compliance Archives - Inside Track Blog http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/tag/compliance/ How Microsoft does IT Mon, 13 May 2024 18:25:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 137088546 Shifting left to get accessibility right at Microsoft http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/shifting-left-to-get-accessibility-right-at-microsoft/ Mon, 13 May 2024 18:30:00 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/?p=12865 At Microsoft, we’ve learned the best way to get accessibility right is to shift left. “We need to think about accessibility before we start any of our work, before we write any line of code, at every step of our development lifecycle,” says Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director for Microsoft Digital (MSD), the company’s […]

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Microsoft Digital storiesAt Microsoft, we’ve learned the best way to get accessibility right is to shift left.

“We need to think about accessibility before we start any of our work, before we write any line of code, at every step of our development lifecycle,” says Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director for Microsoft Digital (MSD), the company’s IT organization. “Shifting left means thinking about accessibility at the start of every step we take when we deploy new software or services.”

This enables us to find accessibility bugs early, so at the end, major, disruptive bugs are few and far between. It enables us to ship experiences with accessibility in mind from the start, creating applications that are more inclusive for everyone, including those with disabilities. That’s why shifting left is so powerful—it allows you to avoid fire drills at the end of your projects.

—Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director, Microsoft Digital

This approach is helping us improve how we approach accessibility internally here at Microsoft.

“This enables us to find accessibility bugs early, so at the end, major, disruptive bugs are few and far between,” Pelland says. “It enables us to ship experiences with accessibility in mind from the start, creating applications that are more inclusive for everyone, including those with disabilities. That’s why shifting left is so powerful—it allows you to avoid fire drills at the end of your projects.”

With Accessibility Insights, developers don’t have to be accessibility experts to create accessible products. Now they don’t have to wait until their whole page is complete to check for accessibility.

—Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner, 1ES Accessibility Insights Team

A tool for shifting left

To help teams shift left with accessibility, the 1ES Accessibility Insights Team encourages teams to use Accessibility Insights, an open-source tool developed here at Microsoft.

“With Accessibility Insights, developers don’t have to be accessibility experts to create accessible products,” says Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner on the 1ES Accessibility Insights Team. “Now they don’t have to wait until their whole page is complete to check for accessibility.”

Diagram showing how Accessibility Insights provides feedback to developers before issues reach testers or customers.

How Accessibility Insights fits into the developer workflow.

Our teams across MSD are using the Accessibility Insights tool to transform how they approach accessibility. We’re providing feedback on what it’s like to use the tool, something that’s part of our role as the company’s Customer Zero.

“Accessibility Insights is embedded into our engineering pipeline,” Chumba Limo, a principal software engineering lead on the MSD’s Infrastructure Engineering Services team. “Any time we integrate a new feature, the tool automatically kicks in and assesses the changes we want to make before they go live.”

If we do find accessibility issues, engineers can address the problem immediately, rather than waiting for the results of a testing cycle later.

We’re able to remediate bugs caught by the automation in less than one hour on average. We’re saving a lot of time.

—Chumba Limo, principal software engineering lead, Infrastructure Engineering Services team, Microsoft Digital

Many of our engineering teams in MSD are using the new shift-left tool from Accessibility Insights.

“Having MSD teams using and deploying Accessibility Insights internally is very powerful,” Gupta says. “By taking active steps to ensure accessibility in the development lifecycle, MSD is sending a very important message: Accessibility is important to us and is a part of our DNA and culture.”

With the work completed by MSD teams so far, we project that our organization will save as many as 2,000 development hours over the next six months. Using Accessibility Insights and talking accessibility early in the process is reducing the amount of accessibility testing we need.

—Jia Ma, senior product manager, Accessibility team, Microsoft Digital

Benefits of shifting left with accessibility

Teams using Accessibility Insights have found several benefits to shifting left with accessibility, including saving time and money by fixing issues in the development phase.

