When teams need to spend time looking for resources, wait for other people to get back to them or try to knit together information from different software or devices, projects end up running late. Team members rush to meet deadlines making it almost impossible to do their best creative work.
But isn’t working in a team supposed to make you more efficient—not less? That’s the idea, but you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t always work out that way.
Have you ever found yourself saying, “Who has the latest version of that market analysis? I know it’s been updated, so how come the only one I can find is months old?” or “It’s taking too long to get feedback on the budget from the team; we’re running out of time!”
We heard you and created Microsoft Teams—the chat-based workspace in Office 365—so you can get all the creative benefits of teamwork and free your teams from these productivity sinkholes.
Find what you’re looking for—instantly
One of the biggest time-wasters for teams is looking for content, tools, contacts and conversation threads. Imagine how much more effective everyone would be if they had instant access to everything they need—right in Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Teams uses powerful, integrated search capabilities and built-in access to SharePoint, OneNote and Planner, so team members can find what they’re looking for—instantly. Because every document shared in Microsoft Teams is saved to the cloud, team members work from the latest version—no searching.
Get that feedback
Team members often get stuck in a holding pattern because they’re waiting for the feedback and sign-off to drive a project forward. They try to set up conference calls, but to-and-fro scheduling burns up time. Even when they finally do get on a call, make edits to project documents and send out the revised versions, they’re often stuck waiting again for sign-off.
All that changes when they can quickly start a team, private chat or online meeting with decision-makers and collaborate on shared files to secure approval right away. Integrated notifications plus side-by-side chat while viewing a document enables on-the-spot editing and finalizing of materials.
Get Microsoft Teams for free
That’s right, free. As in $0. Work together with features like chat, file sharing, and video calling.Get started for free
Bring relevant information into Microsoft Teams
Team members can tailor workspaces with the specialized content and apps they need every day. For example, using Microsoft Teams, they can add tabs like a Word document or Power BI dashboard to provide quick access or take quick action with bots. Add apps like Jira or Trello to bring relevant information into your hub for teamwork.
You can do all this with built-in security and compliance features, including data encryption and multi-factor authentication for enhanced identity protection.
And now for the best part about teamwork
Microsoft Teams lets you fully embrace the upside of teamwork—frictionless sharing that makes good ideas exceptional. Seize the potential for dramatic innovation by supporting a collaborative culture, and your enterprise can:
Widen the ideation pipeline.
Accelerate time to market.
Deliver higher-quality products and new customer experiences.
The pandemic has dramatically accelerated the role of technology as a core enabler for hybrid work, and developers are at the heart of this transformation. Last Microsoft Build, we introduced collaborative apps, a new app pattern designed to bring people, processes, and data together to help users thrive in the hybrid workplace. Just like mobile devices completely transformed how people consume software, collaborative apps are transforming how people in every organization work together.
With more than 270 million monthly active users, Microsoft Teams offers developers an unmatched opportunity to build collaborative apps. Since the beginning of 2020, monthly active users of custom-built or third-party apps in Teams have grown more than tenfold. There are more than 1,400 Teams apps, with more and more independent software vendors (ISVs) generating millions in annual revenue from customers using their apps built on Teams and Microsoft 365 services. Looking ahead, we expect emerging technologies that bring the digital and physical worlds together, like Microsoft Mesh for Teams, to open new engaging possibilities for collaborative experiences on Teams.
This year at Build 2022, we are sharing several enhancements and new capabilities for developers building collaborative apps for Teams and Microsoft 365. Watch my keynote with Charles Lamanna, Innovate with collaborative apps and low code, to view the highlights. Read on to get a full recap of our Build announcements, which are organized here in three sections: new ways to help you delight your users with rich collaborative experiences, scale your productivity and grow user engagement, and monetize your apps. We can’t wait to see what you will build with these innovations!
Delight users with rich collaborative experiences
Introducing Live Share: Interactive app experiences in Teams meetings
We are introducing Live Share, a capability for your apps to go beyond passive screen sharing and enable participants to co-watch, co-edit, co-create, and more in Teams meetings. Developers can use new preview extensions to the Teams SDK to easily extend existing Teams apps and create Live Share experiences in meetings. Live Share is backed by the power of Fluid Framework, which supports sophisticated synchronization of state, media, and control actions with only front-end development. This synchronization will run on Teams hosted and managed Microsoft Azure Fluid Relay service instance—at no cost to you. Our early partners building Live Share experiences include Frame.io, Hexagon, Skillsoft, MakeCode, Accenture, Parabol, and Breakthru. Watch our Live Share on-demand session and try out the new Teams SDK extensions.
Figure 1. Hexagon Live Share prototype enables engineers to annotate and edit 3D models and simulations, while they brainstorm together in Teams meetings.
Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay general availability
Fluid Framework is a collection of open-source, client-side JavaScript libraries that underpin the Live Share real-time collaboration capabilities. Azure Fluid Relay is a fully managed cloud service that supports Fluid Framework Clients. Developers are using Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay to enable real-time interactivity on their apps beyond Microsoft Teams meetings. Fluid Framework, the Azure Fluid Relay service, and the corresponding Azure Fluid client-side SDK will be ready for production scenarios and available in mid-2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs for updates. Watch the on-demand session to learn more about building collaborative web apps with Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay.
