Using hard data as a starting point, we explore the changing world of hybrid work. Guided by our own experiences of neurodivergence and disability, we debate how a more collaborative and accessible approach can drive efficiency across the public sector. In most cases we find that it can be done using technology that governments already possess.  

As a former policy advisor with hands-on experience of shaping equality legislation, these issues are all very close to my heart. 

Aligning leaders and teams to make hybrid work, work

The first episode of the Public Sector Podcast Series, season four, is The Future of Work – Facing the Hybrid Challenge. In it, Microsoft’s Henry Rex, industry advisor, and Rakhi Sachdeva, modern workplace specialist, discuss findings from the latest Work Trends Index report. The numbers reveal a significant disconnect between managers and teams around attitudes to remote working. 87 percent of remote employees reported feeling confident in their productivity at work, while only 12 percent of managers felt the same way about the performance of their remote teams.  

Managers can benefit from investing more trust in their teams and using soft skills to ensure that everyone gets access to the vision and culture of the organisation, which is key to productivity. Helping staff learn new skills ‘on the go’ improves both retention and productivity. We also discuss how a more flexible approach to work can empower individuals who have differing needs to be more effective. Building trust between management and staff enables everyone to align around the public service mission; as Henry Rex points out, people often join an organisation for the money, but stay there for the culture.

Neurodivergence and the innovation challenge

In episode two, Innovate Together, Microsoft account technology strategist, Andrew Boxall, talks about managing change in government and how it can enable staff to embrace more productive and collaborative ways of working. Along the way we discuss our shared experiences of being neurodiverse in the workplace, which provides insights into the challenges of data-driven innovation. 

Addressing bias and differing learning styles enables public servants to collaborate better across organisations. The Innovate Together initiative, supported by Microsoft, aims to accelerate innovation and best practice sharing across the public sector. Trailblazers like Norfolk County Council provide an inspirational example of how advanced techniques such as robotic process automation can drive efficiency.  

Success depends on leaders who set an example and have the initiative to share their learnings. All our guests agreed that making better use of existing tools is a great way to achieve incremental efficiency gains in government, and start building confidence. 

Extending accessibility and inclusion to drive productivity 

In episode three, Accessibility, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, I speak to Maria Grazia Zedda, senior EDI manager at HS2, who is severely deaf. Maria Grazia speaks movingly about overcoming the challenges of disability and hardship when she arrived in London as a young woman. London is also where she found support on her career path and discovered her vocation, improving accessibility in the workplace for everyone. These uplifting experiences are captured in her first novel which is to be published in her native Italy. 

Maria Grazia welcomes the adoption of new technologies that enhance accessibility and inclusion, such as minicoms and auto-captions (Live Captions in Microsoft Teams), the use of which was accelerated by remote working. The momentum now needs to be maintained so that inclusion becomes a fundamental principle of the workplace and the built environment. 

Explore episodes from our previous series 

Our previous three podcast series provide fascinating insights into how efficiency in the public sector could be improved with fresh thinking.  

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season One

In Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 1, guests discuss how citizen services can be enhanced using new digital technologies. Further episodes explore the challenges of managing security across government in a digital world, and overcoming the barriers to legacy estate reduction. Hindsight is also explored as a means of understanding past mistakes and improving government performance in the future.

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season Two

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 2 builds on these themes, looking at how citizen identity in government can be managed simply and securely. The challenges of hybrid work, and the uses of geospatial data science in the context of the government’s levelling-up agenda, are also up for discussion. A highlight from series two is the episode that draws lessons from the Environment Agency’s experience of digital transformation. Cross-government data sharing also comes under scrutiny.

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season Three

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 3 digs deeper into data sharing and how citizens engage with government. We assess the government’s Green agenda and the challenge of data literacy in driving innovation across the public sector. And what, we ask, do young people think about entering public service? We devote an episode to figuring out the changing face of apprenticeship in a hybrid world.

Find out more

Successful trial of the Microsoft and Socitm Change Agent programme

Our innovation – Norfolk County Council

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Blueprint for UK Government – Microsoft Industry Blogs – United Kingdom

How the public sector can streamline operations and innovate with intelligent automation – Microsoft Industry Blogs – United Kingdom

About the author

Aaron has worked at Microsoft as an industry advisor for central government for the last four years. Before that he spent twenty-five years in the public sector across a number of departments, in both central and local government, leading on technology policy and strategy. Most notably, he worked on the creation of the Equality Acts (2006 and 2010), the Public Sector Equality Duty and the translation of the EU Accessibility Regulations over to the UK. Outside of his day job, Aaron lectures on accessibility, inclusion and neurodiversity at local institutions and across the wider tech sector.

The post How to make government more effective in a hybrid world: podcast series appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

It will take time for the new hybrid workplace to emerge. At Microsoft, we continue to take a people and design-centred approach to hybrid working. To help leaders build an inclusive hybrid workplace, we focus on the perspectives of four employees. We look at their wants and needs, their current situation, and what their desired normal future of work looks like.

• Balancing work and home: Sarah’s story
• Building inclusivity and accessibility: Raj’s story
• Staying connected while apart: Mike’s story
• Starting a new career: Veronica’s story

Balancing work and home: Sarah’s story

Sarah is an architect in the construction industry. She is a professional, a wife and mother, and the primary carer of two daughters. As a result, she finds balancing work and home demands a constant struggle.

Pre-remote working

Before our shift to remote working, Sarah often struggled to achieve a healthy balance between her professional and family life. Long days could involve up to four hours in the car. There were design meetings, planning meetings and site visits to attend, often at multiple locations. Sometimes she would get home late. That meant she would miss the opportunity to catch up with her family. This made her feel disconnected and like she was failing at home.

Remote working

Not having to travel has been a revelation for Sarah. Home schooling is difficult to manage. However, the extra 10+ hours a week Sarah gains by not travelling means she can spend more time with her family. Also, she has more time to keep her clients happy and projects on track.

As everyone got used to remote working, there were some initial misunderstandings and mistakes. However, everyone quickly adapted.

Whereas she would do this informally in the office, smaller scheduled meetings and more regular diarised check-ins helped Sarah stay on top of her work. Unfortunately, Sarah’s broadband was disconnected for two days and that had a big impact on everyone – work, school and entertainment were all affected. The family have since changed provider and upgraded their package to make the connection more reliable.

Sarah’s desired normal in the future of work

A year on, Sarah does occasionally miss the buzz and connection of the office. It’s made her recognise the importance of face-to-face connection. But through remote working, she has found a work life balance that was unobtainable before. Her firm are discussing their return to workplace strategy. Sarah hopes she can continue to be empowered to meet her client, project and family needs in a way that works well for her.

Building inclusivity and accessibility: Raj’s story

Raj is a partner at a management consulting firm. He has a late acquired disability. This has impacted the way he delivers his work.

Pre-remote working

Raj was happy with his career progression. However, his late acquired disabilities meant he faced a lot of challenges delivering his work. Unable to use public transport or stay overnight in new cities without elaborate carer arrangements, Raj had a lot of restrictions in terms of the customers he could serve.

For the customers he could serve, Raj had to put in a lot of effort to manage travel arrangements. Also, he had to deal with all the unknowns that come with new locations. He remembers several occasions when he had to wake up at 4am to be part of morning face to face meetings. To do that, his wife needs to assist him, as the carer can’t attend that early. At times, he would travel over three hours for a two-hour face to face customer meeting and make the same arduous journey back. There were several incidents where he came across meeting rooms that were not accessible. In all this, he never felt that he was doing anything extraordinary because that was the only way he could get work done – that was his normal.

Remote working

2020 changed Raj’s whole perspective about workplace productivity. It also changed his opinion on the meaning of equitable environments for people with disabilities. The rapid pace of digital transformation enabled an unprecedented level of digital inclusion in our society.

Overnight, everything became more accessible. All those customers that Raj couldn’t travel to are now in his reach. With all the time saved he has become much more productive. His wellbeing has also improved, as he no longer worries about accessibility when travelling to meet clients. This year, Raj is handling three times the workload compared to last year. He still has time to publish new intellectual property, mentor colleagues and students and advise start-ups. He also has more time to spend with his family.

Raj’s desired normal in the future of work

What’s been brought home to Raj is the power of technology. It’s a major catalyst to enable the full participation of people with disabilities in the digital economy. Raj realises he has a voice and role in taking this opportunity forward and removing the barriers to a truly inclusive digital future of work.

