In this episode of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, we will look at how a global HR services organisation uses Office 365 Apps and Services to support their employees to excel in the Modern Work Collaboration and Productivity.
Also, I present five steps you can take to take your HR operations to the next level using Office 365. You can listen to the episode here.
If you prefer reading rather than listen, here is the transcript.
Episode Transcript
Hi Office 365 fam, Welcome to the 'Stories of Modern Work' podcast. Where we discuss business case studies and experiences of Users, IT Pros and Community Leaders using Office 365 as a Modern Workplace toolset.
My name is Jag Kakarlapudi, I help users and businesses maximum the productivity benefits of using Office 365 as a modern workplace platform. You can check out my website at modernwork.cloud and find more resources on how to start on your Modern Work journey.
In today's episode, we will talk about practices and experiences of using Office 365 as a Modern Work tool within Human Resources Teams.
This is a must-listen episode if you are an HR manager or part of the Digital Transformation team in your business.
Before we begin the episode, I would like to say thanks to all of you who have listened and subscribed to the Stories of Modern Work podcast. The main aim of this podcast is to give you an insight into how other businesses and users use Microsoft Office 365 as a Modern Work platform.
If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, I highly recommend you subscribe and leave your feedback & rating to help me improve the Stories of Modern Work Podcast in the coming episodes.
Here is how we are going to structure this podcast episode to make it more fun and informative.
First up we will look into why Human Resource teams need to embrace Modern Work tools such as Office 365 to create a better work environment to its employees.
Then we will look into a case study of how a Human Resources organisation is already using Office 365 to achieve better employee engagement and support streamlined business operations.
Finally, we will look into five steps you can take today to start using Office 365 Apps and Services within your HR team.
Let's get into it!
Why Human Resource Teams need to embrace Modern Work tools.
The business expects the Human Resources Team to find the right talent with the correct mix of skills and experience that is perfectly suited for the job at hand. Also, the management team expect HR team members to support business objectives and operations along with providing a great workplace for the employees to carry out their job. Management teams have always expected HR teams to do more with less.
Employees on the other side want more from HR teams as well. They want a transparent employment experience. Which includes better knowledge sharing, easy access to HR, access to better training, career progression and flexibility.
To meet these higher expectations from both the management teams and the employees, HR needs to help create a workplace which is agile, transparent, modern and supports flexible work arrangements.
Let's now look at how an HR organisation is leading the front with its foray into Modern Work practices.
NGA HR is a global organisation employing 8000+ employees to help customers realize the value of workforce management through HR consulting, outsourcing, and technology services. NGA HR works with 20 per cent of Fortune Global 500 companies and approximately 10,000 medium-sized organizations in 50 locations in 145 countries using 25 languages—combined with local knowledge and service delivery.
According to Chief Information Officer at NGA HR, “Building a collaborative company culture is critical to delivering innovative HR technology and outsourcing services.”
NGA HR has migrated for Google Gsuite to Office 365 as their preferred Modern Work platform.
Using Office 365, NGA HR is able to achieve,
- Real-time service and innovation
- Build a global brand and support diverse employee requirements
- Expedited top-talent recruitment and retainment
- Secured Employee data privacy to its employees and customers
I will leave the links to the official Microsoft customer success story in the podcast show notes on the Modern Work website at MODERNWORK.CLOUD if you want to watch the videos and read an in-depth case study.
I know the listeners of the Stories of Modern Work podcast like actionable advice on how they can start using Office 365 Apps and Services to achieve productivity benefits straight away. So let me give you five ways on how you can use office 365 apps in your HR team.
- Develop apps for HR and employees, working with data you already have in your SharePoint sites or legacy databases. Use Microsoft PowerApps to easily create your own apps, all without having to write a single line of code. PowerApps lets you create and share apps that work on any device. Use pre-built templates, or start from scratch to create apps health plan selector, interview tool, organization browser, suggestion box, and many more.
- Streamline the approval process for HR workflows - Human Resources departments often route requests through several people for approval. Your team can simplify these approval processes by using Microsoft Flow to set up automated workflows to quickly process employee requests or document reviews. Flow seamlessly works with data that is stored in SharePoint or other apps like the PowerApps you built in step 1. You can view and respond to all approval requests in a unified approval centre from within Office 365 ecosystem.
- Automate routine manual tasks - Every time you hire a new employee, you perform the same set of steps. For example, you might add the employee’s information to an onboarding list, and then send an email to various departments to initiate the onboarding process. You can now use Microsoft Flow to do just that: set up a workflow from SharePoint to your email app, automatically sending the right emails to the right people whenever you add a new person to a SharePoint list. Or even better build a fully functional Employee Onboarding System using Microsoft Flow, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Forms and Azure Active Directory.
- Setup, Manage and track your HR teamwork tasks and productivity in a simple, intuitive planning board - Use Microsoft Planner to create plans, organize and assign tasks, and get updates on progress. Planner App within Office 365 offers a simple, highly visual way to organize teamwork and give all HR team members visibility into who is working on what. You can attach files to tasks, work together on those files, and even have conversations around tasks. My Tasks view provides a complete list of all of your tasks and their status across all of your projects.
- Easily create surveys and polls and analyze results to support Employee Engagement. As an HR professional, you often want to check in with employees: How do they feel about work-life balance? How can you improve new employee onboarding? Which type of team building activities do they enjoy? With Microsoft Forms, you can create surveys and polls, and easily see the results as they come in. Your employees can respond to your surveys by using any web browser, even on their mobile devices.
If you need help with building Apps using PowerApps or setting up an employee onboarding system, you can reach out to me using the Modern Work website or connect with me on LinkedIn.
There you have it. My key takeaway from this podcast episode is, Office 365 which you already have license, has the required apps and services to support Modern Work requirements for HR teams. So, you need to start using Office 365 Modern Work platform to support both the employees and the management teams.
Hope you have learned something new by listening to this episode. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast. If you subscribe, you will be the first one to get the episode each Sunday and Don't miss it!
I thank Microsoft for publishing the case studies so that other businesses and Office 365 users can learn and start their own Modern Work journey.
That's it for this episode and I will be back with another one next week. In the meantime, follow me on LinkedIn to check out my daily learning videos on Office 365.
Links to Official Case studies:
https://customers.microsoft.com/en-gb/story/nga-human-resources-microsoft-office-365