“We’re able to remediate bugs caught by the automation in less than one hour on average,” Limo says. “We’re saving a lot of time.”

The risk of delays in shipping are greatly reduced. If we’re finding fewer issues, we’re releasing the application or product on time. Because we already found those issues in the early phase, there’s no delay, and no risk of having an inaccessible experience for users.

—Ankur Garg, senior technical program manager, Accessibility team, Microsoft Digital

Fixing a bug later, in the post-production phase, can cost 30 times more than it takes to fix it in the development phase.

“With the work completed by MSD teams so far, we project that our organization will save as many as 2,000 development hours over the next six months,” says Jia Ma, a senior product manager on the MSD Accessibility team. “Using Accessibility Insights and talking accessibility early in the process is reducing the amount of accessibility testing we need.”

I’ve heard from my fellow engineers from multiple organizations. They tell me, “By conducting accessibility testing using the tool, it’s teaching me issues I need to avoid and thus, now when I’m writing code, I’m not introducing those issues anymore. Now I just code with accessibility in mind.”

—Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner, 1ES Accessibility Insights Team

Collage of portrait photos showing Ma, Garg, Gupta, and Pelland.
Jia Ma, Ankur Garg, Nandita Gupta, and Patrice Pelland worked together to deploy Accessibility Insights internally at Microsoft.

In the end, getting it right at the start helps us from end to end.

“The risk of delays in shipping are greatly reduced,” says Ankur Garg, a senior technical program manager on the MSD Accessibility team. “If we’re finding fewer issues, we’re releasing the application or product on time. Because we already found those issues in the early phase, there’s no delay, and no risk of having an inaccessible experience for users.”

Accessibility Insights supports learning in addition to accessibility testing for developers. “I’ve heard from my fellow engineers from multiple organizations,” Gupta says. “They tell me, ‘By conducting accessibility testing using the tool, it’s teaching me issues I need to avoid and thus, now when I’m writing code, I’m not introducing those issues anymore. Now I just code with accessibility in mind.’”

You can see a change happening across the company. “It’s really great to see the cultural shift as organizations are starting to use this product,” Gupta says.

Tips for shifting left with accessibility

Organizations outside of Microsoft are using Accessibility Insights, too. While developed here at Microsoft, it’s open-source and available for anyone to use.

“It’s used across different industries, including academic and nonprofit,” says Gupta, who says customers love using the product, especially since it’s an open-source product for tackling accessibility testing. “Here’s an open-source product that nonprofits, academia, and others can use to tackle accessibility at no cost.”

For us, it’s been a helpful tool in our journey to improve the way we approach accessibility internally at Microsoft—shifting left is helping us get it right, but we still have a lot of work to do.

Key Takeaways
If your organization wants to shift left with accessibility, our experts here at Microsoft have some tips to share.

“Just do it,” Gupta says. “Ask yourselves, what is the one thing you can do today?”

Start there and build on that.

For example, one quick, impactful thing you can do is to make sure all your images have alt text. Then make sure you’re using ARIA correctly. Then look for the next thing you can do.

There are more than one billion people in the world who have a disability and they’re not necessarily visible. Anybody investing in shifting left is buying themselves more time to do innovation, and better things for their customers.

—Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director, Microsoft Digital

“It’s worth the investment,” Limo says. “You’re going to have to go through the process anyway, so you might as well address these bugs sooner than later.”

It’s about making products better for everyone.

“There are more than one billion people in the world who have a disability and they’re not necessarily visible,” Pelland says. “Anybody investing in shifting left is buying themselves more time to do innovation, and better things for their customers.”

Try it out
Try the open-source Accessibility Insights to progress accessible and inclusive experiences in your business.

