4 ways Microsoft 365 helps HR professionals

https://workspace365.net/en/how-microsoft-365-and-office-365-help-hr-professionals/

In recent times, we've seen how more and more companies have started touse Microsoft 365 as part of their digital workplace solutions. Also knownas Office 365, this cloud-based platform features a wide variety of essentialonline workspace tools including Outlook, Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint),SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, the Power Platform, and more.

Microsoft 365 offers users a wide variety of benefits; from driving efficiencyto encouraging collaboration and enabling them to carry out a full-on digital transformation. It has also been of vital importance in terms offacilitating remote working during the recent global pandemic.

A diverse and powerful platform, Microsoft 365 can have a transformationalimpact on almost every role within an organisation. It has proven itself to beparticularly useful for support functions such as IT, Marketing and HumanResources (HR).

In fact, the increased implementation of Microsoft 365 is great news for thislast group of professionals in particular as it allows for higher efficiencyacross core HR processes whilst also supporting objectives such as improvingemployee experience.

In the following post, we'll be taking a deep diveinto just some of the wide range of features that Microsoft 365 has to offer inorder to give you a greater understanding of how the platform benefits HRfunctions.

How does Microsoft 365 help HR professionals?

At a macro level, Microsoft 365 supports HRprofessionals and teams across four major areas:

1. Improving Employee Experience

There's an increased awareness nowadays of theimportance of what is known as Employee Experience - the overall experiencethat a person has with their company across various touchpoints. Evidence hasshown us how this can have a considerable impact on things such as talentretention and the ability to attract new people to an organisation.

An evaluation of Employee Experience involves taking aholistic and strategic look at the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) on offerthroughout a person's time at a company. This includes having a close look at the employeeworkspace and learning about people's everyday experiences with technology.

In this sense, Microsoft 365 can play a successful role in terms of enhancingemployees' day-to-day experience of the digital workspace. Important processeslike onboarding or learning & development can be greatly improved, and theplatform can also help nurture a healthier organisational culture that willinevitably have a positive impact on employee experience.

2. Driving productivity

Encouraging more efficient practices, services andsupport should be a constant priority for any HR department. With this in mind,Microsoft 365 can play a significant role in making this happen by transformingand in some cases revolutionising a number of core HR processes. It allows youto do so in the following ways:

·      Driving the standardisation of HR practices across larger organisations by ensuring everybodyhas access to the right information and documents.

·      Taking the pressure off of busy HR support teams by digitising manual or email-basedprocesses like booking annual leave, thereby improving productivity andproviding tools and information that help drive self-service.

·      Using automation to streamline HR transactions and provide information for employees,utilising tools such as chatbots.

·      Using Power BI to provide reporting dashboards for people and workforce analytics.

3. Supporting smart working

Giving employees a choice of where they work – be itfrom home or from another location, has always been an attractive option forpeople. Virtual workspace platforms such as Microsoft 365 have been driving theevolution of the hybrid workspace for a number of years now, making theprospect of smart working a reality for more and more people around the world.However, it was the pandemic in 2020 that truly provided the change moment,exponentially ramping up demand for a high-quality virtual workspace that allowspeople to work flexibly and remotely. The smart working revolution has been profound andwill continue to be part of our lives in a post-pandemic world.

4. Promoting collaboration across the HRteam

Microsoft 365 contains several tools such as Yammer, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint that allow HR teams tocommunicate, collaborate on key projects, coordinate their activities andaccess documents. In large organisations that are spread across multiplelocations, these tools help bring HR functions much closer together, utilisingthe virtual workspace to its full potential by making it possible to work aspart of a far more compact team.

 
How does a platform like Workspace 365 supportHR professionals?

One frequent issue with Microsoft 365 is that it canoften be tricky for people who are trying to get to grips with the massivevariety of tools and features on offer. The sheer volume of these, many ofwhich facilitate new ways of working, can sometimes be overwhelming, andgovernance, coordination, and change management are needed to get the most outof the platform.

For this reason, many organisations choose to maximise the return on investmentwith Microsoft 365 by purchasing a digital workspace product that sitsalongside it, delivering an overall experience that's more tailored to thespecific needs of their employees. A platform like WorkSpace 365 can be hugelybeneficial to HR teams as it allows them to build the exact kind of digital employee experience they want without having to sacrifice any ofthe benefits of Microsoft 365.

Let’s look at some of the ways that platforms such asWorkspace 365 can help HR teams carry out their day-to-day tasks.

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1. Putting everything you need into one place

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One of the most common complaints that people have about their online workspaceis that it is far too fragmented. Employees often have to work with severaldifferent applications depending on the task, information is sometimes hiddenin silos and consequently, a huge amount of time is wasted.