Create Loop components by updating Adaptive Cards
Microsoft Loop components are live, actionable units of productivity that stay in sync and move freely across Microsoft 365 apps starting with Teams chat and Microsoft Outlook. Today, we are announcing the ability for developers to create Loop components. Now you can easily evolve an existing Adaptive Card into a Loop component or create a new Adaptive Card-based Loop component. Additionally, Adaptive Card-based Loop components can be surfaced with Editor using Context IQ, our set of intelligent capabilities working in the background of Microsoft apps and services, to stay directly in the flow of composing an email. Zoho Projects is using these Adaptive Card-based Loop components to help its customers improve incident response times, reduce outage durations, and improve overall performance against service-level agreements (SLAs), by enabling users to complete these tasks across Teams and Outlook. Zoho Projects and ServiceDesk Plus Cloud are among the first products integrated with Microsoft 365 apps to implement Microsoft Loop. Developer private preview for this capability starts in June 2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs or follow us on Twitter @Microsoft365Dev for updates.
Figure 2. Zoho Projects is extending adaptive cards to be live, actionable Loop components that work across Teams and Outlook.
Introducing Microsoft Azure Communication Services sample app builder
Microsoft Azure Communication Services interoperability with Teams enables you to create experiences that support seamless communications between customers on any custom app or website and employees working in Teams. For example, Teladoc Health built the first-of-its-kind custom fully integrated clinical and administrative virtual healthcare solution that allows care team collaboration and access to relevant clinical data directly within Teams, and the ability to seamlessly deliver virtual care to patients who join from a custom app.
Figure 3. Teladoc Health is enabling care providers to work and connect from Teams while patients join from a custom app built using Azure Communication Services.
Today, we are introducing the Azure Communication Services sample app builder, enabling developers to easily build and deploy a sample application for virtual appointments in just a few minutes, with no coding needed. Through the sample app, customers can book appointments powered by Microsoft Bookings and join a Teams meeting through a custom web app with a company-branded experience, while staff use Teams to join scheduled appointments. The sample app is fully open source and developers can tap into the code for more customization. Visit Github to learn more.
Microsoft Graph API enhancements to embed chats and channel messages into your apps
Microsoft Graph chat APIs enable developers to embed Teams chats into their applications, enabling their users to collaborate seamlessly without having to switch back and forth across apps. We are introducing several new APIs in preview with capabilities such as enabling chats with federated users (like users outside your tenant), identifying which messages are read and unread by the current user, and subscribing to user chats and membership changes. These new APIs will be generally available in mid-2022. Visit our chat message resource type docs page and view the on-demand session to learn more.
SharePoint Framework and Microsoft Viva Connections
SharePoint is the most flexible content collaboration platform powering experiences across Microsoft 365. SharePoint Framework now lets you create parts and pages in SharePoint sites, Teams apps, and more. It is at the center of our extensibility capabilities for the new Microsoft Viva Connections employee experience platform. Check out the how-to session on building tailored employee experiences for Viva Connections that directly integrate with Teams apps.
Figure 4. A sample Microsoft Viva Connections app running in both Teams and on a mobile device.
Approvals extensibility
Approvals in Microsoft Teams help everyone—from frontline workers to office workers—to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly in the flow of work. We are introducing create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) APIs for Approvals. Developers can use the Approvals APIs to enable approvals within line of business apps and use webhooks to track changes and drive workflows with Approvals in Teams. The Approvals APIs will be available for preview in mid-2022. Subscribe to Microsoft Developer Blogs for updates. View the on-demand session to learn more.
Scale developer productivity
Build once and deploy anywhere across Teams and Microsoft 365
Today, we are announcing the general availability of the new Teams SDK that enables you to build apps for Teams, Outlook, and Office using a single application and deployment model and build collaborative apps that make use of the capabilities relevant to each product. Developers can now upgrade to the latest Teams JS SDK v2 and App manifest v1.13 to build production Teams apps, and run full-scale pilots with users on the preview channels of Outlook and Office. This will enable developers to get feedback and prepare for the distribution of their apps on Outlook and Office later this calendar year.
These updates are backward compatible so all your existing Teams apps will continue to work as-is in Teams with production-level support. Our Teams developer experience including our Microsoft Teams Developer Documentation, tooling, support, and code repository has been updated to support extended apps. You will be able to distribute both single-tenant and multi-tenant apps using existing Teams experiences. To learn more, check out our on-demand session about extending Teams apps across Microsoft 365.
Figure 5. MURAL is extending its Teams app’s personal tabs and search-based message extensions to other Microsoft host apps.
MURAL is among the early partners bringing the connected experience across Teams, Outlook, and Office to life with their apps, like the example above showing a search-based message extension inserting a MURAL directly into the Outlook message as an interactive Adaptive Card. In addition to MURAL, several other partners, including Adobe, eCare Vault, go1, monday.com, Polly, ServiceNow, SurveyMonkey, and Zoho have helped us get these new tools ready and we are excited to make them generally available to everyone at Microsoft Build.
Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and CLI now generally available
Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and command-line interface (CLI) are tools for building Teams and Microsoft 365 apps, fast. Whether you’re new to Teams platform or a seasoned developer, Teams Toolkit is the best way to create, build, debug, test, and deploy apps. Today we are excited to announce the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and CLI is now generally available (GA). Developers can start with scenario-based code scaffolds for notification and command-and-response bots, automate upgrades to the latest Teams SDK version, and debug apps directly to Outlook and Office. Get started building apps with Teams Toolkit today.
Figure 6. Building a notification app for Microsoft Teams using the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code.
Collaboration Controls in Power Apps
We are announcing Collaboration Controls in Power Apps to let developers drag and drop Microsoft 365 collaboration features like Teams chats, meetings, files, Tasks by Planner, and more right inside custom apps built with Power Apps. Collaboration Controls will be available in preview in mid-2022. View the on-demand session to learn more. Subscribe to the Power Apps blog for updates.
Grow user engagement and monetize your apps
App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 App Compliance Program is designed to evaluate and showcase the trustworthiness of application-based industry standards, such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001 for security, privacy, and data handling practices. We are announcing the preview of the App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365 for applications built on Azure to help them accelerate the compliance journey of their apps. With this tool, developers can automate a significant number of tasks to achieve the certification faster and easier. This tool also produces reports that can be easily shared by developers to help IT gain visibility of app security and compliance. Learn more from our App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365 docs page.
Improved app management and discoverability
The Teams Store helps users find the right apps through updated app categories, curated app collections, featured top apps, and intelligent recommendations based on what colleagues and peers are using. This Microsoft Build, we are making available a central experience within the Teams Store to help users track the apps they are using across various Teams and group chats, and see what permissions are required by these apps. We are also making the discovery of apps through tabs, message extensions, and connectors more contextual to help users find the right apps and grow usage of the ISV apps in Teams. For example, in the context of composing messages, the message extension suggestions will be organized by tasks and actions users can take with it. Lastly, users on mobile devices can now add your apps right from the mobile device, such as from a link or QR code.
In-app purchasing for Teams apps
A top request from partners and developers is to provide the ability to include a paywall experience directly from within your Teams app. This gives you the ability to turn a free app into a freemium version, where you can choose when to prompt your users when to subscribe to your app. The new in-app purchase functionality is available today and can be invoked with a few lines of code. Learn more from our in-app purchases docs page.
Figure 7. Developers can enable freemium upgrades directly within Teams with a few lines of code.
Teams app license management
Another area we are making advancements in is enabling users to manage and assign purchased licenses. It’s previously been up to developers to build the license management component into their solution, whether on their landing page or directly within the app. To help streamline the license management experience, we will soon be offering the ability for you to offload the license management capabilities to Microsoft where users can manage and assign licenses—directly in Teams. License management in Teams will be available in preview in mid-2022.
New collaborative apps coming to Teams
We are excited to see ISVs bringing innovative collaborative apps to Teams across a broad range of scenarios. Here are just a few examples of the new apps available now or coming soon:
MURAL app for Teams gives teams everywhere the ability to bring a shared collaboration space directly into Microsoft Teams. Users can improve teamwork with asynchronous visual collaboration, and transform disengaged conversations into productive, engaging meetings and workshops using hundreds of templates and proven, guided methods that empower teams to deliver breakthrough results. MURAL is a Microsoft preview partner, and the MURAL app now works across Teams, Outlook, and Office for a single, connected experience.
Observable app for Teams allows companies to bring their data, context, and logic together in one place to uncover insights collaboratively and accelerate data-driven decision-making across the organization. New updates coming to the Observable app in June 2022 will offer Microsoft Teams notifications when collaborating through comments in Observable.
SAP S/4HANA operational purchaser chatbot provides collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Teams to SAP S/4HANA users within a conversational user experience. It uses Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication and leverages Microsoft Graph APIs to allow users to call other parties or schedule Teams meetings with business partners directly from the bot in the context of the authenticated business user. This provides tight integration of the Teams collaboration experience in a standalone app in SAP, bringing connectivity and collaboration where users need them.
ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app from ManageEngine, Zoho’s enterprise IT management division, leverages Microsoft Teams to streamline business and IT service delivery, manage and accelerate IT incident resolutions, and improve service experience across the enterprise. Coming soon, the ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app will enhance its existing static Adaptive Cards with Loop components, which will allow everyone working on the ticket to get the latest updates and trigger service desk tasks without switching tabs.
Figma, the collaborative design platform, is introducing a new app that will enable teams to share, present, and collaborate in real-time on Figma and FigJam files within a Teams meeting. The app also leverages the new Adaptive Card functionality so when a user shares a link to a Figma or FigJam file in a Teams chat, the card unfurls, allowing users to open the file from within Teams. Users can also view and respond to file notifications directly from Teams. The Figma app will be available later in 2022 in the Teams app store.