Staying connected while apart: Mike’s story

Mike is an assistant buyer for a large online retailer. He is single and has no dependents. This job is the first time he has lived away from home.

Pre-remote working

Mike has been an assistant buyer for two years. After graduating from a university – which was close to his hometown – he took the brave step of leaving his friends and family. He moved 200 miles for his job. His working life was spent either in the office, on the road, or travelling across Asia with colleagues looking for the next great product.

Mike’s social life also circulated around work. He caught up with colleagues over a coffee, is a member of the company sports team and enjoyed team socials. While Mike lived alone, most of his time was spent with others either at work or in social situations.

Remote working

In 2020, Mike shifted to working from home. Due to both his work and personal technology, he felt he could be just as productive or even more productive than when he was travelling. In the beginning, he was enjoying not having to travel. He was able to do things that he did not have time for before. After a few weeks however, he started to realise how much he relied on work for social interaction and began to feel isolated. After four months, the social isolation took its toll. Mike decided to move back home.

Mike’s desired normal in the future of work

Mike can see that there are plans to return to the office. Soon, things will start to go back to some kind of normality. He is looking forward to getting back into the office. He’s also starting to travel again as he has missed those elements of the role. However, Mike has proven that he can be productive from anywhere. While remote working has made some things complex, he believes hybrid working is the way to go.

Mike has been speaking to his manager about the possibility of a home working contract. He doesn’t want to permanently relocate again. In addition, he believes the company would get more value from this arrangement. Mike has decided that if his employer forces him to move closer to the office then he will have to look for a new position. The market for his skills appears buoyant.

Starting a new career: Veronica’s story

Veronica is an intern at a large tech company. She is excited to pick up experiences and skills which would help her secure her first job once she has obtained her degree.

Pre-remote working

Veronica’s excitement to start her work placement turned to dread in 2020. She had moved to a new city to be near her workplace. She was looking forward to onboarding into her role, meeting her colleagues and getting settled in. Yet government restrictions meant that all offices closed.

Remote working

On-boarding into her new role was difficult. There was great supporting infrastructure in the form of digital platforms, training, and tools. However, Veronica felt she would have benefited from more 1:1 guidance and mentoring, especially whilst she was settling in. Instead, she found that her days were full of meetings. Whilst everyone was generally helpful, it could at times be overwhelming. She was sometimes unsure of whether she was prioritising the right tasks. This made her feel anxious.

Veronica’s desired normal in the future of work

Veronica hopes the world will learn from the last year. Digital tools are a great benefit and enable ‘work anywhere’ flexibility. However, she has found as someone early in career, that sometimes working in the same space as her team can have benefits too, such as building a greater sense of camaraderie and connection. She feels that if she had had more help in her on-boarding it would have helped to build her confidence faster and to accomplish more during her work placement.

Designing the hybrid workspace in the future of work

The future of work needs to be intentionally focused on three things:

• The work we will do.
• How we will work.
• The value the work creates.

The workplace shouldn’t be focussed on location. Nor should it be driven by the personal preferences and habits of the influential few. With just these four stories, we can see how different individual preferences are. But what connects them? Digital technology.

By taking a people-oriented approach we can design the future of work. We’ll build strategies that work for everyone. Investing in digital tools opens the door to the opportunity but investing in a digital culture realises it. Leaders have a pivotal role to play in enabling the future of work. They can empower others to do their jobs in a way that works for them, whilst also satisfying the needs and wants of the customers they serve.

Find out more

Microsoft Viva: The employee experience platform

Create an agile and innovative hybrid workplace

Enable the anywhere office

3 steps to build a successful hybrid working framework

About the authors

Prajakt is a management consulting professional with more than 17 years of experience in serving large global clients. He specialises in business consulting and advisory services; driving digital modernisation for customers.
Currently, Prajakt is an Industry Advisory Lead for the Local and Regional Government sector in Microsoft Services.
Previously, Prajakt was heading the Europe consulting services for Tech Mahindra serving large global customers like British Telecom, Vodafone, Telefonica etc., in addition to leading implementations for various smart city initiatives across the UK.

Terry Room is currently a Managing Architect for Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK. With over 20 years of technology industry experience, he leads a cross disciplinary team of consulting architects and digital advisors, with a focus on driving large scale business and technology transformation with strategic enterprise customers through the design of compelling business cases, resilient technology architectures, and transformation programmes which deliver sustainable business value.

The post The hybrid workplace: How organisations can build the future of work, inclusively appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

But how do you run these sessions remotely while creating that same energy? How can you maximise productivity and return on investment of time and resources? Virtual meetings tend to require more thought and planning to enable and drive business results in an engaging and inclusive way.

We consider some of the underlying assumptions around working in the same physical space to map to a fully virtual way of working model for remote creative thinking sessions.

Moving on from traditional creative thinking sessions 

It’s a general assumption that the investment of time (including travel), focus and energy is offset by generating innovative ideas. This leads to workshops and agendas which are coarse-grained, to maximise the investment in time people have set aside to contribute.

Being somewhere physically can lend itself more naturally to creating serendipitous moments and the feeling of connectedness. Yet, when organised correctly, these moments can be designed into a virtual event.

And when you factor in those other ideas such as travel, and focus, hosting a virtual event can improve those. A major benefit of virtual events is that there is reduced cost and no travel time – there may even be a reduced carbon footprint. This increased flexibility can result in increased attendance, allowing people to carve out the time and get themselves in the right headspace.

Now we have the digital tools to support virtual ways of working, it makes sense that people’s expectations have changed, and they’re more likely to expect virtual events in the future. A virtual event has the potential to be just as good as, or even more successful than a physical event.

What makes a good facilitator for a creative thinking session?

It’s important to remember that often ideation session attendees are diverse and in a lot of cases do not have close and pre-established working relationships. This means you need a good facilitator to help drive the session.

They will ensure that everyone is briefed on ground rules, agenda, objectives and required tools. Ongoing active facilitation manages the energy and focus of the group. When all are in the same physical location the facilitator can read visual cues. This needs to be done differently for virtual ideation sessions. Visible or declared accessibility needs can also be more explicit and actively catered for. We’ll go into some depth about how to manage these in the virtual environment.

How to flip from physical creative thinking sessions to virtual effectively

Examine your assumptions

• Video conferencing fatigue is real: Agendas should be much more granular in a virtual setting to ensure breaks.
• Introduce small breakout rooms to ensure everyone can share ideas.
• Establish ground rules.

Virtual accessibility

• Planning is key: Ensure you have accessibility factored in, such as automatic captioning.
• Consider everyone: Use the Accessibility Checker in your presentations and documents to ensure everyone can access them.

Virtual engagement

• Actively plan engagement: Use digital engagement tools to gamify sessions.
• Facilitate creative thinking: Implement warmups, games, and quizzes during breaks.

Virtual tools and processes

• Effective meetings take planning: Share a pre-brief of the tools and processes you will use so participants can familiarise themselves.
• Mistakes happen: Allow time in your agenda in case something doesn’t work right away.

Examine your assumptions for creative thinking sessions

When everyone joins remotely, we need to examine our assumptions of physical meetings. For example, we shouldn’t assume that all attendees have blocked out the half-day or whole day to collaborate. Conversely, we should be mindful that many will be sitting in their home office or living space. Agendas should be much more granular in a virtual setting. Allowing people the time to get away from their desk is a key part of this.

We should challenge our assumptions that workshops must be in a whole or half day event. Consider breaking up your agenda into ‘bites’. Make sure to include recap time to warm people back up. This also allows real time for consolidation of previous sessions and presentations of feedback and insights to guide the group forward.

This approach might mean more facilitation time is needed – potentially filling the time of two facilitators where one was previously enough.

Virtual inclusion

We all make assumptions of how we want to collaborate. Even if we’ve identified strategies to address our subconscious biases, inclusion requires extra consideration in a virtual setting. Virtual meetings have the potential to be a great leveller, where everyone is starting from the same place.

One useful strategy for driving inclusion in diverse groups is to task attendees to write an ‘about me’ slide which is shared ahead of the session. This can outline things such as:

• How I like to work
• My areas of expertise
• What I am hoping to get out of the session
• How I prefer to communicate

Facilitators can also use this to look at the balance of perspectives, objectives and experiences in the team. They can also allocate individuals to breakout groups to maximise diversity or concentrate expertise (as appropriate).

