Change Management + Digital Measurement

Let's start with a fact: changing people's behavior is hard.

It is even harder to do when you aren't measuring that behavior. If you can't measure it - you can't improve it. Fortunately, we now have the technology to make that possible.

We've all sat through meetings with too many associates - many of whom are simply silent. Or seen an urgent email request to "give me the latest document" when you updated it several days ago. And we've all had our calendars double (or triple!) booked for time - which means that many of us are also attending a meeting, while working on something else, because that was the only free time available.

It is exhausting to think about it!

The good news is that we all know the types of modern behavior we want to encourage:

• Meetings being used to reach consensus, rather than to simply communicate information (the old "could this have simply been an email?" ask)
• Folks who don't need to be in a meeting feeling able to skip it and obtain the key points, via notes, at a later point, rather than pressured to "attend" to appear busy
• Documents and communications able to be updated in real-time, rather than always being an asynchronous snapshot of a moment in time
• Staff using technology tools that increase productivity - and gaining more productivity the more familiar they are with the tools in question

That last point deserves a little focus: for the past few decades, many technology companies have incrementally improved their software with nebulous claims around "increased productivity". Despite being digital tools - there was no real way to ever determine if folks were spending less time on make-work activities - so it was tough to measure their impact. Some of these claims were bogus, while others were so painfully honest folks couldn't wait to use them. (I can remember when I showed some clients the "Flash Fill " feature in Excel a decade ago and it caused literal tears of joy - since so much time was spent manually filling in column entries.)

The good news is that Microsoft's "Viva Insights " product can measure these behaviors - and also measure the time saved/spent on activities to drive home how effective certain programs can be. Cognizant has invested heavily in this tool - and it allows us to compare different parts of the organization to one another, as well as the effect of specific programs to drive up productivity - and whether they are working effectively or not.

I got a chance to see this behavior first hand as we rolled out Copilot at Cognizant. Microsoft has opened up the "Microsoft Copilot Dashboard " to all customers of its Microsoft 365 Copilot product - enabling many more organizations to gain insights about how their staff are using Copilot - while still respecting privacy and not allowing individual staff to be identified for their specific habits.

The best part of this capability is to perform that comparison: you can now select a group of individuals who have Copilot - versus those who do not - and measure the number of conflicting meetings they have, or if they are multi-tasking during those meetings

By comparing the productivity metrics of Copilot users and non-users, companies can assess the impact of Copilot on employee efficiency. For instance, they can analyze metrics such as task completion rates, time spent on administrative tasks, and the frequency of AI-assisted recommendations. This comparison can help quantify the benefits of Copilot and justify further investment in AI tools.?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 can significantly enhance collaboration by providing real-time insights, suggestions, and automation. Viva Insights can help companies analyze how Copilot users interact with their colleagues compared to non-users. Metrics such as response times, the volume of collaborative work, and network centrality can provide insights into how Copilot influences team dynamics and communication efficiency.?

It is what many of us have wanted for years - the ability to see if the promises made about a particular software tool hold up to the real world experience. And although it begins with Copilot - you can start to use these metrics to hold up parts of the organization that are acting more modern, in general, than others - and pass those learnings from the highest performing parts of the organization to those further behind.

We've all had informal ways of measuring how progressive parts of the organization are (my favorites are whether meetings are using PowerPoint Live, or Excel Live, when they share, versus simply sharing their screen) - but this will let your senior leadership see hard data rather than anecdotal evidence.

Microsoft Viva Insights is a powerful tool that enables companies to gain deep intelligence into their organizational workings and make informed decisions to enhance productivity, well-being, and collaboration. By leveraging Viva Insights to compare the performance and behaviors of employees with and without Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses, organizations can better understand the impact of AI tools and drive continuous improvement.?

In an era where data-driven decisions are paramount, Viva Insights provides the actionable intelligence needed to foster a thriving, efficient, and engaged workforce.?If you're not yet tracking the progress of Copilot in your organization - reach out to us at Cognizant today!

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