Two managers contributing to the same report from two different locations. Three executives using an online whiteboard and building a presentation from three corporate campuses. Four hundred employees participating in an online meeting from their homes spread across the four corners of the globe.
Real-time collaboration is just that—people working together at the same time even if they’re in different places. And the online collaboration tools available are just as varied as the types of collaboration they enable. For example, desktop sharing. Using a feature that allows you to share your device screen with others allows them all to see exactly the same thing so everyone can collaborate at the same time with the same context. Document sharing is another collaboration tool that gives multiple people access to the same piece of writing, spreadsheet, or presentation so that they can collectively add, edit, or comment on a single live file.
How real-time collaboration works
A file is made commonly available to multiple people in multiple locations. This requires storing the file in the cloud and then providing a link or access to the file. It also requires the people who are collaborating to have uninterrupted internet access, the same collaboration software, or integrated apps that interact seamlessly.
The difference between traditional collaboration and real-time collaboration
The main and most obvious distinction between the two types of collaboration is the timing of their processes. Traditional online collaboration can only occur sequentially—one person at a time. For example, an employee creates a document, emails it to a colleague for review, the colleague emails it back, and so on. Real-time collaboration between multiple people happens simultaneously—an entire team of people can work together on the same project at the same time.
Why real-time collaboration is important now?
As remote work and working from home is increasingly encouraged and accepted by many industries, in-person collaboration such as conference room meetings and whiteboard sessions will become the rare exception versus the norm. For productive collaboration to continue, people need new ways to come together and contribute without sharing the same physical space. Online collaboration tools are designed to do just that by replacing old analog methods with modern digital ones. With tools such as online whiteboards now being widely adopted and used, it’s easier than ever to empower people working remotely to collaborate in real time.
Work together and stay productive using Microsoft OneDrive
Store, share, protect and collaborate on your files from any device, anywhere.Learn more about OneDrive
Types of real-time collaboration
The types of real-time collaboration possible are as varied as the apps that enable them. Here’s a list with some of the most common ways people collaborate in real-time:
Document sharing and editing
Videoconferencing
Desktop sharing
Online whiteboards
Instant messaging (real-time text) and chat rooms (or threads)
Real-time collaboration features
Different real-time collaboration tools have different sets of features for enabling group interaction. Some have instant messaging, or other real-time meeting and communications tools, and file sharing so everyone involved has access to files at the same time.
A few important features to look for when considering collaboration tools:
Seamless integration with other productivity apps such as document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation software.
Easy access and visibility of files, calendars, meeting notes, and communication threads.
Flexibility to collaborate anytime, anywhere, and from any device—desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Confidentiality from built-in, advanced security and compliance capabilities
Ease of implementation among groups, businesses, and organizations
Benefits of real-time collaboration
The benefits are becoming clear as more businesses and groups implement and adopt online collaboration tools such as online whiteboards. Here are just a few proven benefits of real-time collaboration:
Improved participation and knowledge sharing from working together as a team just as you would if you were in the same room.
Increased efficiency and productivity from a simplified and seamless process that eliminates back-and-forth communications and replaces the chaos of multiple versions with a single, shared document living in the cloud.
Higher employee morale and job satisfaction and decreased feelings of isolation and loneliness associated with remote work.
Streamlined workflow with meetings, conversations, and file sharing—all happening simultaneously.
Greater cost-effectiveness over traditional methods of collaboration which require office space, equipment, and travel.
Expansive reach and scope from the ability to connect anyone inside and outside your business including employees, clients, and vendors.
Get started
Where, when, and how we work is changing. Fortunately, online collaboration tools give people the freedom and flexibility to work hand in hand even when they’re apart. Are you ready to start seeing the benefits of real-time collaboration for your business? Take next steps and learn more about the latest solutions such as an integrated suite of apps or a powerful set of collaboration and communication tools.
In choppy economic waters, new data points to three urgent pivots for leaders to help employees and organizations thrive
September 22, 2022
Illustration by Vanessa Branchi
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Months into hybrid work, not everyone agrees on how it’s going.onths into hybrid work, not everyone agrees on how it’s going. Employees and employers are divided. Employees have embraced flexible work and its benefits and are rejecting a return to hustle culture.
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Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong?
At the same time, many leaders yearn for the office life of 2019—hallways abuzz with chatter, coffee overflowing. Add to that what can only be described as one of the strangest recessions the world has ever seen: business leaders must contend with rising inflation, shrinking budgets, and, paradoxically, a talent marketplace that remains incredibly tight.
Now more than ever, it’s the job of every leader to balance employee interests with the success of the organization, aligning everyone around the most impactful work. One thing is clear: “Thriving employees are what will give organizations a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic economic environment,” according to Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. And, creating a culture and employee experience to meet the needs of today’s digitally connected, distributed workforce requires a new approach.
To help, we surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with LinkedIn labor trends and Glint People Science findings. The data points to three urgent pivots for leaders to drive alignment and empower people for the new ways we work. Because when employees thrive, organizations flourish.
