think if it comes to Viva connections, it's about putting those tools used day in day out, like, uh, and and I'll probably start laughing at this point, forgetting to do your timesheets. So by putting those reminders right there on the top of the page and giving that easy problem, say. Right, I can go and do this. The reality is that there are so many different things you do on a daily basis that are simple that are easy. But then in some cases you probably shouldn't have to do. There should be tools that can do it for you like timesheets. So put it there, make it easier to go. This is what we think this is what you said you were going to do. Have you done that and you can just go? Yeah yeah have click boom done putting those front center so you can clear out those and again get back to that focus. You can make that time when you start. Today you can in that day started with that journey interview for connections. Here's the stuff I need to do. Let's get that done. Let's get focused on the the things I need to do instead of getting distracted by emails coming in left, right and center. Reminding me about this. Reminding about that things I don't actually need reminding about. Let it focus on the stuff that's important to you, and I think that's that is the key to this as well.
Alan Eardley:Well, that's part. That's part of the benefits of connections. That personalization element that had I mean intranets have had personalization for for years, you know and?
Kevin McDonnell:It's been ignored for years as well, yeah?
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:Absolutely, and it, but I think you know what we're talking about with connections. Is being able to see not just your Internet, but to be able to see the news articles that are you're interested in. You know, being able to see events, being able to see things that are tailored for you. And as you say, you know where you have activities that you need to do, making sure that actually you are using the tools that are available to there to make them as effective as possible with the audience targeting, targeting them to write the right audience so that you see what you need to see.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Kevin McDonnell:Events
Alan Eardley:And making it as as you said, Karelina. It's one pane of glass, isn't it? Teams and you can see everything that you need to see in one place. So I think it's you know it is it is building upon a lot of the.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:The core concepts that we've had for a long time, but making it easier, making it easier from the end user. And I'm sure you know if Gary were here, he would say it's obviously much easier from the developer side as well, but it's really focusing on the end user experience.
Kevin McDonnell:yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, and also about it's it's lots about mobile experience as well. Because yeah, we we have teams application. We have syrup in the application. We have all of these. You can use your Internet fit with mobile phone but then you get test Weaver connections for example dashboard in your teams application. It's a super simple step yet again to get those tasks or report. Or news that they are important to you in in the same application in the same window with your mobile phone. So I I think in the future it will be even more important elements to end users of how you can really utilize your mobile phone to work and how it will bring more even even more flexibility in your work day.
Kevin McDonnell:I wish I was just thinking 'cause yeah, you see that.
Alan Eardley:He's thinking again. I can see he's thinking again. For that, for those who are who are not watching but I listening Kevin head just kind of looks off into the distance.
Kevin McDonnell:Someone once taught that is it NLP, neural link, acoustic programming and depending what you think of you kind of look in different places. And it's always a good one and I think ever since I've heard that I've done this really over exaggerated kind of look up when I think. And then I look to the other side when I think. Anyway, I I must look up where the different ones. I think when you're trying to remember things or ponder you look in different directions and it's it works very well anyway, what what.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Kevin McDonnell:Who is thinking of and when you look down that's when you're trying to remember what you're talking about, which is why I'm looking down now as well. Uhm, what I was thinking, of course, it's.
Karoliina Kettukari:I'm just always looking after my own picture. Indiscreetly
Kevin McDonnell:Are you being turned off soon? Uhm? The what I was thinking was kind of Eve's talking bout that focus. That ability to kind of get with you want but you mentioned the the mobile one and you've got the dashboard there in the mobile within teams you've also got the feed which is there was kind of get it. Could be interesting to see how well that fee gets because you think feeds you think social media that that distraction coming through always wanted to go and see what's coming. What's more, what's always there and kind of that technology addiction. Be interesting to see how that feed evolves and how. How relevant and that becomes how quick that updates are matching? For larger organizations, the volume of things going through that for getting all your news updates from documents and people working around you could be the place you kind of go to a lot and it destroys that connection, so it may be sorry that focus it may be something to kind of. Keep an eye on for people there. Be interesting. I I haven't seen if you've got stats of how much that's being looked at, but it be good to know that and see what focus can happen as well.