Another useful approach to drive inclusion is to structure your agenda around smaller group breakouts, followed by share backs with the wider group. Smaller groups still need an element of facilitation. However, generally the smaller the group the more opportunity everyone has for their voices to be heard.

Ground rules are also important to establish. Brief attendees to try to be more self-aware and to actively give each other airtime. Establish the use of the ‘Raise hand’ feature in Teams when they want to speak, for example.

In some cases, we have even seen virtual meetings become a cultural leveller, as they flatten organisation hierarchies – for example by reducing deference that team members might have for their boss in a physical setting.

Virtual accessibility

We need to actively plan for specific accessibility needs in virtual settings. In a physical setting visual cues may make accessibility needs more present. Yet, a remote setting may even be an enabler through the use of accessibility features in digital tools such as live captions. Like in physical settings, planning is key.

Virtual engagement for creative thinking

Engagement needs to be more actively planned. Warmups and ice breakers need to be more part of the agenda. Digital tools can help defend against distractions. Asking people to be present is a start. But techniques such as regular voting and gamifying participation can drive engagement. It can also help deliver feedback to facilitators on the level of group engagement and attention, and where help and coaching may be needed.

Consider side challenges – for example quizzes or cryptic puzzles, with prizes awarded to inject purpose. Creativity is your only limit. Make things fun! Equally, actively encourage breaks more regularly than you would with a typical set of back-to-back meetings.

Virtual tools and processes

There are many established design practices and tools to utilise which will help you establish the right methodology, tools and templates. Yet, we should be mindful of how these need to be modified, extended or changed for virtual meetings. Effective physical meetings require preparation. So do virtual meetings.

You’ll need to standardise the overall working method and toolset ahead of time, sharing this and encouraging people to try it out before the meeting. From a process perspective, a small working group should define the process based on objectives and create things like required templates, breakout meeting groups and process guides. And for the first time you try this, allow for things to go wrong by with extra time in your agenda – as they probably will.

Creating engaging experiences for everyone

Where do we get our best ideas from? Diverse groups where everyone has a voice to share their thoughts. That’s why ideation sessions are an essential business tool to solve the problems of today and create the opportunities of tomorrow.

And because we’ve moved more to virtual meetings, this means more people can take part, solving challenges quicker and building new ideas. When done in a clear and structured way, they can maximise human creativity and drives business results.

Creativity never needs to stop – even in a hybrid or remote working environment.

Find out more

Reimagine the new world of work

Discover how to respond to the new world of work with leadership, culture and practice

About the author

Terry Room is currently a Managing Architect for Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK. With over 20 years of technology industry experience, he leads a cross disciplinary team of consulting architects and digital advisors, with a focus on driving large scale business and technology transformation with strategic enterprise customers through the design of compelling business cases, resilient technology architectures, and transformation programmes which deliver sustainable business value.

The post How to encourage creative thinking inclusively and remotely in the new world of work appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Microsoft, we’re also going through this journey. We’ve seen that giving people the tools to be more productive and collaborative whether in the office or at home is only one piece of the puzzle. An effective culture is one that gives people what they need to succeed. It also encourages everyone to truly be themselves. This drives a more diverse culture, and in turn, more innovation and agility for the future.

During 2020, many employees were working strictly from home. Microsoft had to work differently to extend this culture onto a digital platform. I’ve talked previously about how using this technology, especially in the manufacturing and utilities industries can help drive an innovative culture. From our learnings, we know that with the right tools and leadership, you can successfully have a transparent and collaborative culture.

Centrica also recognised this and began to survey their colleagues more frequently to check in on employee wellbeing. Their people told them that there was a growing sense of isolation. Feedback from employee groups also shared a greater need to focus on inclusivity, addressing barriers to inclusion and creating a workplace where all can thrive.

Creating a platform to share our culture change stories

In November, Centrica invited us to join their first ever Culture Hack which gave their employees a platform to come together, listen to different experiences and discuss ideas for what their culture could grow into. Culture change doesn’t always come from the top down, it can be from the bottom up and the Culture Hack was a great way to uncover the changes that were needed and to start driving them forward.

Here are three learnings from Centrica’s experience of running a Culture Hack to help you with your own culture change revolution as we enter a new world of work.

1.      Use your values to drive your culture change

At Centrica, our values act as a guide to driving this culture change, our business is founded on a 200-year heritage of serving people and our values are central to our success:

Technology helps mobilise productivity and collaboration from anywhere. Our people are already using it effectively in their day-to-day, so we leveraged it to help us start our culture change. We decided the best way for people to come together would be a specific day. Then we would have follow up communications and events designed to keep the ball rolling.

We used Microsoft Teams to host the events. We hosted one main event for keynotes and talks and then created Channels to host smaller breakout groups, based on key topics. These groups were each assigned a Microsoft and Centrica facilitator. We gave clear advice on what we wanted these breakout sessions to achieve. We provided a virtual Whiteboard template, with prepared sticky notes as well as simple guidelines on how to get the best from the session and what we wanted them to discuss.

The most difficult part of running the Culture Hack was the planning and logistical side, but it was worth the extra effort. Our tech worked perfectly. Our people were genuinely excited and engaged. We even had people wanting to join last minute, which showed how enthusiastic the team were to be involved. It was challenging to manage the individual breakout sessions based on employee availability. However, scheduling the Culture Hack as much in advance as possible will definitely help if you’re looking to run your own.

2. Encourage everyone to get involved in the culture change

Our leaders have found that the virtual way of working requires dialling up their emotional intelligence skills to improve online collaboration, demonstrate empathy, model personal resilience and look after their team as well as having the ability to listen to and coach others.

The Culture Hack was something they were completely engaged with. We also encouraged everyone to join and share feedback. It was a very empathetic, collaborative space with people sharing and listening – you truly felt like everything was being taken on board. This is something highly important for culture change. Listening to feedback and ideas is the best way to ensure everyone stays on board with the movement.

Our speakers from Centrica, Microsoft and LinkedIn were well received. They generously shared stories of their own cultural transformation journey. Our people found that it provided inspiration as well as practical tips on how organisations can make a change that matters. When organising your own Culture Hack, be sure to share personal stories. Encourage people to come off mute or use the chat window to share their own ideas.

3. Implement the quick wins and act on the bigger ideas

Following the feedback, we got so many ideas to follow up on. What’s important for our colleagues is to show that we’re hearing them and taking action. So, while some ideas may take some time to develop, we have immediately implemented the ones we could. Sometimes, this is as easy as signposting our people to programmes we already run.

For example, skills was a big topic discussed during the Culture Hack. One of our Responsible Business Ambitions is to inspire and develop 100,000 people with essential STEM skills. So, post-event we shared how to access our Learning Academy, Workday Learning App, and The Career Development Hub with our colleagues so they could start building skills. These resources already existed but employees weren’t necessarily aware of them. Having a central place where resources can be shared can go a long way to alleviating some of the challenges faced by your teams.

We also have suggested people implement a ‘Golden Hour’ – something our Irish team in Bord Gáis does already. This is an hour everyday, blocked out in diaries, around lunch time when people are encouraged to leave their computer and get some screen-free time. A Microsoft Research study found that in the last few months workers experienced reduced boundaries and struggled with work-life balance. In the office, this is normally represented by grabbing lunch with a colleague, or going for a midday walk. We want people to ensure they take their breaks during the day. By implementing this organisational-wide, we can ensure everyone can take their time without feeling guilty, and come back refreshed.

For those ideas that take a little bit longer, we’re looking forward to hosting more discussion groups to develop them. However, we told people if they wanted positive change – don’t wait.

Creating a more transparent, collaborative future

For us, running a Culture Hack in partnership with Microsoft brought people together to co-create our new world of work. We were able to:

• Help our people understand why culture change is critical to delivering Centrica’s strategy and what it looks like.
• Source their feedback/input on the type of organisation we want to be.
• Reflect on how we, as individuals, may need to shift their own mindset, actions and behaviours.
• Commit to pragmatic actions to nudge us towards the desired future culture.

People loved the opportunity to be open. They appreciated our leadership team and Microsoft showing up and genuinely taking part, sharing their culture change experiences. Our speakers were extremely popular. People are already asking us when the next sessions are running. This is just the first stage of our culture change journey.