People are working more than ever, while leaders—already worried by signals of macroeconomic decline—are questioning if their employees are being productive. The majority of employees (87%) report that they are productive at work, and productivity signals across Microsoft 365 continue to climb. This spring, we found that the number of meetings per week had increased by 153% globally for the average Microsoft Teams user since the start of the pandemic, and there is still no indication that this trend has reversed, suggesting this peak could become the new baseline. On top of an already high meeting load, overlapping meetings (being double-booked) increased by 46% per person in the past year. And users are flooded with meeting invites—even as the overall meeting acceptance rate has remained fairly steady (growing by only 3%), declines and tentative RSVPs have soared in the past two years (84% and 216% growth, respectively). The strain is clear: in an average week, 42% of participants multitask during meetings by actively sending an email or ping—and that doesn’t include practices like reading incoming emails and pings, working in non-meeting files, or web activity.
At the same time, 85% of leaders say that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive. And as some organizations use technology to track activity rather than impact, employees lack context on how and why they’re being tracked, which can undermine trust and lead to “productivity theater.” This has led to productivity paranoia: where leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased.
85%
of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.
Many leaders and managers are missing the old visual cues of what it means to be productive because they can’t “see” who is hard at work by walking down the hall or past the conference room. Indeed, compared to in-person managers, hybrid managers are more likely to say they struggle to trust their employees to do their best work (49% vs. 36%) and report that they have less visibility into the work their employees do (54% vs. 38%). And as employees feel the pressure to “prove” they’re working, digital overwhelm is soaring.
Productivity paranoia risks making hybrid work unsustainable. Leaders need to pivot from worrying about whether their people are working enough to helping them focus on the work that’s most important. 81% of employees say it’s important that their managers help them prioritize their workload, but less than a third (31%) say their managers have ever given clear guidance during one-on-ones. Solving this issue needs to start at the top: 74% of people managers say more guidance on prioritizing their own work would help their performance, and 80% say they’d personally benefit from more clarity from senior leadership on impactful priorities.
Clarity is key
Employees who report having clarity about their work priorities are:
3.95x
as likely to say they plan to stay at the company for at least two years
7.1x
as likely to say they rarely think about looking for a new job
4.5x
as likely to say they’re happy at their current company
Source: Glint, 2022
48% of employees and 53% of managers report that they’re already burned out at work, so prioritization must go beyond simply reordering an overflowing to-do list. Leaders need to create clarity and purpose for their people, aligning work with the company mission and team goals. And defining what work doesn’t matter is just as important as defining what does—in a world where everything is important, nothing is. We’ve reached a point of diminishing returns due to overwork and overwhelm—if leaders don’t intervene, they put productivity in jeopardy.
Showing employees that you care requires creating a continuous feedback loop—listening and taking action consistently. Only 43% of employees can confidently say their company solicits employee feedback at least once a year—meaning over half of companies (57%) may rarely, if ever, ask and hear about their employees’ experience at work. And even if their company is collecting feedback, 75% of employees (and 80% of managers) think it’s not often enough, and 75% of business decision makers say it’s not actionable enough. In an era of ongoing volatility, timely, actionable employee insights are critical to gaining and maintaining a competitive edge. To ensure that decisions are driven by the most up-to-date information, leaders need to consistently take a pulse on how their employees are doing.
Productivity Paranoia
There is a stark disconnect between the portion of leaders who say they have full confidence their team is productive (12%) and the portion of employees who report they are productive at work (87%).
Survey respondents were asked, “On a typical day, how much do you agree or disagree with the following? ‘I feel productive when I work’” Survey respondents in a leadership role were asked, “How much of a challenge is the following when thinking about new changes brought about by the shift to hybrid work? ‘Having confidence that my employees are being productive’”
Illustration by Valerio Pellegrini
Closing the feedback loop is key to retaining talent. Employees who feel their companies use employee feedback to drive change are more satisfied (90% vs. 69%) and engaged (89% vs. 73%) compared to those who believe their companies don’t drive change. And the employees who don’t think their companies drive change based on feedback? They’re more than twice as likely to consider leaving in the next year (16% vs. 7%) compared to those who do. And it’s not a one-way street. To build trust and participation in feedback systems, leaders should regularly share what they’re hearing, how they’re responding, and why.
Take action:
Set goals like OKRs to ensure that employee work aligns with company goals. Also, establish NO-KRs, or what employees should not do in order to get the most critical work done.
Create and reinforce a culture that rewards employees’ impact, not just activity, or risk people LARP-ing their jobs.
Collect employee feedback regularly at organizational, departmental, and team levels to keep a pulse on your people—and empower managers and leaders to actively listen, coach, and make better decisions to improve the overall performance and wellbeing of their teams.
2.
Embrace the fact that people come in for each other
The return to the office has been a struggle at many organizations—with some employers rolling back plans after one-size-fits-all policies failed to generate a great return. So how can leaders inspire people to prioritize in-person time together? The data shows that people come in for each other to recapture what they miss: the social connection of being with other people. In other words: rebuilding social capital can be a powerful lever for bringing people back to the office.
