Microsoft’s ‘tech optimist’ focused on improving the digital employee experience

For Microsoft’s Jared Spataro, the last few years have been a learning experience. A frequent international traveller for work, he was grounded indefinitely during the pandemic when non-essential travel shut down.

But the pandemic has also helped energise his work, bringing new momentum to his role at the company. As Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of modern work, he is tasked with predicting, shaping and innovating the future of work.

Spataro describes himself as a tech optimist. And if anyone has had cause to be optimistic recently, despite the upheaval of the past few months, it is those who are involved in the development of digital tools to help reshape the workplace.

Microsoft has published the most recent results from its workplace trends index, which surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries, looked at LinkedIn labour trends, Glint People Science insights and productivity data from Microsoft 365.

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Disconnect

The index has revealed some interesting results. But as always, there is a disconnect between what employees want and what the business thinks it needs.

Productivity is a key topic, with a debate raging between employees, who consider themselves to be more productive in the new hybrid way of working, and business leaders, who can be more sceptical.

Microsoft’s research found 87 per cent of employees say they are productive at work. That contrasts with 85 per cent of leaders who say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that people are being productive.

The company refers to this as “productivity paranoia”, and it persists even though the number of hours worked, meetings and other activities have increased.

“That is forcing a bunch of discussions about what is productivity and how you measure it. What is productivity at an individual level, what is it at a firm level?” says Spataro.

“That was surprising. I had not predicted that productivity would be as high as it is, or as I think it will be over the next year. I think it’ll be a very hot topic in businesses.”

For employers, the data also holds some insights, particularly if they want to retain staff during a time of volatility in the labour market. While survey after survey has hammered home the importance of flexibility to employees, the latest Microsoft survey also pointed to another factor in retaining staff – learning and growth.

“Most employees have looked at the world over the last 2½ years, and they’ve taken a lot of lessons. And one of the biggest, most durable lessons I think the labour market has taken is we can’t predict what’s ahead except for one thing: we can predict volatility. Volatility all around the world has increased. First it was pandemic, then in places like the United States, they have localised issues with social unrest. And then we have these wars happening that are very significant. It’s just one thing after another,” he says.

“Workers are realising there’s volatility, it looks like it’s not going to stop and that has translated in their lives into, ‘I’m going to have to take care of myself. And the best way economically to take care of myself is to make sure that I’m learning and growing so I’m very relevant as the economy changes’.”

Failure for employers to provide that opportunity for growth is one of the key reasons for deciding to look elsewhere, Spataro says, or at least that is what the Microsoft survey is indicating. The new data found 76 per cent of employees say they would stay at their company longer if they were given the opportunity to learn. Building a learning culture that offers employees the opportunity to build new skills is, therefore, in the company’s interests.

Incentive

For those employers who want to get workers back into the office, there may be another incentive. The survey found connecting with colleagues was a key motivation for staff to return to in-person work, with 84 per cent of employees saying they would be motivated by the promise of socialising with coworkers. A similar number said that rebuilding key bonds would persuade them to return to the office. Giving people a good reason to go into the office may be key in striking a happy medium that suits both staff and management.

There could be more changes to come. Conducted in the summer, when inflation was just ramping up, the survey may reflect different trends at its next go around, as the ongoing macroeconomic changes hit home. Increases to electricity and home heating, for example, could force employees to seek a return to the office, balancing out the cost of commuting to the office daily with the added burden of working from home on the household finances.

“The number one reason for not coming in ends up being the commute, the costs of the commute, both in real cost terms and in time cost terms. And that’s what people are weighing, that’s the calculus they do,” says Spataro. “In Europe I think there’s a different thing of how much is it going to cost to heat my house, working from home during the day versus coming here [to the office].”

That is a debate that is likely to rage for some time as inflation shows no sign of abating.

But Spataro says that data indicates almost every organisation has come out of the pandemic more siloed than before. Although people have formed stronger ties with close colleagues, the weaker ties with staff outside their immediate work circle have degraded further. Social capital matters, he says, but it is possible to build it in a hybrid workplace.

“We would say you do need to find ways putting some structure around the flexibility to build that social capital,” says Spataro. “That can’t be enough; you actually have to sustain and build that social capital when we’re not together. And that lends itself to digital tools, what we would call a digital employee experience. And that’s something almost nobody had invested in previously.”

Microsoft, of course, is filling that gap with new tools that it refers to as “persistent tools”, or tools that help build relationships between people outside of any particular task. Spataro is predicting a surge in demand for such tools, with early indications that it has already begun.

Its employee experience platform, Microsoft Viva, brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources and insights into the workflow. It offers personalised insights for employees on productivity and wellbeing, supports learning and promotes workplace communication.

Spataro, meanwhile, has been building on that social capital, both inside his own team and with business partners. Part of that is transparency, owning up to mistakes and explaining its actions.

“I do think that makes a difference. When I talk with customers, I think they feel like they have a business partner, who is trying to do its best and they give us a lot of grace, you know if things go wrong.”

Spataro wears two hats on a regular basis. The first is in his role in Microsoft; the other is as a pastor in his local church. There are times, however, when both roles can intersect. The church, for example, is one of the more technologically advanced ones. And with his pastor role comes a deeper understanding of human nature.

Second job

“My job at Microsoft is very analytical. It’s very focused on what can we learn about the world, how do we both serve our customers and our shareholders and sometimes I love that part of my job, but it’s not very humanistic. My second job is welcoming new babies into the world; people taking their last breaths and saying goodbye to the world. It’s helping grieving families who have really suffered during the pandemic. It’s helping immigrant families who are trying to deal with policy changes in the United States, but just trying to make a new life for themselves. It is very humanistic,” he says.

“It just rounds me out in a way. I bring Microsoft to that job – you should see us run the church – but at the same time, it allows me to bring some things to Microsoft. It allows me to bring that understanding of these people, they try to put their game face on but they have real families. That’s what the pandemic taught us: we’re just humans doing our best with our families and friends. Someday, I hope that there’s more mashing those two things together.”