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Get Microsoft’s tips for partnering with your works councils http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/get-microsofts-tips-for-partnering-with-your-works-councils/ Mon, 05 Feb 2024 19:34:13 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/?p=9903 Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. To support their work, we need to ensure we meet their needs, honor their concerns, and set up the best possible environments for their success. In parts of Europe, our relationships with employees are governed by works councils, and they’re key players in all new […]

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Microsoft Digital technical storiesMicrosoft has hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. To support their work, we need to ensure we meet their needs, honor their concerns, and set up the best possible environments for their success.

In parts of Europe, our relationships with employees are governed by works councils, and they’re key players in all new technology implementations. When we’re adapting our solutions to highly regionalized regulatory standards, the best expertise comes from the people who live in those countries.

“Microsoft is striving to be the most trustworthy company, and one part of that is about privacy and security,” says Allan Hvass, director of Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) for Western Europe. “There’s local legislation and special interest groups, but another strong input is works councils in specific geographies.”

In the course of our partnerships with regional works councils, we’ve learned some strategies for operating alongside these bodies on product rollouts. If you do business in a region where works councils are part of the regulatory landscape, you may want to consider these strategies for your own tech implementations.

[See what we’ve learned from deploying Microsoft Viva, Data and AI across Microsoft. Learn how Microsoft benefits from partnering with our works councils. See how our relationships with our works councils boost product and service rollouts.]

What is a works council?

In several European countries, employers may have to partner with works councils. That depends on several factors, including the size of the organization and other legal requirements. Works councils are collective bodies, primarily at a local level, that represent rank and file employees within an organization.

In practice, employers may need to engage with works councils in multiple countries. If you have a widespread European employee base, you might have a relationship with several works councils, each representing workers in their home country. For example, Microsoft operates across the European Union, so we collaborate with representatives in several different countries like Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, just to name a few.

While a union is typically an external body that governs an industry, sector, trade, or business, works councils sit within the employer. They generally consist of employees elected from the company’s workforce. Those employees can be devoted to their works council roles either full-time or part-time.

Works councils might play a role in day-to-day operations, and you may need their input or approval for any changes that impact the work environment. In some countries, works councils’ purview extends beyond consultation and into co-determination, which means that companies need to obtain a works council’s agreement before moving ahead with an initiative.

Their authority and responsibilities vary from country to country, but the core mission remains the same: representing and protecting employees.

Of course, you should consult with your own legal counsel to understand your obligations to any works councils within your organization, since they vary country-by-country. This article highlights Microsoft’s experience with our own works councils, and it isn’t intended to provide legal advice.

When do you need to consult a works council?

Works councils can be responsible for a wide range of concerns depending on local laws and prior agreements their organizations have made. Typically, they have purview over topics like workplace health and safety, pay and benefits, hiring, business reorganizations, training, and more.

In the context of technology implementations, they often take a keen interest in products, tools, and features that organizations might use to monitor or influence employee performance or behavior. As a result, you may need to consult with your works council before deploying certain kinds of tools and software in your organization.

For example, Microsoft Viva Sales for Microsoft Teams is currently under review by our works councils across Europe. Its AI-powered conversation-tracking features demand careful consideration.

One core principle of partnering with works councils is being aware of the kind of information they need and what sort of questions they’ll typically have.

— Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager, Employee Experience Success

“In Viva Sales, we have a feature that we call Sales Conversation Intelligence, which is basically an AI-driven assistant that sits in the background of a meeting and pulls out action items, sentiment analysis, and statistics that can help a salesperson have more productive calls with customers,” says Aaron Bjork, partner director of product management for Dynamics 365, CRM, and Viva Sales. “But within that feature set, we’re recording the call and creating a transcript, and those features need to follow certain additional guidelines depending on the works council we’re partnering with.”

A Viva Sales panel in Microsoft Outlook outlining a client contact’s profile.
Microsoft has already implemented Viva Sales for Microsoft Outlook, and we’re in the process of ensuring that its Microsoft Teams integration meets our works councils’ needs.