While 82% of business decision makers say getting employees back to the office in person is a concern in the coming year, the fact is that people now expect flexibility and autonomy around how, when, and where they work. Policy alone will not reverse this reality: 73% of employees and 78% of business decision makers say they need a better reason to go in than just company expectations. While a less certain job market may motivate some employees to spend more time in the office, a more lasting, effective approach requires concerted efforts to rebuild social capital. Organizations that fail to use in-person time to rebuild and strengthen team bonds may risk losing out on attracting and retaining top talent.
73%
of employees say they need a better reason to go into the office than just company expectations.
The data reveals a better way to bring people back together to engage and energize them. Connecting with colleagues is a key motivation for working in person. 84% of employees would be motivated by the promise of socializing with co-workers, while 85% would be motivated by rebuilding team bonds. Employees also report that they would go to the office more frequently if they knew their direct team members would be there (73%) or if their work friends were there (74%).
Younger people are especially keen to use the office to establish themselves as part of their workplace community and feel more connected to their co-workers: younger generations are particularly looking to connect with senior leadership (78% of Gen Z and Millennials vs. 72% Gen X and older) and their direct managers in person (80% Gen Z and Millennials vs. 76% Gen X and older). Gen Z is also particularly motivated by working in person to see their work friends (79% vs. 68% of Gen X and older).
Social Connection Is Worth the Commute
Workers say they are even more interested in going into the office for their friends and peers than for managers and leadership.Gen ZMillennialsGen XBoomers213040506020%40%60%80%100%friendsdirectTeamimmediateManagerseniorLeadershipmy ‘work friends’ would be theremembers of my direct team would be theremy immediate manager would be theremy senior leadership would be thereI would go into the office more frequently if I knew…
Survey respondents were asked, “As an employee who is working in a hybrid environment, how much do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?”
Authenticity Matters
We asked employees about how an authentic—open, honest, empathetic—manager impacted them. Here’s what they said:
The desire among employees to reconnect with co-workers dovetails nicely with a powerful organizational need: to rebuild social capital. 68% of business decision makers say that ensuring cohesion and social connections within teams has been a moderate/major challenge due to the shift to hybrid work. Employees are feeling this acutely, with roughly half saying their relationships outside their immediate work group have weakened (51%) and that they feel disconnected from their company as a whole (43%).
The office can’t be the only answer—technology plays a critical role in creating connection wherever, whenever, and however people work. And communication is crucial to keeping everyone engaged and informed: according to nearly all business decision makers (96%) and employees (95%), effective communication is among the most critical skills they’ll need in the year ahead. And communication will need to be authentic, not just informative. Employees list authenticity as the #1 quality a manager can have in supporting them to do their best work (85%), and 83% of business decision makers say it’s important for their senior leadership to show up authentically.
Take action:
Use in-person time to help employees rebuild team bonds and networks.
Build a digital employee experience to help employees stay connected to each other, to leadership, and to the company culture no matter where they’re working.
Create a digital community with modern communication tools to fuel conversation, empower people to express themselves, and connect leadership and employees.
3.
Re-recruit your employees
Amid macroeconomic headwinds, now is the time for every organization to re-recruit, re-onboard, and re-energize employees. And the data shows if people can’t learn and grow, they’ll leave. As employees embrace a new “worth-it” equation, they’re increasingly turning to job-hopping, the creator economy, side hustles, and entrepreneurship to achieve their career goals. And in a still-tight labor market, leaders who were hoping for the tide to turn have so far been disappointed. Rather than ignore or fight these trends, the best leaders will prioritize learning and development to help both people and the business grow.
Younger generations are the most likely to aspire to be their own boss, with 76% of Gen Z and Millennials saying that this is a goal, versus 63% of those who are Gen X and older. These younger generations are also more likely to say that they’d stay at their current company longer if the company gave them the flexibility to pursue side projects or businesses for additional income (77% vs. 66%). And this spring, 52% of Gen Z and Millennials reported they were likely to consider changing jobs within the next year. Employers can’t ignore this next wave of the workforce: in the US alone, Gen Z employees are projected to make up approximately 30% of the workforce by 2030. And on LinkedIn, Gen Z employees are transitioning jobs at a faster pace than other generations, up 22% in the past year (far exceeding Millennials, whose job transition rate dropped by 1% in the same timeframe).
76%
of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support
Across the workforce, employees are hungry for growth opportunities: 56% of employees and 68% of business decision makers say there are not enough growth opportunities in their company to make them want to stay long term. And many employees believe that learning requires leaving: 55% say the best way for them to develop their skills is to change companies. That sentiment increases as people rise through the ranks at their company, climbing from 51% among lower- and entry-level workers to 66% among upper- and mid-level managers, and 69% among executives. Making it easier for employees to find their next growth opportunity inside the company seems obvious, but the data shows organizations aren’t prioritizing internal mobility enough.
If People Can’t Learn, They’ll Leave
Many workers feel that they need to leave a company to develop their skills.