It’s never been more important to maintain a continuous conversation and ensure that all employees voices are heard, particularly as we begin to navigate a new world of work. Centrica have been on an incredible journey and we hope that the learnings they have shared in this blog provide some helpful inspiration for your organisation’s transformation journey.

Find out more

Learn how to empower employees in the new world of work

Discover more about Centrica’s values

Drive innovation through inclusion

How to have productive and inclusive workplaces in the new normal

Resources for your development team

Discover how a DevOps culture can help high-performing teams perform even better

About the authors

Rik joined Microsoft at the start of 2020, with responsibility for Microsoft’s strategy across manufacturing, energy and resources in the UK. He is Microsoft’s lead when working with regulators, industry bodies, industry partners, and our largest customers to ensure Microsoft enables the needs of industry. Since joining, Rik has become a board member in techUK’s Smart Energy & Utilities working group, techUK’s Digital Twin steering board, UK Research & Innovation Manufacturing Made Smarter board, and the BIM4Water Digital Skills steering group. Prior to Microsoft, Rik worked at Cisco for 13 years, with global lead roles in energy and resource industries, IoT and security, and digital transformation.

He has an MBA in international leadership and is currently studying for a Masters in Green Economy.

Heather joined Centrica in 2020 as HR Director for Centrica’s Digital and Technology Services Division. Here, the focus is on reinforcing strong company culture, creating and leading employee engagement and development programs, and implementing reward and talent management strategies that enable the achievement of business goals and objectives as well as meeting the needs and aspirations of its employees. Prior to her appointment at Centrica, Heather has held senior HR leadership roles including as HR Director UK & Ireland for OTIS. Heather has also served in HR leadership roles at Virgin Media, International SOS, the Telegraph Media Group and BT Plc.

Heather holds a Bachelor of Law degree from Durham University, a Postgraduate Diploma from University of Law and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Tara Keatley joined Centrica in 2011, reporting directly into the CIO of Centrica Energy. After a whirlwind tour of Digital Technology Services (DTS), she moved into the role of DTS Transformation Strategy Manager in 2019. Tara’s main focus is on the people within DTS; ensuring that diversity and inclusion, learning and development, and wellbeing are at the forefront of a strong culture within Centrica. Tara also works closely with the DTS leadership team, concentrating on encouraging employee engagement, improving motivation and morale, and highlighting career development and capability building for our colleagues.

The post How to deliver successful culture change for the new world of work appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In the new world of work, it’s important to keep your people at the heart of your business. That’s why empowering them with the tools they need to work smarter will help you create an inclusive and resilient culture. A Forrester study found that workers realised almost two hours in daily productivity gains using Microsoft 365 on Surface, while reducing security breach costs by about 20 percent. We’re going to dive into the ways you can embrace the productivity gains of a robust security strategy, while empowering employees to do their best work from anywhere.

1.      Extend security across your entire stack

A security strategy needs to ensure your entire digital estate is secure. Ensure your entire stack is optimised with devices and applications that have built-in security based on a Zero Trust model. Surface meets the same security standards of all Microsoft software and services, making it a strategic part of your security stack.

But what is Zero Trust? It’s a security model that adapts to the new hybrid workplace and embraces mobility and remote working. By assuming breach, Zero Trust verifies each request or what resource it accesses regardless of where the request originates. By never trusting and always verifying, it ensures every access request is authenticated, authorised and encrypted before granting access.

This identity-based approach works in the background and enables things like single sign-on. Employees can, for example, sign into their Surface device with Windows Hello, a reliable, fully integrated biometric authentication based on facial recognition or fingerprint matching. Because the Surface optimises apps, it makes it easier for employees to work together. In fact, that same Forrester study I mentioned earlier also found that 88 percent of survey respondents said that Microsoft 365-powered Surface devices had helped their employees become more collaborative.

Construction firm Willmott Dixon saw an immediate improvement in productivity when using Surface and Microsoft 365. “A lot of our architects and engineers live quite far away. We now connect with them via Teams” says Simon Wilson, Senior Operations Manager. “We’ve seen projects that have reduced design time from 12 weeks to eight weeks. That is a true saving to the project.”

2.      Manage your security strategy your way

Zero Trust also helps your IT team manage your security infrastructure by combining threat protection, detection and response. Security can be managed from an easy to use control centre, protecting users, data, and endpoints. An integrated approach takes advantage of AI and automation. They take over low-level risk detection and real-time analytics to monitor and respond. This reduces chronic alert fatigue and means analysts can focus on critical alerts or higher threats.

The built-in security of Surface and Microsoft 365 makes it easy for your IT team to optimise to meet your specific needs. You can even go beyond traditional software-based policy management. Firmware configuration settings can deliver an extra level of hardware control and manageability. For example, the camera can be turned off for any device in highly secure areas to reduce risk. The built-in security of Surface and Microsoft 365 makes it easy for your IT team to optimise to meet your specific needs. You can even go beyond traditional software-based policy management. Firmware configuration settings can deliver an extra level of hardware control and manageability. For example, the camera can be turned off for any device in highly secure areas to reduce risk. Surface also benefits from three security features: Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Device Firmware Configuration Interface (DFCI).

TPM: This military-grade security protects the keys used in authentication and encryption.

UEFI: This protects the firmware from malicious attacks. Maintained by Microsoft, so that from the time the power button is pressed to the time that the operating system boots, organisations can avoid a critical vulnerability point and be assured that the latest UEFI updates are pushed out.

DFCI: Born from the Microsoft cloud offerings and enabled fast cloud deployment and management down to the firmware and component level. Benefit for those using AutoPilot via InTune, perfect for cloud first deployment, management and end of user decommission from your IT admin. DFCI gives users freedom to work from any location while still maintaining control and security.

Microsoft Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM) is a feature of Surface devices with Surface UEFI that allows you to secure and manage firmware settings within your organization. With SEMM, IT professionals can prepare configurations of UEFI settings and install them on a Surface device.

While these make it easy for your IT team to manage, a compliant organisation often hears from employees that security measures make it harder for them to access the tools they need to work. When you have built-in security, you can ensure pain-free access without compromising the employee experience. A biometric single sign-on such as Windows Hello can make it faster for your employees to log in. Additions like multi-factor authentication can also reduce credential attacks by 99 percent.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) actively serves 25 million British citizens. Their cloud-first strategy allows them to be more agile and efficient. As a result of this approach, they are less reliant on expensive and hard-to-maintain on-premise infrastructure and are able to scale with the demands of business. By pairing this approach with Surface devices, they’re ensuring advanced security standards are applied from chip to cloud. “We’re making sure our solution covers all these security standards without limiting user experience,” says Nava Ramanan, Workplace Computing Lead Technical Architect at DWP.

3.      Minimise risk and reduce costs and complexity

With the right tools and devices it is possible to increase security and productivity while reducing costs and complexity. Surface powered by Microsoft 365 improves enterprise security by reducing both the number of security breaches and remediation costs—all without impacting workforce productivity or the employee experience. Forrester found that the number of annual breaches was reduced by 50 percent per year by using two-factor authentication, Advanced Threat Analytics, and Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM).

By integrating new agile methods of device deployment and management, you can improve IT efficiency while reducing overheads. When combining Surface with Microsoft AutoPilot and Windows 10 Pro, IT teams saved four hours per device deployed.

As a local government, Warwickshire County Council is under increasing pressure to make resources go as far as possible while maintaining and improving services for its community. They made the bold decision to reduce costs by going from a combination of eight different devices to just one. They deployed Windows AutoPilot to optimise their IT team and ensure staff could start working straight out of the box.

“In just three months we migrated 4,500 staff to Microsoft 365 and Surface Pro. And less than one percent of users raised any issue with that at all,” says Craig Cusack, Assistant Director for Enabling Services.

Keeping workforce productivity at the heart of your security strategy

When you integrate your devices, apps and cloud security provisions, based on a Zero Trust principle, you can drive a highly orchestrated, centrally managed security solution. This makes it easier for your IT team to manage and deploy. It also embraces productivity and collaboration to ensure your employees stay secure and working at their best, even when remote.