Initiating a consultation with a works council typically involves three steps:

  • Presenting a proposed version of the tool or feature
  • Preparing to receive and consider the works council’s feedback before implementation
  • In countries that require co-determination, addressing feedback and making modifications

A strong relationship with works councils is a powerful asset because it builds a foundation of understanding between product teams, employees, and the HR and technical staff who liaise between them.

“One core principle of partnering with works councils is being aware of the kind of information they need and what sort of questions they’ll typically have,” says Alexandra Jones, senior business program and change manager for Microsoft’s global Employee Experience Success team. “That helps us anticipate those questions and provide that information up front without waiting to be asked.”

Effectively engaging with works councils

Before you engage a works council, a good first step is reaching out to your HR, privacy, and legal teams. They may help you head off any unforeseen blockers before they become an issue. In some cases, works councils actually require a privacy or GDPR review as part of their process, so privacy and legal professionals are essential partners.

What we’ve learned is that the more proactive we are, the more prepared we are for these conversations, and the more we do up front, the better.

— Aaron Bjork, partner director of product management, Dynamics 365 CRM and Viva Sales

Organizations usually want to implement their technology as quickly as possible. To make that happen, it’s important to engage with a works council early in the process. Review and approval may take anywhere from several weeks to several months depending on the nature of the technology’s features, the works council’s existing docket, and even the time of year.

“If you’re reactive in your approach, this takes longer,” Bjork says. “What we’ve learned is that the more proactive we are, the more prepared we are for these conversations, and the more we do up front, the better.”

Building an effective approval process

At Microsoft, we’ve been evolving a replicable and efficient process for getting new solutions and features approved.

Step 1: Global oversight

Seek approval from global HR. Confirm that the technology only interacts with employees’ information in a limited, private capacity, it complies with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), and its data won’t play into performance assessment or influencing behavior.

Step 2: Individual works councils

Once global HR clears a solution, it’s time to zoom in on countries with works councils. This involves identifying the local HR representatives that engage with each country’s individual councils and submitting the actual details of the technology.

Through partnering with our works council in Germany, we’ve developed a process for triaging reviews based on the compliance concerns that a solution is likely to raise. Those break down into two process flows: one for simple scenarios and one for more complex ones.

Simple scenarios

For technology that’s unlikely to cause any concerns, the product team completes a single-page intake form. It answers simple questions like the tool’s name, audience, owner, and access rights to its data. The works council can expedite a simplified review of the technology in under four weeks.

Complex scenarios

Some solutions require more extensive review. These complex scenarios include specific kinds of features:

  • Human capital management or employee experience features, including dashboards or platforms to provide access to benefits, pay, or other basic employment information
  • Network security features that monitor individual or group behaviors to identify potential threats
  • Features that implicitly track or report on hours or work locations
  • Productivity analysis or performance evaluation
  • Anything that someone could use to monitor behavior or control conduct

If these features are present, the product team completes a lengthier form that outlines the tool’s place in our organization, how managers might use it, and if the information it provides could inadvertently allow anyone other than a direct manager to appraise an employee’s performance. It’s also a good idea to provide screenshots, mockups, or other materials that demonstrate the user experience.

The lengthier form usually gives the works council everything it needs to approve a tool. But if more information would be helpful, we initiate a dialog with other teams.

The two-scenario workflow in place for Germany is just one example of how we engage with works councils in Europe. Each country’s council has its own processes and concerns, largely tied to the work culture in the region. But what they all share in common is that they’re a hub for dialog around the impact of new solutions and features. When a technology requires more than the simplest approval, it’s an opportunity for a conversation between several teams throughout Microsoft.

Returning to our ongoing implementation of Viva Sales for Microsoft Teams, this tool contains a number of features that include recording and tracking. Its ongoing implementation is a good example of this consultation process.