Alan Eardley:But out. I would think it's quite interesting when you look at the mobile. Interface for teams you know the activity is the first thing that you see and it it always gets missed on the desktop version, people always go somewhere else, but on the mobile device, that's what you go to 1st. So actually it works really effectively and I think you know the different form factors that we've got now with the mobile and the and the desktop devices. And thinking about what you use for.
Kevin McDonnell:Me. Milk.
Alan Eardley:So what is actually going to be get even more interesting as you get, you know, the companion devices coming through. Whether you know applications like Viva will have you know different capabilities targeted on different different platforms or different form factors will be an interesting one as well. He's doing it again.
Karoliina Kettukari:yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Good stuff.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, but at the feet I think it's very very interesting concept and I'm really eager to see if it really works in in real life, because the targeting must be on point.
Kevin McDonnell:Sorry Carrie Lee. Yes, yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:You don't, you don't get so many chances with her employees. Say you look at it like five times if it. If it's not relevant, say it's doomed forever. So I really hope the.
Alan Eardley:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, I agree.
Alan Eardley:But this does that not. I mean, that's that's the same with teams generally, isn't it? And I think this is where things like Viva learning come in. Is, you know, even learning to bring in? How do we get people to use these tools? Better is really important because you know one of the things that I've seen over many years with teams is people just don't understand all the components that are there.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah. No.
Alan Eardley:And it's like word. In some cases people are only using a few things.
Kevin McDonnell:And especially where sort of pandemic. They just move quickly. They've taken on meetings, calls the orbiter chat they don't understand all the different things you can do on there.
Alan Eardley:Yeah. That yeah and and I think this is this is one of the really interesting things is as people start to get more comfortable with the technology they use it more, they find better ways to work, you know. And so therefore you know you can beddown best practice, but you need the best practice and the etiquette and the training and you need all of those things available to people so that they understand how to get the most out of it for whatever their role is not the generic. Here's the.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:The single way that you use teams it's their role, but I think that also comes back to you know a lot about what's on work lab that the manager of a team is really shaping the culture of the team. How do we as a team little T team work together? And how do we make the technology work best for us?
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah. Yeah, and especially when we are talking about fieldworkers Firstline workers. I think tomorrow love to monitor or to supervise supervisor. Is Everton more importance? So in in knowledge workers at office you're maybe used to.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:That's true, yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:They may be more used to using computers all day long, but when you go to T factory and you are in T factory floor and those test people have maybe 10 mobile phones or just like 1 computer dust, dust, dust, the inner corner tendency manager plays a huge role in all of this.
Alan Eardley:And I think when you get those teams that actually. They're there to do their job. They want to do their job. The technology really doesn't interest them. You know, as information workers. We kind of, you know, we we kind of like the technology, you know, but a lot. We've got to remember that a lot of Firstline workers and a lot of information workers. The technology is an enabler. It's just a tool to help them do what they need to do. And actually, they're not interested in, oh, teams can do this or correct. Does that help me do my job? And I think this is where you know the Bieber learning elements, making it easier to to show people how best to use the technology is absolutely vital.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes and and also to connections where you can really target things that are relevant to the factory workers.