UK law firm Shakespeare Martineau rolled out Surface devices to pair agility and freedom with improved end-point security, flexible productivity and practicality. In the end, it did much more, including improving morale, productivity and reducing downtime. They also saw an increase in billable hours and enhanced client satisfaction.

“Microsoft Surface complimented our strategy and was the device of choice to support our positive passionate people. The product is very good – in style, different ways of working and real performance – and it gives our staff the agility and freedom to work in a way that suits their lives whilst maximizing productivity and effectiveness,” says Dal Virdi, IT Director.

This also has the advantage of doing more with less. Implement new agile ways of working with a standardised portfolio that optimises the software and apps you run. Not only will this encourage your employees to work better together, but you’ll also benefit from improved efficiency and reduced overheads. That way you can spend more time innovating and delivering a great experience for the customers you support.

Find out more

Security and Endpoint Management with Surface: Surface for Business

Visit the website: Reimagine security and risk management

Download the eBook: Modernise your endpoint security strategy

Resources for your development team

Read the blog: Data security and encryption best practices

About the author

Chris is Surface for Business product portfolio lead for Microsoft in the UK. As the owner of the UK product proposition, Chris enjoys understanding business challenges and bringing together product propositions that empower individuals and businesses to achieve their business objectives. With over 13 years of experience in hardware technology, Chris has held a number of roles in Product Management, Marketing and Sales across the industry in the UK and abroad.

The post 3 ways to create a robust security strategy for remote teams appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Back in January, Satya Nadella was invited to deliver the keynote at the National Retail Federation conference in New York. He spoke of our ambition to help retailers create their own tech intensity and tech independence. Looking back, none of us could have predicted the levels of tech intensity and workplace modernisation that we have seen over the past few months and we’re committed to supporting our customers on their road to recovery as we enter a new normal.

Navigating the new normal

Our focus from a retail industry perspective has been on helping customers like Sainsbury’s, Co-op, and M&S continue to serve the nation by rapidly scaling out remote working. Technology has been a real enabler for all our retail customers to keep both their customers and employees connected, secure, and informed during this period of uncertainty.

“It’s unprecedented to run a business like ours, a complex business that requires so much day-to-day intense transactions, all remotely… We pivoted the whole company to work from home in a couple of weeks, and at no point did any of that ever cause any disruption in stores.” – Phil Jordan, CIO, Sainsbury’s

Breaking down barriers

In the latest edition of The Interface magazine, Sainsbury’s found Microsoft Teams instrumental for their employees to stay connected with internal teams, third-party suppliers and partners. They also found the collaboration platform to be a key enabler in democratising the business and making the leadership team more accessible too.

“We work really well this way,” says Jordan. “Everybody coming through the same communication medium has democratised the business so hierarchy becomes less important… the fact that people are talking from their own homes makes you, as a leader, look and feel more accessible.”

Adoption of Teams became 100 percent across operations and almost completely replaced face-to-face contact. This has actually facilitated better communication between teams, as there’s one voice reaching out to everyone, giving the right information at the right time and as Jordan says, “people feel more inclined to comment, to sit and talk, to ask questions.”

At Co-op, as communications become even more dispersed due to regional rules and the shift to remote working, they used Teams as a means to work together on specific projects at work, but Yammer became the place to ensure everyone received one version of the truth. It ensures everyone gets updated and connects the support centre and executives with firstline workers.

“Yammer really helps us break down those barriers and open up communications—to really focus on well-being, supporting our colleagues, and helping people with one source of truth.”  says Rebecca Sykes, Channel Strategy Manager.

Now, over 73 percent of 17,500 users are using it to connect together.

“It’s important for everyone to have to the opportunity to collaborate and feel like part of the Co-op.” – Rebecca Sykes, Channel Strategy Manager, Co-op

“We really saw a quick uptick in usage because it filled the hole that we had, giving colleagues the ability to converse and share ideas. It was all about adding value and being beneficial to people,” Sykes says. “Colleagues saw their voices were being heard and considered.”

Embracing ways of working and managing employee wellbeing

For the vast majority, 80-90%, Sainsbury’s found their employees liked working from home. “They’re productive. They don’t have to commute. It frees them up from a location perspective, and we work really well this way.”, says Jordan.

Gillian Green, Colleague Experience Manager at Sainsbury’s was charged with helping the team adapt to remote working and ensuring people could maintain a healthy work-life balance. Before COVID-19, Gillian had been working through a lot of different initiatives to raise awareness and build empathy between colleagues through education. With COVID-19 they were challenged with how to get the value from those connections and keep the passion alive in a virtual format, particularly for new recruits to the business where screen fatigue would start to set in for the traditional three-and-a-half-hour induction session.

Sainsbury’s are fully embracing the flexible working approach and employees are encouraged to make the most of the ability to do a yoga session on their lunch break or go for a walking meeting. Technology is an enabler to keep the community together and drive the team forward.

Harnessing the power of data to manage customer demand

For retailers, the end of the year normally brings more customer opportunities with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping. But in the new normal, we can all expect this to be done slightly differently, especially as people move to digital channels to do the bulk of their shopping. By using data and analytics, retailers can help manage demand, predict changes, as well as drive new insights.

To fully embrace this, M&S decided to build a new data platform around Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Databricks, and Azure Synapse Analytics. By moving their data to the cloud, they can access it securely from anywhere. They can also scale to respond to customer demand. Most importantly, it gives data and insights to people who need it, when they need it.

“By democratizing access, we’re allowing more people to have ideas, and these ideas add incremental value to the business.” – Aaronpal Dhanda, Head of Data Technology, M&S.

“Our retail support team is already reshaping how we report stock and stock loss to managers. Since they work closest to the retail side of the business, they know exactly how to consolidate and present information in ways that lead to real improvements,” says Aaronpal Dhanda, Head of Data Technology.

Bringing everybody along the journey to a new normal

As we look to respond to the immediate impact of COVID-19 and build flexible business resiliency models for the future of work, it’s important to take an inclusive approach. Ensuring everybody has the tools and skills to work in their best way has never been more important. With built-in accessibility features such as Immersive Reader, closed captions and more, we are committed to ensuring our products are designed for everyone, including over one billion people with disabilities. That way you can be confident that your solutions provide a strong experience for all – whether that be for your customers or your employees.

Building on that we are also providing increased on-demand training and resources to aid re-skilling which is imperative given the increased role technology will play as part of our economic recovery. A recent study by Goldsmiths, University of London in partnership with Microsoft, showed that the UK economy could get a £48 billion boost if companies made small technology and talent changes. Microsoft’s Get On 2021 campaign aims to help 1.5 million people in the UK build careers in technology by 2025 in an effort to help the UK economy build back better.

From recovery to re-imagination

This unprecedented change has caused businesses to reimagine their processes for the new normal. As we now start to recover, our focus extends to the future of work. It’s the perfect time to re-imagine how businesses will operate, and how we can innovate faster, using data and analytics to gain new insights and streamline operations, whilst also optimising secure remote collaboration and connected workforces.

The learnings we’ve acquired during these tumultuous times will help us recover faster and emerge stronger as a collective.

Let’s work together to build a future with resilient and innovative customer-centric services.

Find out more

Download the eBook: What’s next for retail?

Download the report: Creating a blueprint for UK competitiveness

Read the blog: Four ways to nurture success in the new world of work

About the author

Jennifer leads the account technology unit that looks after key strategic customers in retail and consumer packaged goods for Microsoft UK, and is focussed on partnering with customers to deliver technology solutions and innovation that creates business value.

She has had a diverse career in the IT industry over the last 20 years, across product development, programme management, enterprise architecture, consulting and sales. She holds a BA (Hons) in Industrial Sociology, an MSc in Information Technology and multiple change management qualifications, reflecting her passion for bringing people and technology together to drive sustainable and impactful change.

Jennifer is a passionate STEM ambassador and an active champion of diversity and inclusion, and neurodiversity. She lives in Reading with her husband and three sons and can most often be found at the weekends either walking the dog or freezing on the sidelines during one of many sporting activities with the family.

The post Re-imagining retail: How supermarkets have adapted for the new normal appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To truly succeed, I believe we need to evolve our focus on how we can collectively be together, regardless of where we are. One of the challenges for businesses is to understand and, more importantly, know what they can do to create an inclusive environment. One where everyone can play their part, is able to continuously learn and can develop their potential. This in turn, will drive innovation and productivity as the nature of work itself continues to evolve.