Survey respondents were asked: “How much do you agree or disagree with the following when you think about your future career? ‘The best way for me to develop my skills is by changing companies’”
Illustration by Valerio Pellegrini
2 out of 3 employees say they would stay longer at their company if it were easier to change jobs internally (68% overall, 73% Gen Z, 73% Millennials, 65% Gen X). That rises to 3 in 4 for people managers (75%) and business decision makers (77%), revealing a powerful retention tool for your leadership layer. This focus on long-term growth and skill development may explain why 68% of employees and 77% of business decision makers say they would rather make a lateral move that offers new skills than a vertical move that is more senior but has fewer learning and growth opportunities.
The connection between learning and retention is clear: 76% of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support. The numbers rise even higher for business decision makers (+7). In fact, employees consider opportunities to learn and grow as the #1 driver of great work culture, a jump from 2019 when it was ranked #9. So taken as a whole, prioritizing employee learning and growth presents a winning retention formula for organizations—or, alternately, if neglected, could pose an existential threat.
The skills gap puts daily work at risk
According to LinkedIn, the skill sets for jobs have changed by approximately 25% since 2015. And by 2027, this number is expected to double. But many employees don’t have the current skills they need, let alone ones for the future.
Take action:
Make learning and growth core to the employee experience—that means bringing the right resources and learning experiences into the flow of work to close the skills gap.
Recognize that people want opportunities not just for promotion but to broaden their skills. Organizations need to make internal mobility a key priority and help employees view their career as a climbing wall or playground, rather than a ladder.
Shift your mindset to create an internal talent marketplace where people can grow their skills, build their careers, and find purpose while helping the organization thrive.
The Way Forward
The changes that have swept the work world over the past few years are not temporary. Flexibility is a feature, not a fad. And 2019 leadership practices simply won’t meet the moment for a digitally connected, distributed workforce. Leaders who look to data—not just instinct—and focus on clarity, social capital, and career growth can realize both the promise of hybrid work and the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Now more than ever, positive business outcomes depend on positive people outcomes.
We pride ourselves on listening to our customers and then building products and partnerships that meet customer needs and enable every application to migrate to Azure. We recognize that migrating Virtual Desktop, Virtual Server, High Performance Compute, Analytics, and many other critical applications requires copying tens of terabytes to several petabytes of file data stored on file servers, NAS appliances, and Object Storage to Azure. Automated, intuitive, and scalable solutions are required to migrate file data between heterogeneous platforms and eliminate the inherent complexity and risk of these projects. Our customers have told us that copying unstructured and semi-structured file data to Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, and Azure NetApp Files needs to be fast and easy so you can focus on innovating with Azure services.
Today we are announcing the Azure File Migration Program which gives customers and partners in our Solution Integrator and Service Provider ecosystem, access to industry-leading file migration solutions from Komprise and Data Dynamics—at no cost. These solutions help easily, safely, and securely migrate file and object data to Azure Storage.
Azure Migrate offers a very powerful set of no-cost (or low-cost) tools to help you migrate virtual machines, websites, databases, and virtual desktops for critical applications. You can modernize legacy applications by migrating them from servers to containers and build a cloud native environment. Our new program complements Azure Migrate and provides the means to migrate applications and workloads that include large volumes of unstructured file data.
This program offers free software licensing, an onboarding session, and access to the migration solution provider’s support organization. You can review a detailed comparison of the solutions, review the Getting Started Guides for Data Dynamics and Komprise, and watch videos showcasing their functionality. After choosing the solution that best fits your needs, you simply select the appropriate Azure sponsored offer from the Azure Marketplace.
We plan to expand this program going forward to include additional migration ISVs and target storage platforms to support any and every storage migration scenario—subscribe to this blog for updates as we expand the program.
Learn more about the Azure File Migration Program
To learn more about this program, please visit our Tech Community Blog where Principal Program Manager Karl Rautenstrauch has written a post to help you move forward and take advantage of this great offer! You can also learn more about migrating application workloads to Azure by visiting the Azure Migration and Modernization Center.
In times of great change, challenges and opportunities can be found in many directions. This is certainly true in IT and cybersecurity.
Today, while navigating a pandemic, frequent supply chain shocks, and global talent shortages, organizations around the world are forced to confront sophisticated ransomware and nation-state attacks. They’re continually staying ahead of stricter compliance requirements, and they’re doing all of this while focusing on the strategic edge they obtain using technology as a transformational advantage.
Cloud, mobile, and edge platforms have driven unprecedented business innovation, adaptation, and resilience during this time, but this broad mix of technologies also introduces incredible complexity for security and compliance teams. The security operations center (SOC) must keep pace with safeguarding identities, devices, data, apps, infrastructure, and more. Further, they must take stock of evolving cyber risks in this multicloud, multi-platform world, and identify where blind spots may exist across a broad new set of users, devices, and destinations.
When you combine these business needs and rising concerns, it’s clear that security is the defining opportunity and challenge of our time. At Microsoft, our mission of empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more means anticipating these needs, slashing security complexity, and protecting organizations across their entire digital estate. We do this by making multicloud support central to our security strategy.