Kevin McDonnell:And. Yeah. Could you imagine factory workers? We've won this blah blah blah deal with so and so company. More work for me it you know it doesn't resonate. The things you see a lot of the cases on the Internet aren't gonna kinda hit for people and but what does it actually mean to them? And I think that's where the personalization needs to come through and it it could be or almost same article written in different ways. Targeting people as what the understanding is of. You know this means good news that the we have security for this factory. If we think of car factories you could win a big new deal of a new make. That's can be run from this factory. Your job suddenly more secure, and you're going to probably have more people there to chat to, and bits like that. Rolling out this fantastic new bit of automation. Yeah, a lot of frontline workers. I mean again, So what am I gonna do then? You know trying to realize what what this personalization, what these messages can mean to people is absolutely vital on there and absolutely key. And and I think also getting that that that habit for people to be able to read the messages and get use these new ways. Remember, we wrote out an enterprise social network at one. The banks are worked at rollouts. Will be the kind of desk workers and things like that and we start to see channels and things popping up kind of corporate ones. People talking about food photography. It was fantastic and they're like great. We don't need to have email for a lot of our bank staff. Let's all out to them. Suddenly we had a new problem because they were like we can chat to each other. We can say what we want. The office workers have been used to kind of having those conversation and what was right. What was wrong, what you shouldn't be talking about. Suddenly opened up to these other people and it's fair to say there were quite a few cases that needed to be talked about with HR and things like that. We managed to not turn it off and kind of keep it going and and use the tools itself to educate people and not not say you can't do this but say oh maybe you want to think about what you're putting in here and what this message and people over a few months where there were certainly some close calls about having it switched off completely by going and educating people, sitting down, helping explain where the benefits were, saying, you know, have. Chat have that friendly conversations. Just realize he's watching. Realize what you say here. Realize what the impacts and people learned from that. They kind of understood in the in the same way that the reality is. People have learned when to use LinkedIn, when to use Twitter, when to use Instagram, when to use Tik T.O.K where they're kind of different elements, it within that people could learn that with a little bit of guidance. And I, I think that that brings on to how logs manage change. You know, getting that out to people, you using the tools themselves to help people educate, showing how they can be used there. Putting it in ways that are relevant to them. Whether that's making that work relevant to them, whether it's showing how you can chat to people to talk about the latest football scores, whether you can use some of these tools to run the sports teams within their, it doesn't kind of matter. You're still teaching people and getting them using it. They then realize how that can that can be used to make their own jobs easier as well. So thinking about that change that's relevant to each of those different personas within there is is absolutely key as well, and and helps you learn how you can tailor back her tool to. To better suit people as well, I think. It's it's gonna be interesting to see how how Weaver does get rolled out. And as you say, care leader. They that is that personalization going to work because if it doesn't, and if it doesn't for the beginning it can get bad reputation quickly and it doesn't matter what you pick up with afterwards. You're really fighting a losing battle if you don't get that right at the beginning.
Karoliina Kettukari:Huh?
Alan Eardley:Is that the technology challenge though getting that right or is that the? Thinking about the organization and identifying the you know, do it. Doing the hard work of you know that we used to do with intranets. Who needs to see this information? Who who is going to benefit from it and are they? Are they genuinely interested? You know, and I think that's a lot of those questions. They still stand. You know, the top down comms team who want everybody to read their article. And actually most people aren't really interested. And the the the frontline.
Kevin McDonnell:What information? Why do it?
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Yep.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:'cause all have their own their own interests. You know? I think that's that's the eternal challenge, isn't it?
Karoliina Kettukari:We have the launch menu. Yeah, yeah, I I'll, I'll off because I've done this here. A couple of Lords Lords communicates like modern communication, internal communication projects, which of course include modernizing. SharePoint, modernizing Internet, bringing into into teams with bit. We were connections and we have had toast discussions with global communications team that what about TS News we want to.
Kevin McDonnell:But I.
Karoliina Kettukari:Tell to all of our employee years, but ten when we ask the employees they really don't care about Toast Global global news, even though they may be chewed. But it's not something they really want to see. First thing in terms of our faults. So how to. It it gets to like to to midway about what what the employee is want to say and what the company wants them to see and how you can go go buying house.