Several stakeholder teams are involved:

  • Works councils ensure the tool meets their standards for compliance and employee relations.
  • The Viva Sales product group uses insights from works councils to guide their efforts.
  • Area transformation leads who sit on local adoption teams steer change management efforts in their regions.
  • Legal and privacy teams provide guidance on any implementation, regardless of works councils.
  • Change management professionals from the Employee Experience Success team apply specialized adoption guidance.
  • Local HR leads maintain close relationships with the works councils in their regions.
  • Sales professionals from the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) and Microsoft Dynamics teams provide customer insights.
  • Regional MDEE leads act as technical liaisons between each group.

Every stakeholder has a role to play in ensuring our organization balances the dual objectives of getting Viva Sales for Microsoft Teams implemented quickly and respecting our works councils’ need to protect employees and maintain compliance.

If you’re considering a technology implementation in a works council jurisdiction, it’s worth considering who in your organization might belong in the conversation.

Collaboration drives innovation

It’s essential for companies and councils to work together closely to drive outcomes that work for everyone—employees and organizations alike. Our rollout experiences at Microsoft have demonstrated the power of this approach: unique innovations that wouldn’t have taken shape if not for collaboration with works councils.

“Everything we build these days is configurable and allows an organization to tailor the solution to their specific requirements,” Bjork says. “That’s directly related to works councils because there’s no one-size-fits-all. You can’t apply the same level of compliance or the same capabilities to everyone and assume that it will just work.”

That insight wouldn’t be possible without close partnerships between product groups, works councils, and our wider organization. Ultimately, it means we’re more equipped to meet regulatory demands around the world. It’s also an asset for our customers, who can use Microsoft technology knowing it meets rigorous standards for protecting employees and their data.

“Microsoft wants to represent the gold standard of solutions that keep people safe, regardless of the mechanisms their countries have in place for protecting employees,” Jones says. “These conversations drive us to do better and question solutions before we even get to the point of launching them.”

Key Takeaways

  • Build a robust triage system. Establish parameters for triggering reviews and criteria for different levels of engagement.
  • Understand that you’re allies. Teams focused on compliance aren’t there to be blockers. They want to make sure enablement is compliant.
  • Establish trust through dialogue. Build internal awareness across teams to bring everyone to the table.
  • Engage early. Seeking feedback early in the product development process avoids churn and rework.
  • Embrace modularity and configurability. Deploying on a feature-by-feature basis empowers effective compliance triage without delaying overall product rollouts. Make the features configurable at the geo or country level to comply with local regulations.
  • Ask good questions. What do you need to see? Why is this a concern? What are the organization’s fears?

Related links

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Microsoft workers’ council partnerships boost the company’s product and service rollouts http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/microsoft-workers-council-partnerships-boost-the-companys-product-and-service-rollouts/ Thu, 26 Oct 2023 16:00:57 +0000 http://approjects.co.za/?big=insidetrack/blog/?p=7719 Ensuring compliance doesn’t have to be a roadblock—just ask the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany. This group of employee representatives has partnered with their employer, Microsoft, to speed up how the company develops and deploys new products and services to its employees, a story that resonates with customers who have similar challenges at their companies. […]

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Microsoft Digital storiesEnsuring compliance doesn’t have to be a roadblock—just ask the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany. This group of employee representatives has partnered with their employer, Microsoft, to speed up how the company develops and deploys new products and services to its employees, a story that resonates with customers who have similar challenges at their companies.

Across Europe, workers’ councils are responsible for representing employees and protecting their rights. Elected from a company’s workforce, representatives protect against misuse of employee data and ensure compliance with local employee related law. Germany’s workers’ councils are among the most well-established in Europe, so they’ve become leaders in the conversation around employee data usage.

In the past, when Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, wanted to deploy a new tool or service in Europe, the Microsoft workers’ councils in countries/regions there would undertake a lengthy, product-wide review process to ensure it didn’t violate employee rights. Any features that made personal, behavioral, or performance data usable to the organization triggered extensive reviews that could take up to a year and a half to complete.

The Microsoft Digital team, charged with deploying new features and services, needed a way to avoid delays and rollbacks while meeting regulatory obligations across all of Europe.