Workspace 365 allows you to create one single, all-encompassing, and securedigital workplace environment where employees use Single Sign-On to gain access to several different apps, findinformation and carry out tasks. People no longer have to deal with thefrustration of having to jump between multiple platforms to find what they needto get the job done. This contributes to a better overall employee experienceas people recognise that the virtual workspace is working for them, reducinginformation overload and increasing their overall level of productivity.

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2. Supporting adoption of Microsoft 365 tools thatdrive efficiency

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Workspace 365 supports the adoption of tools and elements of a SharePointworkspace that allow you to effectively streamline HR processes and encourageemployee self-service. By highlighting these tools, providing easy access viaSingle Sign-On, and sharing “how to” resources, you can build your departmentaround the digital workplace solutions of your choice.

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Within the workspace, you can also integrate Microsoft Forms or Power Apps to research your employee satisfaction rate, allowthem to request annual leave or submit claims.

3. Providing easy access to key documentsand policies ‍

Workspace 365 provides easy access to key files andinformation while also encouraging employee self-service and thestandardisation of HR practices. This eliminates confusion, removes thepossibility of coming across out-of-date documents, and greatly reduces thetime that HR workers spend dealing with basic and routine questions.

You can create a tile(s) on the digital workspace that displays importantdocuments such as employee handbooks, job descriptions, performance appraisalforms, salary scales, information about working conditions, and much more.

4. Using content targeting to ensuredifferent roles and locations have access to the right HR information

Using a virtual workspace platform like Workspace 365allows you to centralise all communication and information whilst also ensuringthat the content delivered is relevant to the respective roles, locations anddivisions that make up your organisation. Content targeting based on ActiveDirectory groups means that managers with specific HR processes to carry out, employeesin different offices who use separate HR systems, and groups working inmultiple languages will only see the information that is relevant to them.

5. Providing HR updates and notificationstogether in one place

Employees are often bombarded with emails from HR withreminders, requests, approvals and updates. Aside from being overwhelming, thismeans that important information can get easily lost in the sea of generalinbox noise or create bottlenecks with approval processes.

With Workspace 365, employees and managers can make use of the AnnouncementCentre to bring all HR updates and notifications together into one convenientplace, allowing them to carry out tasks with increased speed and productivity.

6. Using Micro Apps to encourage HRself-service

Workspace 365 can help you build custom Micro Apps that are excellent in terms ofpromoting self-service for key HR tasks such as booking annual leave, logging asupport ticket, organising performance reviews, reviewing mandatory trainingand much more.

By integrating your HR systems, you can create Micro Apps that help employeesget things done quicker, without actually having to access the HR systemsthemselves.

7. Employing chatbots to reduce theworkload of busy HR support staff

Chatbots use AI and natural language processing toallow employees to find information and complete transactions with a morenatural style of conversation.

The Workspace 365 platform can incorporate an HR supportchatbot,taking a great deal of pressure off of busy HR helpdesks. It does so byautomating simple tasks such as logging a ticket, sending people to FAQs, andproviding other information relevant to their questions.

8. Supporting remote working

Remote working is going to play an increasinglysignificant role going forward in the post-pandemic world. Workspace 365presents a secure hybrid workspace environment that can be accessed fromabsolutely anywhere and has no problem supporting all kinds of scaled-up remoteworking capabilities. The workspace automatically adapts to each employee'sindividual role, device, location, operating system, and browser.

9. Employee onboarding

A key process for HR professionals is employeeonboarding. When done well, this has been shown to effectively reduce employeeturnover. It also makes new starters feel more welcome and drives efficiency bygetting them up to speed with how things work at your company.

Workspace 365 helps bring all the information, checklists, and forms that newhires need into one place. It is even possible to give them access to theplatform before their first day to make sure they hit the ground running.

10. Providing resources for HRprofessionals

Workspace 365 brings HR employees closer together byproviding them with a focused virtual workspace where they have access to allthe resources, systems and documents that they need to get the job done. Itallows global HR teams in particular to stay more connected, offering them thepossibility to collaborate and communicate effectively across multiplelocations.
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Arrange a free Workspace 365 demo

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As many HR professionals are finding out already, integrating Microsoft 365 and Workspace 365 into a company's digital workspace solutions can have atransformative impact in terms of employees' overall experience.

More and more organisations are enjoying the benefits that these platforms have to offer, allowing them to boost overall productivity and achieve all kinds of strategic and operational objectives in the virtual workspace.

However, you shouldn't just take our word for it. Remember, the best way to experience Workspace 365 is to try it for yourself and arrange a free demo.