As the year continues on, organisations are concerned about employee wellbeing. As everyone tries to get back on track and functioning in the new normal, anxiety and stress may rise. We all need to be aware of the implications for individuals, businesses and society. This is a marathon and not a sprint. That’s why responsible businesses need to take a holistic approach in moving to new ways of working, while ensuring people don’t suffer from burnout along the way

What are organisations top concerns in the new normal?

As many of us continue to work remotely, I’ve been listening to what concerns business executives are sharing. Here are the top four I’ve heard from across all industries and businesses:

• Maintaining the health and wellbeing of their employees
• Increasing productivity
• Retaining talent
• Cutting costs

It’s becoming increasingly important for employees to feel safe, cared for and healthy at work and at home. I’ve found that there is a growing consensus by business leaders that employee health must be a top priority. Mental health is a critical part of that equation. Microsoft Research shows on average, mental health disability costs more than $1 trillion every year in lost productivity.

1. How to maintain employee health and wellbeing in the new normal

Wellness programs, mindfulness practices and regular interactions with family, friends and colleagues are all helping employees stay engaged, be creative and productive at work.

At Microsoft, we’re using Yammer to learn from one another’s experiences and discover the offers and new programmes developed for our wellbeing. This includes meditation practice, Pilates and even Zumba classes! It is also a great platform for sharing what’s on our minds and our experiences with our wider Microsoft community.

2. Empower employees with the right tools

After finding ourselves working remotely, we’ve been empowered to stay productive and connected using Microsoft 365. I’ve found Microsoft Teams especially useful for daily communication and collaboration and for creating space for water cooler conversations.

As we are helping our customers set up for remote work, we’ve found that the ability to record meetings has become essential. All attendees can access recordings of meetings they’ve missed and then listen in to the most relevant parts. Recorded meetings also come with a transcript that’s easy to search. Live meetings or events even have closed captions to ensure everyone can take part.

Take Manulife, for example. The company makes smart use of cloud capabilities like Azure and Microsoft Teams to build digital experiences and help its employees and customers work together and stay connected from anywhere.

3. Optimise operations to succeed in the new normal

One way you can improve your employee’s experience is to make collaboration seamless by breaking down barriers between apps. The Fluid Framework integrations in Microsoft 365 enables collaboration on dynamic content. Tables, charts, and task lists can be easily inserted in Outlook for the web, so your sales numbers, project tasks and research reports are always up to date.

We have seen and will keep seeing that technology plays a huge role in enabling business productivity and resilience. Companies need to emphasise the use of tools to aid remote management. They also need to develop a learning-centric culture to build resiliency in the day-to-day operations. Leonard Cheshire, a UK non-profit organisation that provides care and support for people with disabilities around the world, have been using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform to streamline their processes and create smarter apps that make care services easier to access and deliver.

“We’ve identified a lot more ways that we can make a difference using Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform. We’re now using them to improve our financial operations, with customer relationship management and compliance monitoring capabilities to follow in the next few months.” – Laura Crandley, Executive Director, Partnerships, Leonard Cheshire.

4. Be more people-centric to attract and retain talent

Now is the time to ensure that technology is people-centric. Organisations need to get a handle on how best they can support their employees to work remotely. This includes building an environment for your employees to succeed. Try developing networks to enhance long distance working relationships or cultivating capabilities for remote managing their teams by leveraging communication tools and advanced technology, including AI.

If data is the new oil, then talent with the knowledge is gold. It is imperative that organisations understand their talent and where the knowledge exists so that they can tap into the information to be able to respond to disruptive events. It also helps capitalise on opportunities when they arise. Executives need to consider some questions about talent:

• What skillset and mindset will be needed to operate, grow and evolve in a time of continuous disruption?
• How can we augment our human ingenuity to position the organisation to meet evolving and future needs?
• How can we access a wider pool of talent to enable faster scale up and greater diversity thereby enriching and strengthening our local and global reach?

Technologies such as AI enable a rethinking of talent management. Technology can help businesses deploy skills, tools and talent where they are needed most, while also acting as a catalyst for learning and best-practice sharing. It’s important to have the right tools for your team to create a seamless employee experience. According to a recent Forrester study, employees save between five to nine hours on common weekly tasks when using Microsoft 365 and Surface together, with 75% of workers stating their experience had improved.

These are challenging times, and it would be wrong to assume that this is business as usual. Organisations that succeed in building a great employee experience will create meaningful impact now and well into the future.

Leveraging data and AI

Organisations are sitting on gold mines of underutilised data. This is where the unexploited knowledge is and where the answers lie. The best way to help your employees is to help them succeed. Prioritisation and optimisation of work need to be the priority but also, to help people deliver work effectively from anywhere. True innovation begins with data. After all, machine learning algorithms are only as good as the data inputs they receive.

This is the perfect time to use AI. Allow the machines to learn and the humans to lead. More and more companies are also leveraging big data analytics. This is becoming one of the most significant ways to boost productivity. Adoption of automation technologies and AI-driven software that perform processing workflows have accelerated and driven contactless interactions.

Businesses continue to operate at reasonable productivity levels through hybrid work arrangements. Digital platforms are becoming increasingly more efficient and effective at leveraging AI and automating routine and predictable tasks. They are also finding new ways to deliver high value to their customers and employees through lower-effort solutions. Hexicon, global chemical manufacturer, streamlined and automated its various business processes.

Some insurers are starting to explore how they can use AI in more innovative ways while some are already providing these kind of services, which combine AI technology and scientific research focusing on developing tailored workplace improvements for organisations and for their employees. For example, LV= is using AI to reduce the number of ‘grey area’ accidents for its customers.

Amplifying human ingenuity

At Microsoft we are focusing on empowering our teams and freeing up Microsoft’s most valuable asset, it’s people, to become more productive. The real power of AI technology is that it amplifies our ingenuity and extends our capacity so that we can achieve more.

Using technology to increase situational awareness and maintain a productive, safe, clean, and incident free working environment while ensuring personal privacy, transparency, and trust is more important than ever in the new normal. These technological innovations need to be developed with strict ethical standards and guidance on how to implement responsibly.

Microsoft rolled out its spatial analysis feature, an Azure Cognitive Service, to meet the needs of businesses across a variety of industries. Spatial analysis uses Computer Vision AI on real-time video and offers the ability to understand people’s movements in a physical space. This significantly increases efficiency and resolution of customer data. Spatial analysis runs on the Intelligent Edge. RXR, the third-largest real estate owner in New York City used Microsoft Azure to create and deploy new safety measures for tenants after it’s buildings reopened for business. They used an intelligent, secure, hyperscalable solution, created in just a few months.

Reimagining for innovation, resilience, and inclusivity

This year has seen a dramatic change to the way many jobs are done. While we’ve seen an acceleration of trends and new realities be created, it has also posed questions for every aspect of business models in the new normal.

Organisations are now planning how best to extract benefits from those changes as they prepare for the future of work. Innovation historically has driven changes beneficial to workers and society at large, and new workplace trends hold the promise of greater productivity that will power broader well-being. Greater digitisation and automation hold the potential to deliver better productivity, enhance resilience, generate economic value, and lower costs as we see the accelerated use of data analysis, AI and higher technology digital solutions.

Join the conversation at Envision

Digital technology is changing not just how organisations operate but how leaders lead. Join us at Envision, where executives across industries come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this era of digital disruption. You’ll hear diverse perspectives from a worldwide audience and gain fresh insights you can apply immediately in your organisation.

Connect with leaders across industries to get relevant insights on leadership in the digital era.

Find out more

Read the playbook: Resilience at work

Learn more: Reimagine productivity in the new world of work

Learn more: Harness the power of data

Read more: How to build and deliver a strong data strategy

Resources for your development team

Explore the learning path: Get started with Microsoft Data Analytics

Read the blog: Remote working resources for IT professionals and developers

About the author

As a Digital Strategy and Transformation Advisor, Esra helps Microsoft’s strategic and enterprise customers within financial services and across other industry sectors to drive their digital transformation agenda. She helps them to deliver large scale digital change with the customer and employee at the heart of the solution.

The post How to have productive and inclusive hybrid workplaces in the new normal appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Microsoft, I’m constantly reminded of how advances in security technology can enable productivity and collaboration. How it can actually create and improve inclusive user experiences. We do this by adapting security policies and processes to reflect how users and consumers are utilising and engaging technology, and new ways of working, on an evolving basis.