Alan Eardley:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:But it. And and if you put what people want to see along with what the company wants you to see, they're far more likely to read it if you put I I I always remember by my introduction SharePoint, we rolled out SharePoint and, uh, kind of joins the team and we turned it on and within a couple of years 35 out of 35 and half thousand employees were using it every day. Even though it's a separate intranet. So there was the corporate news there, but the reality was they were using SharePoint because it was meeting what they wanted more and and if we've been able to. Bring we have many conversations and flights around that, but if we've been out to bring those two things together on on that page sort, say, here is the corporate news. Here's the big deals that being one, by the way, the new deployment Doc is ready so you can roll this out. This is days of IS with those big long deployment docs and that you know the good old days without CI CD. But if you had all those different things all in one place, it it means people are more likely to read those other bits of contents in there. If a page is completely irrelevant to people, they will move away. The only thing people used to look out in the home page. He was the buy sell rent. I'm trying to find out where they what they could buy in a second hand. Things and bits there that was far and away the most popular thing and there was talk about getting rid of it because it wasn't relevant. It's like, well, no, no, no, no don't you want you want the stuff that people are looking to build that in with the rest of it? Otherwise it just disappears completely.
Alan Eardley:Yeah, all of all of those stories will still resonate for everybody today as well. And that's I think that's the interesting thing is that whatever tooling we have, you know the thing with SharePoint and the thing with connections and the integration between the two means that you get.
Karoliina Kettukari:Huh?
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:The targeted content for the individual, so, so long as you design it well, they'll go into teams and they'll go all right. I can see what's interesting for me and what the organization wants me to see, and they get the choice then, and I think that's that makes a successful Internet. Making sure you've got. You've got that balance and you've got them. You've got a nice balance there. Everybody is happy, then aren't they?
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:I, I think that's actually one of the key points in in here, because you might think that with all these new cool tools, everything that will everything will happen automatically. But no, you still need to design things. You still need to have your service design works or whatever. You still need to really think about what you are going to, what, what information goes where.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:And how you offer it to him for years? And I I think that's one pitfall companies at the moment may may come come into that. They think that all his we were we were connections and everything are so advanced that table just work by themselves.
Alan Eardley:And I think. Every every project that I think we've probably worked on, we probably all have looked at what the success criteria are going to be and how you're going to measure it, and I think that's you know that's always something that it's worth thinking about, you know?
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:Where you get the comms team could sign yeah success for me is that every article I push out has 80% readership. OK, that's that's a nice ambition, but you know, thinking about that up front is really important and you know some of that. You could look at, you know we were talking about productivity and performance. You know, a lot of what we're doing with the employee experience is saying. How can we make people more productive? Whether it's getting the right information in front of them, whether it's giving them the right tools to allow them to learn.
Kevin McDonnell:What does God look like?
Karoliina Kettukari:Ah.
Alan Eardley:Making sure that Kevin can do his time sheets as quickly and easily and accurately as possible. You know all of these are actually helping the productivity, and I think this is where you know being able to measure the productivity, being able to see how well we've got a measure that we've identified and then also being able to say well if that measure isn't right.
Kevin McDonnell:Yes.
Alan Eardley:We know where we need to target our change and adoption messaging to actually get people to to adapt to change their behavior.
Kevin McDonnell:And I think about I, I completely agree with first gonna say in terms of getting that measure, I think making sure you think about what it is you're measuring and how you asking for that. Because certainly if you broadcast, that becomes very easy to kind of fake some those measures, like that. 80% brilliant will just get it once I click on it. Yeah, we've met the goal, even though people aren't consuming the content. And always remember speaking to Moraine The Who looks off the Office 365 Distilled podcast. Our fellow Happy hour etiquettes. A colleague as well and we were talking about kind of podcast numbers and they were looking to get boost. So they bought in our marketing company that were of decent price and they said what do you want? Well, we want to boost our numbers. Fantastic next week numbers were through the roof who's actually fantastic though? Like yeah this is really words sorts a great thank you next month. Stripped back down to normal so whatever they done, whether they'd found some people to go and click on it, whether they found some automated way of kind of forcing the numbers through there, I don't know, but. It is quite important you think about your measures and how you get the reality of those, not just not just the kind of underlying thing, because they're very easy to fake with bits like that as well.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:And come back to what Caroline was saying. I think it's. I think it's absolutely true and I I I would say the AI is important. It's not to downplay that because it makes life easier. It makes you kind of it gets you through the quickly and easier stuff. You still at this stage you need that human curation to look at things. If we look at Viva topics it will come up with suggested topics we were talking before the show we've been looking at in our environment at that CPS and we found quadruple X as a topic on there. Now it's probably where. Poor hard. You put things in as a kind of I need to go and fill this in later and never went to fill those out. But that that's not gonna mean anything to anybody. It could be. Maybe it was a special project rolled out for a certain type of company, I don't know, but it it's important that you have that curation to go through and understand from it what is real and what isn't. Humans aren't infallible. Neither of computers. Do you need that kind of combination of both to give you the the best results from it really? And and to measure it and look at what success goes through from there.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, and and that's all. The thing about topics that it's super interesting I think will be super relevant. Relevant thing for many organizations in the future, but you still need people to really.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:Uh, organize it. Yeah yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Write it down at some point. Yeah yeah. And and that knowledge needs to be written down somewhere you know and Viva topics hasn't yet got to the point where it can read minds. Not quite yet, but.
