Fiona Mullan is the senior HR director for Microsoft's APAC region. She discusses how social media is challenging traditional organizational structures by enabling more open information sharing. She emphasizes that companies need a clear social media strategy that leverages the technology to improve communication, engagement, and innovation while mitigating risks. She advises starting with high-value uses of social media and demonstrating success to gain support for broader implementation and change management.

1. Fiona Mullan «PROFILE
March 2014 « Human Resources « 15
Fiona Mullan
has been with
Microsoft since
2005 and is
currently the senior
HR director for
the APAC region.
She is responsible
for working with
the leadership
team to drive
the company’s
people agenda.
Before this, she
led Microsoft’s
recruiting function
for all geographies
outside the US and
Canada. Before
joining Microsoft,
she was with
Accenture for
seven years, where
she served as HR
director for the
government sector
in the UK, Ireland
and the Nordic
region.
VITAL STATS
By SABRINA ZOLKIFI
Senior HR director
Microsoft
The social effect
Fiona Mullan
Q The use of social media is
still something relatively new to the
HR function.
Organisations, historically, have a very
hierarchical structure and organisational
models of today have been traditionally
quite structured. They’ve been built for
execution, for processes and for efficiency,
but the reality is the advent of social media
is challenging all of that. From a Microsoft
perspective, what we’re saying is that social
media is here to stay, and social media
is and will continue to put pressure on
organisations to change.
Q Which area of the organisation do
you feel will be under the most pressure
to adapt to the influx of social media in
the workplace?
Social media is something our employees
want and are already bringing into
organisations, and it’s having a big impact
on the culture of organisations. It is
enabling information, which has historically
been up and down the organisation to
now move up and down, as well as left
and right through the virtual networks within
the company.
Q With social media here to stay, what
do you think is the first thing leaders
need to do to manage the change in the
working landscape?
Organisations and HR professionals really
need a strategy to leverage these social
media technologies in a way that will help
conversations be more effective, drive more
employee engagement, communication,
decision-making, greater idea generation,
and ultimately help the organisation be
a more innovative company – not just
internally, but also with the customers.
Q What makes a strong and effective
social media strategy?
The strategy needs to really understand
where social media can bring value
– many organisations start from a
very conservative point. You need to
understand what social media can do,
where it can be applied, and what types
of technologies should be used internally
to support that.
Q How big a role does HR play in
crafting that social media strategy?
As HR professionals, it’s such an
exciting time to be in HR because as
an organisation and as professionals,
we can help generate the right dialogue
internally within the leadership of
companies to really understand where the
opportunities exist.
Q Aside from HR being part of
that conversation, who should also
be at the table when discussing the
initial stages of building a social
media strategy?
You need to have senior stakeholders
and key leadership sponsors in there to
both understand and support the change.
Certainly, HR should be a key leader in
that dialogue, but I would also advocate
the marketing department be there. They
tend to be the most advanced in using
social media strategies, so they can really
bring in the deep expertise and lead the
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change by demonstrating how to use it
internally and, of course, the IT department.
Q What are some of the focus points
companies should be looking at when
designing the strategy?
Companies need to really start thinking
about potential risks, privacy and data
security, and looking for social media
technologies that will allow for the benefits
of social media, but mitigate some of the
challenges that come with it.
Q Once a strategy is in place,
how can social media best support
the organisation?
We pick opportunities within the
organisation where social media can add
value and demonstrate success. As we’ve
seen, these things begin to reverberate
through the organisation in a viral way,
and that’s been our experience on many
different types of subjects and community
groups, or even addressing different types
of problems – these are really the areas
where we’ve seen social media add value.
Q Do you think Microsoft and its
employees have an advantage in
leveraging off social media in the office
because of the industry you are in?
I definitely think Microsoft has an
advantage as a technology company,
and a company that’s used to using all
of its own technologies for collaboration.
That said, the pace of change has moved
extremely quickly, so for us, just like many
other companies, we have seen enormous
change over the past couple of years.

2. PROFILE»Fiona Mullan Fiona Mullan «PROFILE
» Human Resources » March 201416 March 2014 « Human Resources « 17
though you may have lower levels of
advancements, the change is inevitable.
Q How do you keep the strategy
consistent across the region despite the
need for localisation?
It’s about involving the right stakeholders,
ensuring the strategy is aligned, and
learning from other businesses that may be
slightly more advanced.
Q Looking forward, how do you think
the social aspect of organisations will
continue to evolve?
We’re in a very exciting time in
organisational design and strategy. As I
mentioned earlier, most companies build
a very traditional organisational structure,
built for process, scalability, execution and
efficiency. Our conversation over many
years has always been around productivity
of organisations. I see continued change in
terms of how we structure organisations,
how we communicate up and down
and left to right, how we get work done,
how we solve problems and how we
generate ideas.
Q How do you think globalisation will
have a role to play in this change?
Ultimately, it will come down to influencing
culture at its core – a culture of how to
make decisions, how we share information,
the levels of transparency and trust.