Today, we’re announcing new advances to help customers strengthen visibility and control across multiple cloud providers, workloads, devices, and digital identities—all from a centralized management view. These new features and offerings are designed to secure the foundations of hybrid work and digital transformation.
Delivering the future of multicloud security
According to the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 92 percent of respondents are using a multicloud model, meaning they rely on apps and infrastructure from multiple cloud providers. Another recent survey sponsored by Microsoft shows that 73 percent of respondents say it’s challenging to manage multicloud environments.2 For organizations to fully embrace these multicloud strategies, it’s critical that their security solutions reduce complexity and deliver comprehensive protection.
Today, we’re taking another step in Microsoft’s journey to protect our customers across diverse cloud systems by extending the native capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Cloud to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
With GCP support, Microsoft is now the only cloud provider with native multicloud protection for the industry’s top three platforms: Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) (announced at Ignite last November), and now Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides Cloud Security Posture Management and Cloud Workload Protection. It identifies configuration weak spots across these top providers to help strengthen the overall security posture in the cloud and provides threat protection across workloads—all from a single place.
Support for GCP comes with out-of-box recommendations that allow you to configure GCP environments in line with key security standards like the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark—protection for critical workloads running on GCP, including servers, containers, and more. Find out more in today’s announcement blog.
Strengthening Zero Trust with identity security from CloudKnox
Despite all this innovation and change, security and compliance fundamentals begin with conclusively managing identity. Identities are the foundational piece that makes it possible to deliver apps, data, and services where they’re needed.
In a multicloud world, the number of platforms, devices, users, services, and locations multiplies exponentially, so securing those dynamically changing identities and permissions, wherever they are, is another core pillar of multicloud protection.
A key pain point for many organizations here is the lack of visibility and control over their ever-evolving identities and permissions. To help address this, last year we acquired CloudKnox Security, a leader in Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), to accelerate our ability to help customers manage permissions in their multicloud environments and strengthen their Zero Trust security posture.
Today, we’re announcing the public preview of CloudKnox Permissions Management. CloudKnox provides complete visibility into user and workload identities across clouds, with automated features that consistently enforce least privilege access and use machine learning-powered continuous monitoring to detect and remediate suspicious activities.
Reinventing the economics of security data with Microsoft Sentinel
To defend against today’s threats as well as tomorrow’s, security teams must have ready access to all security data. But as the volume of security data continues to grow exponentially, a one-size-fits-all model is no longer sufficient.
We’re working to reinvent the economics of working with security information and event management (SIEM) data and delivering new ways to access and analyze security data by embracing all data types, wherever they live, to provide the most comprehensive threat hunting solution. Today, we’re announcing new capabilities as the first step on this journey. We’re introducing basic logs, a new type of log that allows Microsoft Sentinel to sift through high volumes of data and find high-severity, low-visibility threats, and a new data archiving capability to extend data retention to seven years—beyond our current policy of two years—to enable our customers’ global data compliance needs. We’re also adding a new search experience to empower security analysts to hunt for threats more effectively. They can now search massive volumes of security data quickly and easily from all logs, analytics, and archives. Learn more about Microsoft Sentinel’s vision and new capabilities.
Delivering comprehensive protection
In today’s threat landscape, attacks are coming from anywhere and everywhere, including both inside and outside organizations. That’s why it’s critical to deliver comprehensive solutions that organize security, compliance, identity, endpoint management, and privacy as an interdependent whole while extending protection across platforms and clouds.
To that end, we’re announcing some updates across our portfolio that will help you better protect what’s most important to your business:
Secure workload identities with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD): We’re extending Azure AD beyond its core capabilities of protecting user identities to now also safeguarding workload identities for apps and services, as customers move more workloads into the cloud, and develop more cloud-native applications. We announced Conditional Access for workload identities last November, and now, Identity Protection can also be applied to workload identities. Learn more from our blog post.
Secure payment processing in the cloud with Azure Payment HSM: We recently launched a new service, Azure Payment HSM, in public preview, for payment card issuers and network and payment processors to securely process payments in the cloud. It provides the highest levels of protection for cryptographic keys and customer PINs for secure payment transactions.
Join us at the What’s Next in Security from Microsoft digital event
Cyber risks are inevitable and ever-evolving, but the more we build comprehensive, integrated, and cloud-powered defenses using automation to prevent, detect, and mitigate risk, the more we can empower organizations of all sizes to be fearless in their digital transformation and continue to innovate.
We’re committed to delivering comprehensive solutions that work seamlessly across platforms and extend to clouds and apps well outside our offerings so that our customers can secure their entire digital estate, end-to-end.
In a new year full of perseverance and opportunity, I want to thank our customers and partners for placing their trust in Microsoft Security. I’d also like to invite you to join us at our What’s Next in Security from Microsoft digital event tomorrow February 24, 2022, where we will be joined by industry leaders to dive deeper into these evolving market trends, our multicloud protection innovations, and more. Learn more and register for the event here.
Learn more
https://twitter.com/escapebusinessTo learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @escapebusiness for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
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