What does this way of thinking mean? It means that a people-first approach is essential when considering the best approach to cyber resilience and business continuity. Especially as you navigate the next steps, and prepare you for the unexpected. It will also support your employees to do their best, no matter where they are, or what their circumstances.

Here are four shifts that will support your organisation on the journey to resilience and inclusivity.

1. Drive the future of security with digital empathy

The most successful organisations who empower their people to achieve more by being productive from anywhere, are the ones who are empathetic to the end-user experience. Sometimes this can be a friendly voice over a Teams call, or assisting them as they adapt to new ways of working.

Digital empathy also stretches to making digital solutions more inclusive. This means having tools and policies that adapt to people’s ever-changing circumstances.

Bring Your Own Device Policies

With more users becoming remote and working flexibly, it can be inconvenient for users to carry multiple corporate and personal devices. Its great to see financial institutions rethinking their approach to Bring Your Own Device (BOYD) policies. This offers flexibility and choice for users. It can also speed up the onboarding process and reduce costs in sourcing and maintaining devices.

Of course, this doesn’t come without risk. To protect users’ privacy and control access to corporate services and data, the devices need to be both ‘trusted and healthy’. By utilising a management tool like Intune to prevent unauthorised access and compromise you can:

• Manage at the device level. Mobile Device Management (MDM) lets you enroll devices for management. This includes all data that lives on the device. You have full control to ensure the device is compliant and can manage settings, certificates, and profiles.
• Another approach is Mobile Application Management (MAM). This works well for BYOD scenario. With MAM you can publish, push, configure, secure, monitor, and update mobile apps for your remote workers. This provides application-level controls and compliance, while maintaining the familiar user experience for end users.

2.      A Zero Trust security approach

As employees started working remotely en masse, the traditional type of ring-fenced security had its disadvantages. It often struggled to meet the need of a hybrid workforce, working from different locations, and from multiple devices. Therefore adopting a Zero Trust approach to business continuity and security became an imperative.

The key principles of Zero Trust are quite straightforward:

• Never trust
• Always verify
• Assume compromise

In a Zero Trust model, access by users and devices – both inside and outside the corporate network – is granted based on an evaluation of the risk associated with each request. The same security checks are applied to all users, devices, applications and data every time.

To start with Zero Trust, it’s important to realign around identity. This can benefit employees, as it makes it easier for them to use single sign-on or access data across multiple devices. For example, multi-factor authentication prevents 99 percent of credential theft and other intelligent authentication methods can make accessing apps easier and more secure than just using traditional passwords. This also helps create robust BYOD strategies that work in unison to enable users to be both secure, and productive.

Of course, it’s important to pair a Zero Trust strategy with advanced threat protection and information protection. This helps to detect and prevent lateral movement, and data loss, no matter where it resides.

3.      A people-led focus to a secure control environment

What normally works on-premise does not easily transfer to a cloud or hybrid operating model. particularly when accessing critical services and data from multiple sources.

For example, how is your Virtual Private Network (VPN) set up? It can often force all your network traffic through on-premises data centres, slowing down services and making it hard for employees to work. This may cause frustration. It can cause employees to look for workarounds, potentially bypassing safeguarding controls and policies, and downloading apps from the internet.

This scenario can be fixed by initiating split-tunnelling. This allows trusted cloud services like Microsoft 365 to be accessed straight over the internet. Your VPN can then be used to access critical apps and data that reside in your Data Centre, reducing the load.

In addition, a Cloud Access Security Blocker (CASB) gives you rich visibility over your shadow IT. It provides a centralised approach to monitor and protect access to data, on cloud based apps. As an example, we implemented Cloud App Security for more than 150,000 employees globally. Apps that don’t meet our stringent security standards are blocked. Popular and trusted apps are onboarded to our Azure Active Directory, making it easier for employees to access what they need securely.

4.      Providing resilient education to improve security

As cybersecurity matures, so do adversaries. They are adept at changing techniques and tactics, and at exploiting local or global events to lure victims via phishing campaigns. Using cloud-based security means you can take advantage of intelligent threat protection and analytics. For example, we collect and analyse over 8 trillion telemetry signals daily from a diverse set of products, services, and feeds around the globe. At the same time, you need to ensure your employees have the knowledge to protect themselves to reduce compromise. During times of crisis and change, users need to be warned to expect more phishing and social engineering attempts. It’s also useful to understand the psychology behind what makes people click.

This stretches beyond standard cybersecurity training. It’s about being empathic as I mentioned earlier, to what is going on inside and outside of the company. As much as we talk about external threats, we must be mindful to the increase in insider threats as well.

Insider threats

With all the changes that may be happening, we have to be mindful to how users are adapting and coping with the situation. We need to think about the stressors (fear and uncertainty about their jobs, balancing work and home life), and how this could impact a person.

Not all insider risks are malicious in intent. It can often come down to a lack of awareness of policies, knowledge, or frustration of not being able to work productively, that leads to mistakes. Conversely concerning behaviour, such as downloading or printing sensitive files, renaming files, using unapproved apps, or copying files onto external devices could be a sign of malicious intent.

While these behaviours don’t automatically arouse suspicion, it’s important to actively look for patterns of anomalous behaviour and mitigate them. With digital empathy, we can pre-empt and reduce some of the stressors or situations with wellbeing programmes and education that are empathetic and supportive to employees, reducing the chance of insider risks.

An effective security culture allows users to work productively while they help keep the business safe. Our built-in approach to security works across platforms, locations and tools – so it’s easier for your people to comply.

The future of security

One of the things we’ve learnt this year is to expect severe, but plausible scenarios. It can seem daunting to prepare for the extreme unknowns – but that’s what we have to do. Organisations are becoming more reliant on cloud and hybrid technologies. Therefore, successful strategies must include a people-based approach to cyber resilience. These four shifts, focussing on digital empathy and zero trust will help you to take advantage of innovative and integrated technologies that enable you to achieve more, with less.

Find out more

Get the guide to building resilience

How modern cybersecurity helps you stay productive and resilient

3 ways the banking sector can innovate in the new normal

Join the conversation at Envision

Digital technology is changing not just how organisations operate but how leaders lead. Join us at Envision, where executives across industries come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this era of digital disruption. You’ll hear diverse perspectives from a worldwide audience and gain fresh insights you can apply immediately in your organisation.

Connect with leaders across industries to get relevant insights on leadership in the digital era.

About the author

Sarah Armstrong-Smith is a Chief Security Advisor in Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Solutions Group. She principally works with FSI customers in the UK and strategic customers across Europe, to help them evolve their security strategy and capabilities to support digital transformation and cloud adoption.

Sarah has a background in business continuity, disaster recovery, data protection and privacy, as well as crisis management. Combining these elements means she operates holistically to understand the cybersecurity landscape, and how this can be proactively enabled to deliver effective operational resilience.

Sarah has been recognised as one of the most influential women in UK Tech and UK cybersecurity and regularly contributes to thought leadership and industry publications.

The post 4 ways to drive the future of security in the financial sector appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

A new report published by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) with software developer Signiant, Will COVID-19 change the way we work?, uses quantitative and qualitative survey data to explore these and other questions.

The survey – whose respondents were senior employees representing dozens of media companies – started in March when most people began working from home and continued until late June 2020. And the results give us an intriguing insight into the new world of work and how we might expect it to unfold.

The way we were before the new normal

The report starts by looking at the pre-COVID work scene. While there was little appetite for permanent home working in the UK, the option to work from home was supported by 62 percent of respondents.

Interestingly, this preference varied across generations, with millennials more comfortable working away from the office.

The report politely corrects the many commentators who have identified a sudden, seismic shift in our working practices. It notes that, before COVID-19 emerged, there was already considerable pressure on employers to be more flexible and enable workers to spend less time in the office.

In the media industry, 96 percent of employees say they had worked from home at some time or other. In other words, COVID-19 simply accelerated a pre-existing workplace trend.

The report suggests that employees who were allowed to work from home previously also tended to be more engaged and more productive. In fact, the findings of large US employers are described here as ‘startling’, with reported home-worker productivity improvements of 15-40 percent.

Adjusting to the new normal

In the UK, approximately half of the entire workforce started working at home from March 2020. So how did they find the experience? What did they like, and what did they like least?