Employees want to see their organisations
do the right thing, and they want to be
engaged in the business opportunities
and in solving problems; they want to
be part of the innovation. We will see
social media continue to influence
communication channels, which I think
will have a pretty fundamental impact
on how we will structure organisations in
the future.
We’re also seeing the need to
change quickly to be more diverse in
global operations. These tools are
being seen less as technologies, but
as enablers of change, which are
allowing for faster communication and a
greater understanding and leveraging of
employee ideas.
Q With the influx of technology in
the workplace, how do you keep the
human element within the company?
In many ways, social media technologies
complement existing methods of
communication such as face-to-face
meetings. In my experience, it has allowed
us to have greater connections. If you’re
doing a one-on-one and your manager is
in another country, you could do that over
video, see the same information or work
on the same presentation together.
In our experience, there’s been
great personalisation [in communication]
supported by these technologies, but
obviously it’s all about applying the
right communication medium to the
right environment. It does take change
management to really help employees
understand how they use these tools and
where they can help them.
Q Has Microsoft used social media as
the main vehicle when communicating
something to employees?
Microsoft recently announced a change to
our performance and rewards approach,
which was a pretty sizeable change. We
used our own social media product –
Yammer – as a way to engage hundreds of
thousands of employees on that change.
We’ve had ongoing dialogue on our social
media boards around questions, about
what it means, getting input and feedback
from employees which started at the
launch in November and continues today.
Q How is that experience different
from what the company would
have done through traditional
communication methods?
Historically, you would have had a launch
email or you would have done meetings in
your local organisations, and we obviously
still continue with those. But because we
have used social media as the main vehicle
to really engage employees in the change,
it’s been quite a fundamentally different
experience for them in that respect.
Q How so?
You’ve got employees having dialogues
with each other from different countries,
and our global HR and others have
personally provided some input, so that’s
been a really interesting experience for
us, and something that is very relevant for
the company.
Q One belief on why social media
hasn’t completely integrated itself into
the office is around privacy concerns.
Certainly, it is the leaders and HR
departments’ responsibility to make sure
we’re doing the right thing in terms of
protecting confidential information and
securing it in a way that we should.
But I think it’s also incumbent
on leaders, on IT and on HR, and on
employees to educate themselves.
We all see the value in greater trust
in organisations and greater transparency.
That is really valuable in leveraging
all the employees’ ideas around
business problems and opportunities,
as well as driving greater engagement
and productivity.
Q What advice would you give
in terms of that change
management process?
Really understanding the existing
landscape that you have in terms of where
your executives are in relation to the use
of technologies and the kinds of business
opportunities the technologies can enable.
I don’t think these things are a case of
using social media for the sake of social
media – how can it help employees
work more effectively, how can it help
them communicate more effectively, or
understand their needs and ideas, and
drive engagement.
Q How do you think having an open
communication when implementing
new social media practices helps?
I think when leaders and employees see
that connection [between the technologies
and the business bottom line], they begin
to get it. I would recommend starting with
an opportunity where there is immediate
value and where you can demonstrate
success, and showcase that success to
others in your organisation.
Q What do you think is the secret to
successfully turning any organisation
into one which is leveraging and
benefiting from social media?
It goes back to having a social media
strategy in your organisation, and
that strategy should address all of the
opportunities for the organisation – around
its culture, the company’s approach to
customers, the business value, the change
management it will involve, as well as all of
the proper protection in relation to security
and privacy.
Q What do you think will happen if
companies implement social media
without a strategy in place?
Without an overarching strategy, the
reality is social media will still come at
you because employees will bring
it into the organisation anyway. So unless
you have that overarching strategy, the
tendency will be to be defensive towards
it. That’s unfortunate, as it’s such a
missed opportunity for the organisation
to move forward.
Q With your experience in APAC, have
the different nuances within the region
posed different challenges?
Certainly there are different levels of
social media penetration across the
region. This is largely driven by the level
of online connections and the number of
devices people have. What we’ve learned
about social media and the advancement
of technologies is the pace of change
happens very quickly, but that should not
hold back HR professionals from waiting
for greater levels of penetration; even
“Unless you have that overarching [social media]
strategy, the tendency will be to be defensive
towards it.That’s unfortunate, as it’s such a missed
opportunity for the organisation to move forward.”
Q Speaking of the future of
organisations, what impact will
social media have on a multi-
generational workplace?
I think social media is going to be
an aid, because it allows people to
identify and find like-minded people
working on the same problem, or working
on a particular opportunity. Social media is
pretty agnostic in terms of who you
are, where you come from and what
age you are, so in our experience,
it’s been a great enabler in helping
leverage on the diversity in an
organisation – be it diversity of generation,
culture or perspective, and driving
greater connectivity.
Q And what do you think is the single
biggest challenge social media is
posing to organisations?
The challenge it’s posing is that it’s
here to stay. There are many HR
professionals and business leaders
who don’t yet see it as an opportunity
and that it is here to stay. As long
as we aren’t seeing it as an
opportunity, the experience will feel like
a challenge.