We have new functionalities every couple of weeks. We’re moving away from separate applications and toward platform thinking where everything is in one environment, for example in Teams or Dynamics 365. And then we’re adding modules, which means we have to think differently about how we review.

—Anna Kopp, regional director, Microsoft Digital

The solution?

Microsoft Digital, in partnership with Microsoft Human Resources and the company’s legal team, developed a collaboration with the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany that would triage and streamline approvals and then take that framework and use it to inspire similar collaborative efforts across all the countries that have workers’ councils.

[Learn how Microsoft is building an employee-centric experience. Experience the digitally assisted workday at Microsoft. Find out how Microsoft reinvented the employee experience.]
For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grMzZ798W30, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.”

Microsoft Inside Track leader Keith Boyd talks with Anna Kopp, regional experience lead for Germany, and Irina Chemerys, senior business program manager who works on employee representation with a focus on workers’ councils.

Building a process for success

Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company, started by grappling with how agile software development has changed the nature of deployment—moving toward modular releases for individual features within larger platforms, which dramatically sped deployments up because it avoided lengthy, product-wide reviews.

“We have new functionalities every couple of weeks,” says Anna Kopp, regional director of Microsoft Digital in Germany. “We’re moving away from separate applications and toward platform thinking where everything is in one environment, for example in Teams or Dynamics 365. And then we’re adding modules, which means we have to think differently about how we review.”

The Microsoft Digital team undertook a full inventory of existing tools and categorized them by how they interact with employees’ private information. Features that presented no risk to employee privacy received expedited approval, so the team could move on to modules that share workers’ information in one way or another.

For those features, the team collaborated with the workers’ council to determine what components needed closer scrutiny. Does a tool’s contact card reveal an employee’s org chart? Does it employ gamification or stacked ranking? Are there red, yellow, and green indicators attached to employee names—no matter how benign their intentions?

Each of these elements has implications for how employees’ personal information and behaviors appear or how others might interpret their performance. As a result of their review effort, the team developed a review process for new features Microsoft plans to release.

First, the team must confirm the feature interacts with employees’ information in a limited, private capacity that General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are complied with, and that Microsoft commits to not make any performance and behavior control with the data. After that threshold is cleared, Microsoft Digital fills out a single-page intake form asking simple questions like the tool’s name, its audience, its owner, and access rights to the data. Finally, the Microsoft workers’ council expedites a simplified review that takes under four weeks.

Features that share employee information more widely or if Microsoft intends to carry out performance or behavior control with the data enter a second, more extensive process. Microsoft Digital completes a lengthier form that outlines things like how the tool would fit into the organization, how managers might use it, and if the information it presents could inadvertently suggest an employee’s performance to anyone other than really necessary roles or persons (e.g., a direct manager).

Trustworthy codetermination organized in this way—between the workers’ council and Microsoft—gave us speed and structure, and it gave us confidence. Because we’ve established strong relationships with stakeholders, we’ve been able to start from a place of compliance in product development and engineering.

—Peter Albus, chairman, Microsoft Germany Central Workers Council Committee for Employee Data Privacy

That form typically gives the workers’ council everything it needs to approve a feature. But if they still need more information, they initiate a dialogue with other teams; including product, engineering, and human resources.

Trust through collaboration

Kopp and Albus smile at the camera in separate corporate photos.
Partnering together via the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany is allowing Anna Kopp, Peter Albus, and others to streamline the internal deployment of new tools and services at Microsoft. (Photos by Peter Albus and Anna Kopp)

“What we try to do is balance the benefit with the risks,” says Peter Albus, dedicated workers’ council member and chairman of the Central Workers Council Committee for Employee Data Privacy for Microsoft Germany. “How can we mitigate the risks while enabling the benefit? If the added value is sufficient, we mitigate the risks through technical settings or organizational orders (policies).”