Alan Eardley:Yeah.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:Really.
Karoliina Kettukari:But maybe soon.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, maybe one day.
Alan Eardley:Oh I, I'm very disappointed now. I thought that's what it was doing.
Kevin McDonnell:Sorry Alex, under NDA don't tell anyone.
Alan Eardley:Well, they're reading minds.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, yeah, I yeah. Just just in case anyone reads, I am joking. There is no reading of mines from Viva topics or any of the other Viva tools or any planned as far as I know, but.
Alan Eardley:I'm not talking about anything NDA either.
Kevin McDonnell:No, no, exactly on there. But I think it's. I think it's interesting. I mean joking aside, what's I'm gonna start with Al 'cause I'm gonna drop him in the init first, what? What do you most look forward to coming in the employee experience space that you're you can talk about? Or what would you like to see coming from it?
Alan Eardley:I think making it all easy to setup is going to be the key thing. I think you know connections is quite an easy one to set up. Ira haven't really played with with any of the the dashboard elements, but that's I think absolutely crucial to make that as easy as possible to bring those in. I mean, a lot of the the connections elements is really building on good Internet design, solid intranet design, but then integrating that with.
Kevin McDonnell:Hmm.
Alan Eardley:People learning, you know, I'm bringing that in so that it becomes seamless. I think that would be the ideal situation. I think one thing that I'm starting to see that I think teams will need to address is if I want to have insights in my left hand rail in teams and I want to have shifts if I'm a frontline worker and I want to have my bots and I want to, I'm all of a sudden.
Kevin McDonnell:My fever connections by COVID Appin.
Alan Eardley:I'm all of a sudden starting to run out of space there.
Kevin McDonnell:Turn your monitor to kind of portrait mode maybe.
Alan Eardley:Or get a very a very tall monitor. Yeah, get my landscape monitor. Yeah, oriented as portrait, but I think that's genuinely going to be probably the next. The next interesting challenge is how we, whilst we've got one pane of glass, we've got an awful lot in there and we don't want everything to be the size of a postage stamps that we can't see it. We want actually to to be able to tailor that, so I think there's going to have to be more personalization there to allow me to see what I want to see the organization to push things down.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:And to give me that flexibility to see all of these things so that I can actually access them quickly and intuitively.
Kevin McDonnell:I think my sense caroleena hope we've given you a little bit of time to think about that.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, I actually hope that all of this with our family and everything in it will bring it. And eight war and communications departments more together.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, like Lydia, yes.
Karoliina Kettukari:So I actually came up with this like right now, so thanks about this. Because I I really, really hope this in like 2023 we are not talking about Internet SharePoint different projects anymore but we are talking about how can we develop develop the whole internal communication platform which includes SharePoint as the Internet platform but also teams. We're connections all those different parts together as one.
Kevin McDonnell:And and what other apps you organize your service now is your work days all of that?
Karoliina Kettukari:Everything.
Kevin McDonnell:All together, yeah.
Alan Eardley:Yeah, Yammer.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah, absolutely.