The overall attitude was largely positive, with less than one in 10 UK workers reporting they were unhappy. Most employees also self-reported their productivity to be the same or higher than in the office.

Their individual mood tended to fluctuate in line with their industry’s fortunes. For example, those who worked for content providers were close to the average score, while those who worked for technology providers – whose services were in demand throughout COVID-19 – were generally more positive. By contrast, work had stopped for many production companies at the start of COVID-19; their employees reported feeling less positive overall.

The future workplace: seven features of the new normal

In its final section, the report surveys C-suite attitudes that hint at media-company workplace trends in the coming months. Here are seven of the key themes.

1. Accelerated business transformation

At the end of June, 64 percent of companies predicted they’d need to rethink their working environments “quite a lot” or “hugely”. When this was probed further, 89 percent felt their approach to business would change to an extent or dramatically. And in the case of content providers, 100 percent felt their approach to business would change.

2. More flexible working

The majority of employees believe they’ll see “dramatic” changes in how they work. In March 2020, most media companies already used cloud-based work tools and were more prepared for flexible working than they realised. Few respondents want full-time home working, but 80 percent believe that by 2021 they’ll work at home for an average of two days a week or more.

3. Cost-cutting

With tighter budgets expected, it’s suggested that organisations will act to reduce both their operational and real-estate costs. The report cites a Gartner survey that found 74 percent of organisations planning to move some staff to remote working as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

4. Investment in tech

The report cites PwC research in which almost one-third of US CFOs surveyed said they’d be investing in technology for growth. Twenty percent believed investment in areas such as automation to be a way of enabling cost reductions. It’s also reported that tech spending will focus on building resilience and agility.

6. Flatter structures

Our recent shared adversity has seen new employer-employee trust nurtured by productive home working. 77 percent of respondents say their strongest positive feelings about returning to work relate to ‘seeing colleagues/sociability’. Some commentators speculate that our experiences have increased employers’ empathy and may prompt a move to flatter team structures.

7. Better contingency planning

When asked if their company would specifically plan for resilience in the future, 67 percent of respondents reported that they would. Many companies already started becoming resilient, pre-COVID-19, with applications and work becoming cloud-based. At the same time, no media company will emerge in the new normal the same as it was before. It’s a great opportunity to take learnings, success, and failings and plan your resiliency in terms of technology and culture for the future.

The new normal

We should be cautious about predicting dramatic long-term changes to the way people work given the complex and fragmented supply chain the industry is based on. However, in future, it could suit employers and employees to reduce reliance on office space. People want variety – so flexible working rather than home working. We may also see a proportion of city dwellers moving to rural surroundings and the coast as organisation use technology to access and connect the right talent and resource on a project basis more effectively. And companies will invest in technology solutions to reduce costs, enable growth and become more resilient and responsive in the new normal.

Find out more

Read the report: Will COVID-19 change the way we work?

Get solutions and guidance: Help content producers and creators work remotely.

Discover the ebook: A guide to building resilience.

Join the conversation at Envision

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About the author

As a lead spokesperson for innovation within the media industry, Stuart has played both sides of the fence having started his career as a BBC Journalist before moving into a number of roles in media production. From here the pull of technology innovation took him into development and R&D, then corporate strategic management and change consultancy for some of the biggest media brands around the globe.

Over the last 20+ years, Stuart has helped deliver major business transformation having held significant change roles at companies ranging from the BBC, Endemol Shine Group, to Sony.

Passionate about the transformation technology can bring, Stuart is now an Industry Lead for Media and Telecommunications within Microsoft, where he relishes any opportunity to offer his entrepreneurial spirit and natural storytelling ability to challenge organisations to ‘refocus the lens’ in order to create a successful impact through the adoption of innovation.

The post Changing the way we work: media companies in the new normal appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Balancing security and remote working

To help the property market operate, HMLR caseworkers need to be able to update and maintain the Land Register. This was challenged when the onset of COVID-19 severely hindered caseworkers’ ability to continue their work as they weren’t able to get to the office. Therefore, a solution was needed to ensure caseworkers could work from home whilst securely maintaining and updating the land register.

Microsoft and HMLR already work together to help empower employees with productive and collaborative tools. Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) was quickly identified as a potential remote working solution. It provides the caseworkers with a virtualised Windows 10 desktop that can be accessed from any device. All the applications that the caseworkers depend upon to maintain the register are accessible remotely. The architecture of WVD has meant the solution has been able to be rolled out to 5,500 caseworkers in a matter of weeks.

The caseworkers are the foundation of operations and are instrumental in HMLR’s commitment to their core value: ‘Your Land and property rights; guaranteed and protected’. To continue this commitment, HMLR had to feel confident that WVD and Microsoft could be trusted with sensitive data. WVD separates the caseworkers work environment from the user device. This reduces the risk of sensitive data being left on a personal device. At the foundational level, HMLR can deploy a number of Azure security services without deprecating the performance of the desktop. Additionally, WVD service benefits from the security investments made in the Azure platform. This includes a multi-layered intelligent approach, with security built by design.

Deploying Windows Virtual Desktop for secure remote working

Once HMLR knew that WVD would help securely enable remote working and provide an agile user experience, they moved onto the next step. Technical teams were quickly established to create an initial WVD proof of concept for 20 users. WVD was then rolled out to a further 1,000 case workers. A total of 4,500 users are in scope for the first wave of deployment.

HMLR’s tips to balancing security and remote working

1. Start with a proof of concept to make sure it works well for the few before rolling it out to the many.
2. Keep security in mind when building the infrastructure from the ground up, make sure you use secure designs and best practices.
3. Leverage automation tools in Azure to build and deploy instances quickly.
4. Take advantage of the marketplace and native tools to deploy apps and services within hours.
5. Embrace the challenge head-on with a can-do attitude and open culture.

In their own words

“The implementation of a new Azure platform and specifically, Windows Virtual Desktop, has been vital to our ability to maintain critical business services and keep this area of the UK economy moving during the COVID-19 crisis. The solution has not only allowed our staff to keep processing vital casework but has also opened up opportunities for further transformation in the future.”

I am extremely proud of what the team have achieved in such a short timescale. To design and implement such an important solution and scale it up for the entire organisation in challenging circumstances has been nothing short of impressive! This has only been achievable through focussed talent and the use of modern, flexible technology available in the Azure platform.” – Andy Crawford, HMLR Principal Technical Architect 

“We have really benefited from the ability to build new infrastructure from the ground up. This has enabled us to deploy at speed, using secure designs and best practice without concerns about impacting existing infrastructure. The automation tools within Azure have enabled us to build and deploy instances quickly, enabling us to scale our platform from a few hundred users to thousands with limited effort.” – HMLR Infrastructure Engineer 

“The ability to leverage marketplace and native tools have given us fast access to products that in the data hall would take weeks to implement. Using templates, we have been able to deploy them in a few hours. As our entire engineering workforce switched to home working for the first time, Microsoft Teams and the Azure Portal enabled us to carry on as if we were in the same office and maintain our momentum of delivery. We could not have imagined going from 0 to a 4,500 user environment in such a short time.” – HMLR Infrastructure Engineer 

A word from Microsoft

Deploying a new secure remote working solution quickly isn’t an easy task. But when you have one that focusses on the employees first, you’re more likely to have a successful deployment. HMLR did this by using WVD to make it easy for employees to access the network and access the information they need securely, and quickly.

“What has really stood out, has been the attitude of all the members of the HMLR team who have designed and implemented a robust and working solution in a timeframe that has enabled HMLR to continue to operate. Given the unprecedented circumstances that we are currently in, this achievement is even more impressive. The HMLR team have embraced the challenge head-on and persisted when faced with setbacks and have taken the opportunity to learn from each step, which will stand them in good stead for the future.”

– Matt Spender, Accounts team, Microsoft.

Find out more

Learn more: Discover the benefits of Windows Virtual Desktop

Read more: Empower employees for secure remote work with Windows Virtual Desktop

Watch the on-demand webinar: The benefits for WVD and how to start your journey

Tools to empower your development team

Read the documentation: How to get started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Explore the learning path: Deliver remote desktops and apps from Azure with Windows Virtual Desktop

About the author

The post Her Majesty’s Land Registry empowers employees with secure remote working appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.