Beyond minimizing the time a feature might take to roll out, increased dialogue between the workers’ council and product teams has helped engineers anticipate regulatory demands and build solutions accordingly.

“Trustworthy codetermination organized in this way—between the workers’ council and Microsoft—gave us speed and structure, and it gave us confidence,” Albus says. “Because we’ve established strong relationships with stakeholders, we’ve been able to start from a place of compliance in product development and engineering.”

The ongoing deployment of Microsoft Viva illustrates how streamlined this process has become. Viva, Microsoft’s Employee Experience Platform (EXP), includes modules that interact with workers’ information differently.

Microsoft Viva Insights supports productivity and well-being by supplying behavioral data and intelligent recommendations directly to employees themselves. Private information doesn’t go beyond their own inboxes, so Microsoft Digital only needed a quick sign-off on the feature.

Microsoft Viva Learning is an AI-powered platform that offers relevant training to employees. In its initial form, Viva Learning included capabilities for tracking progress against course recommendations. Those tracking elements meant that the tool needed further review. But with only minor progress-sharing elements involved to secure approval, the team was able to put the tool into action quickly.

Microsoft Viva Manager Insights provides team leads with data about employees’ work patterns to help assess their workloads. That extra layer of behavioral data necessitates a more in-depth review.

But because the approval of Microsoft Viva Insights and Microsoft Viva Learning was so rapid and approval of Microsoft Viva Goals is coming, the workers’ council can give Viva Manager Insights their full attention. As a result, they’ve substantially reduced the turnaround time for Microsoft Viva compared to previous releases—from one and a half years to a target of around six months.

Cloud, agility, compliance

This more flexible, triage-friendly form of review wouldn’t be possible without cloud-driven agile development, which, for example, enables modular releases for individual features within Microsoft Teams. Agility in product development leads to flexibility in the approval process because entire products aren’t held back by individual feature reviews.

Instead, teams can easily activate or deactivate modules hosted within larger platforms without disrupting the overall experience. Kopp sums up the value of that modularity: “You can bring out the non-critical modules much faster and spend your time reviewing the ones that really need it.”

Meanwhile, increased collaboration between the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany and product teams helps the cross-company collaborative group anticipate and resolve many compliance issues before features reach the approval process. As a result of this multifaceted collaboration, Microsoft Germany is winning back hundreds of hours per year, and they’re sharing those lessons with other country and regional offices in Europe.

A leader in trust

Internal rollouts are only the beginning of the story. The rigorous process developed by the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany is a story worth sharing with partners and customers in hopes that it will help them streamline how they roll out new product features and services at their companies.

Roxana Schupp, account executive for Microsoft Dynamics 365, says it’s become a sales differentiator and a way to build relationships with customers who are trying to solve some of the same challenges at their companies.

“The customers are looking at us as a benchmark,” Schupp says. “The way we deal with data and how we address management or usage of systems in order to comply with regulations in different countries, those are very important for them.”

As a result of this close collaboration between Microsoft Digital and the German workers’ council, an unofficial rule has emerged across Europe. “If it works in Germany, it should work everywhere,” Kopp says.

Key Takeaways

Here are some tips on how you can better partner with your workers’ councils to streamline how you roll out new features and products at your companies:

  • Build a robust triage system: Establish parameters for triggering reviews and criteria for different levels of engagement.
  • Understand that you’re allies: Teams focused on compliance aren’t there to be blockers. They want to make sure enablement is compliant.
  • Establish trust through dialog: Build internal awareness across teams to bring everyone to the table.
  • Engage early: Seeking feedback early in the product development process avoids churn and rework.
  • Embrace modularity: Deploying on a feature-by-feature basis empowers effective compliance triage without delaying overall product rollouts. Make the features configurable at the geo/country level to comply with local regulations.
  • Ask good questions: What do you need to see? Why is this a concern? What are your fears?
  • Compliance and privacy are non-negotiable, so ensure that your technical settings and policies mitigate risk while providing benefits.

Related links

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