How Microsoft is using data to map the pandemic’s impact

When COVID-19 hit, this group of analysts turned to the data to see the impact on the workplace.

Microsoft data scientists set out with many questions on remote working, such as: How will employees integrate — and separate — work and home life? Will we be able to maintain our relationships and networks without our typical face-to-face connections?

As part of a group of data scientists, management consultants and engineers at Microsoft, we help companies harness behavioural data to measure and solve the kinds of challenges that firms feel, but usually cannot see. In March we realised that our company, like so many others, was undergoing a shift to remote work. We scrambled to set up home offices, situate newly homeschooled kids, juggle customer calls and cat antics and ­rethink how to do our jobs.

We knew this was an opportunity to learn something about work itself. So we launched an experiment to measure how the work patterns across our group were changing, using Workplace Analytics, which measures everyday work in Microsoft 365, and anonymous sentiment ­surveys. We had many questions, such as: How will employees integrate — and separate — work and home life? Will we be able to maintain our relationships and networks without our typical face-to-face connections? Will we collaborate differently to get work done? How will managers support and engage fully remote teams?

For this research, we measured collaboration patterns across our 350-person Modern Workplace Transformation team, based largely in the US as well as other groups in Microsoft. Our findings can be grouped into a handful of big themes:

WHEN DRIVEN BY EMPLOYEES, ­ENTRENCHED NORMS CHANGE QUICKLY

While weekly meeting time increased by 10 per cent overall — we could no longer catch up in hallways or by the coffee machine, so we were scheduling more connections — individual meetings shrank in duration. We had 22 per cent more meetings of 30 minutes or less and 11 per cent fewer meetings of more than one hour.

This was surprising. In recent decades meetings have generally become longer, and research shows it has had a negative effect on productivity and happiness. Our flip to shorter meetings had come about organically, not from any management mandate. And according to our sentiment survey, the change was appreciated.

MANAGERS GET SOAKED, BUT THEY ALSO CARRY THE LIFE PRESERVERS

We learned managers are bearing the brunt of the shift to remote work. Senior managers are collaborating eight-plus more hours per week. In China, where offices closed weeks earlier than in other countries, our manager colleagues saw Microsoft Teams calls double, from seven hours a week to 14 hours a week. Working to support employees, nurture connections and manage dispersed teams from home, managers sent 115 per cent more instant messages in March, compared with 50 per cent more for individual contributors.

At the same time, managers are enabling employee resilience through this disruption.

Employees across our team saw their work hours spike after the shift. But we found that the employees who averaged the most weekly one-on-one time with their managers experienced the smallest increase in working hours.

In short, managers were buffering employees against the negative aspects of the change by helping them prioritise and protect their time.

IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH FOR WORKPLACE CULTURE TO START TO SHIFT

Most of our team shifted meetings away from the 8am to 11am window and toward the 3pm to 6pm window. As our days became fragmented, with more meetings and personal responsibilities to juggle, we leaned on flexibility.

HUMAN CONNECTION MATTERS A LOT, AND PEOPLE FIND A WAY TO GET IT

We know that belonging is a core human need and that feeling a sense of connection is an ­intrinsic motivator. On our team, around Microsoft and throughout many of our customers’ companies, virtual social meetings quickly became common. Responding to the lack of natural touch points — grabbing lunch in the cafeteria, popping by someone’s desk — employees found new ones. Overall, social meetings went up 10 per cent in a month. At the same time, ­scheduled one-on-ones among employees went up 18 per cent, showing that people would ­sooner add meetings to their schedules than lose connections.

We also measured networks across more than 90,000 Microsoft employees in the US. We discovered that most employees maintained their existing connections, and that most people’s network size increased. We saw network growth not only within existing work groups but also across different groups, indicating that to adapt and thrive, teams sought to build bridges.

In our experience, organisations and leaders who successfully seed change are those who choose to tackle a small number of challenges.

Within Microsoft and among our customers and partners, we’ve seen groups respond to recent behavioural shifts by normalising manager one-on-ones to help employees gain clarity and connection, increasing small-group meetings to combat the isolation, and reducing late-night instant messaging to address burnout.

As our company and many others plan for what comes next, we’re adjusting the focus of our research to the changes that will be needed to continue supporting organisational health and business continuity. These changes include new processes and policies, tooling and workspaces, collaboration norms and employee wellness ­resources. We know the future will be increasingly digital, flexible and remote-friendly, or even remote-first. And as organisations shift back to the office, measuring patterns of work against a baseline and keeping an eye on how people adapt will be essential — especially if new waves of ­disruption bring new unknowns.

Is work today permanently different from what it was before COVID-19? We don’t know yet, but the data can give us ongoing, real-time information that we can use to influence what happens next. We believe that what we learn about these changes will be key to organisational resilience in the months and years to come.

Natalie Singer-Velush, Kevin Sherman and Erik Anderson work at Microsoft.