Alan Eardley:Wow.
Karoliina Kettukari:Oh yeah, do we have some? Yeah yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:And yeah, I like Yammer and I'm I'm happy.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yammer, Yammer.
Kevin McDonnell:Absolutely. I don't think Gamma is dead.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah, but but I really hope that all of this talk about employee experience and and really brings all the parties more closer together.
Kevin McDonnell:I think I think for me it's making things easier and so I I I love what's now. Viva insights, the mails that it looks through email and brings out your tasks. I want to see more and more things like that that don't do everything for me but give me a little hint saying, you know is this something is this it come to your timesheets? Is this your timesheet? We notice that actually you worked with this person on this day. It was it meant to be this projects and and trying to get all that information. Getting more and more from that data that Microsoft hasn't surfaced that. And then and and I'm looking your comes first T shirt ALS making me think of this. I want augmented reality and so there there's a company called simply videos that was there at comes verse talking about kind of headsets. And I for those haven't seen commercial setting Mercedes-Benz world in the UK so they had lots of lovely cars and there was kind of walking around with a headset looking a bit like universal soldier talking about the cars and and what it was was going giving a description and he had within his kind of little eye vision on there he could see the other people in the team. Or it could put up some content from there so you could walk around, see that content there. You talked earlier about Firstline workers Caroline Hyde to me. I think this. This is the future. I think the hardware is still got a little bit of way to go, but it's getting closer and closer every time I see it the costs come down, the capabilities of them, so I I probably looking a little bit further ahead.
Karoliina Kettukari:Leo
Kevin McDonnell:Uh, I'm nothing that it, you know Alan, are you like going out for walks and taking that little break? I'd love to be able to go for a walk and kind of have that that those meetings as you're walking around without worrying about it and sort of see that ability to come through as well I think would be nice.
Alan Eardley:Yeah, that would be really. That would be really good to be able to bring I guess more formats into teams meetings.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah.
Alan Eardley:You know, make it easier to you know we're going out walking and we're we're having conversations on our phone. But if you've got a headset on, you know and you could share the video. Oh yeah, well, if you have a look at, you know, and you can see the screen be brilliant, wouldn't it?
Karoliina Kettukari:no.
Kevin McDonnell:Yeah. I think we, I mean obviously burnout and all the other things we've talked about have a whole new dimension of places where they can follow you around at that point, but it's.
Alan Eardley:Yes, but we do all have it in our ability to put things on silent and to go do not disturb and to turn things off.
Kevin McDonnell:You have the option.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell:Absolutely.
Alan Eardley:We just need the discipline to do it.
Kevin McDonnell: Absolutely 'cause we will have such good discipline talking of which we said we were going to wrap up by 9:00 o'clock. So that was neatly led into there, and I think it was a.
Karoliina Kettukari:Yes.
Kevin McDonnell:Fantastic discussion, thank you Carolyn, and thank you Al. On their, uh, employee experience does matter. It will help your bottom line. And most importantly, it will give you happy employees that want to start the day, wanna be focused on what they do can handle them become more resilient. All of these things help make the organization better, or every whatever it is they're trying to do. So look at those things. Do go and check out the work lab site. There's many articles. There is a podcast once you've listened to us, then you could go and listen to that as well. If you do, listen to us. Don't forget to hit subscribe. Don't forget to go and give us a rating. We don't get too many 'cause we don't bang on about it, but every now and then I'll remember at the end of the show. So please do if you have enjoyed this. Going to hit and so it gives a rating on there. Uh, otherwise caroleena. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Karoliina Kettukari:Oh, thank you Colonel. It's also pleasure.
Kevin McDonnell:So I've been great.
Alan Eardley:I've been hat.
Kevin McDonnell:And yeah, the beard was hiding off somewhere, but will be joining us next week as we talk about the latest news. Otherwise, thank you very much and speak to you next week. Bye bye.
Alan Eardley:Hey.
Karoliina Kettukari:Bye bye.
Alan Eardley:Hi.