Modern HR, Communication &
Leadership Best Practices With
Microsoft 365
RICHARD HARBRIDGE
@RHarbridge | MVP & CTO | @2toLead
MICROSOFT 365 VIRTUAL MARATHON 2022 MAY, 4 – 6, 2022

My Twitter is @RHarbridge, I’m super friendly & proud to work at @2toLead.
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief
Technology Officer &
Microsoft MVP
Speaker & Author
Super Friendly

Question 1 How has communications changed these past few years?
Question 2 Where is the “digital hub” of the digital
workplace today and where is it going?
Question 3 How do we tackle the increased noise and the growing
sprawl of digital spaces?
Question 4
How has the way we engage employees evolved and
how do we connect more in a hybrid world of work?
Question 5
How are organizations automating and improving
recruitment, onboarding and retention?

Question 1
How has communications
changed in these past few years?

Communications
Enabling more effective
communication matters.
We need to improve engagement in
organizational communications.
Need to enable consistency, brand
alignment and better experiences.
We need to highlight, amplify and
personalize communications.

Edit & Publish
Enable &
Connect
Amplify & Engage
Communications

What do we generally see across our clients?
Improve
Communication
Provide a powerful channel to
communicate, reduce noise,
and help employees feel
informed.
Inspire
Confidence
Provide a trusted repository
for authoritative corporate
information, creating a source
of truth.
Drive
Efficiencies
Make it easier for employees
to find critical information and
get their core tasks done with
increased efficiency.
Foster
Engagement
Create a medium for two-way
communication, allowing
employees to be heard and
feel included.
Nurture
Community
Develop a platform to allow
employees to feel better
connected to one another
and part of a larger whole.

What do we generally see across our clients?
Simplification – This business driver represents absorbing complexity into management
and improving the user experience to be more intelligent, engaging, and personalized.
Responsibly – This business driver represents the need to provide a reliable, fast, stable,
and scalable digital workplace that is well-governed, and that aligns with our policies and
simplifies compliance.
Productivity – This business driver represents the need to automate services,
operationalize manual-work, allow employees to focus on what’s important, and
improve productivity.
Inclusive - Provide personalized content to our diverse employees, using intelligence to
drive the findability of information, engage with them through our communications, and
build our great company culture.
Productive - Provide employees with a suite of automated services that operationalize
manual work, allowing them to be more productive and to spend more time with our
valued customers.
Ready - Provide a strong, reliable, fast, stable, and scalable digital workplace that is
there for employees when they need it. Support with a well-governed experience that
aligns with our policies and simplifies compliance.
Sometimes keeping objectives simple
enables easier mapping and
alignment.
At the end of the day though they all
contain a lot of the same concepts as
what all organizations are often
trying to achieve or improve is similar.

How the roadmap is broken down into categories
Facilitate Governance & Responsibly Empower
Absorb complexity into management, align with policies, simplify compliance, security and performance.
Establish An Effective Foundation
Foundational and important work from strategy to architecture that is necessary for continued digital workplace success.
Migrate & Modernize
Move away from legacy systems into long-term, supported, and more integrated experiences.
Foster Collaboration, Connection & Engagement
Make it easy and efficient for employees to onboard, teams to work together, from anywhere, to gain insights on
what is important and feel included.
Improve Communication, Navigation & Search
Provide more effective ways to communicate, reduce noise, feel informed, engaged and get their core tasks done
with increased efficiency.

A summary of the initiatives planned over the next 24 months
Foster Collaboration, Connection
& Engagement
Improve Communication,
Navigation & Search
Migrate
& Modernize
Establish An
Effective Foundation
Facilitate Governance
& Responsibly Empower

Answer 1
Beyond editors and now enablers,
engagers and experience leaders.

Question 2
Where is the “digital hub” of the
digital workplace today and
where is it going?

Of global workers are
finding that the number
of information sources they
must check each day has
increased in the last
five years.
Of global workers are finding
the surplus of data sources
and applications is adding
to stress levels
31%
45%
What is impacting the focus on communication, knowledge and content?

From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

▪ Designing custom cards for your dashboard | Microsoft
▪ Samples and Templates | Adaptive Cards
▪ Designer | Adaptive Cards

Leverage 1st party supported integrations with popular industry leaders.

Leverage a unified news feed that aggregates yammer announcements and news
recommended for the current user all while empowering quick and easy engagement.

Amplify the reach of your announcements by leveraging the news boost feature which ensures
featured news gets the attention it deserves

Not (yet)
available

You will love the way we work. Together. ™
Contextualized navigation and discovery based on where and how users work benefiting from cloud
scale AI, digital behavior capture & continual content analysis.
In emails, instant messages,
team messages, pages, news,
documents and more… the
knowledge, people, digital
spaces, and more are
available in context.

Contextualized insights based on the topic discovery that includes people, resources, sites,
communities and more can improve our curated assets and support our extended team of content
leads and departmental stakeholders.
Content leaders can leverage
the insights provided by Viva
Topics by rationalizing them
with curated resources to
improve them.
Does that product site
internally have
links/connections to the
people, resources and sites
suggested by topics?

Answer 2
Employees shouldn’t go to the
Intranet but have the “Intranet”
come to employees where they
work and in the context of their
work.

Question 3
How do we tackle the increased
noise and the growing sprawl of
digital spaces?

PROBLEM: ITS OVERWHELMING…
Think about your typical Intranet. How many different things are organizations trying to
squeeze into that homepage when you open your browser?
Out Of The Box
●
These are all news
web parts.
There are also
multiple event web
parts and many other
roll ups on a typical
Intranet. Too much?

SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER FEEDS!
Often customers might create their own visualization for news, events or activities rolling up
within their Intranet which drives greater usability, engagement, integration and more.
Clearer categories
and sources, greater
at a lance insights
such as comment
count can increase
engagement and you
can even color code
and style it the way
that best helps the
user.
This can bring together events,
different types of news,
spotlights, 3rd party activity
highlights, existing capabilities
like saved for later, and much
more into a single design.
Requires Customization
◔

SOLUTION: PERSONALIZED!
Sometimes the capabilities built in aren’t quite enough (or may be years away from meeting your
needs) so it might make sense to add your own web part and targeting/personalization capabilities.
◔

Keep in mind that while we should absolutely leverage audiences in the navigation, that when we do
it is a great opportunity to get feedback on how well designed our audiences are.
View All Links (Without Audiences) - Great To Track If People Click Through Here To Navigate
(Indicates Audience Filter Might Be Over Filtering Or Incorrect)
How Has This Been Filtered? (These Are Your Applied Audiences
& Option To Share Feedback To Improve Audience Alignment Or
Optimally Provide Self-Service)

PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.
How can we help our users navigate this?
With so many spaces (sites, teams,
yammer communities and more)
how can an Intranet (a Digital Hub
for your Digital Workplace)
improve navigation of these
spaces?

SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
Mega menu layout enables you to better organize and showcase the related content and sites
based on topic categories and headings. All with audience targeting and more…
Out Of The Box
●

SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER NAVIGATION!
Navigation doesn’t need to be limited to top level links, or simple UI layouts. Here we have two
examples of content in the nav, and richer/deeper nav.
◔

Menu design can be more tailored to your needs and support everything from an integrated local
navigation model blended with global navigation to iconography to support rapid identification.
Organizational links are
displayed in the user’s
preferred language and
can be targeted to certain
groups.
Links are organized
under headings to
allow categorization
of links.
Links specific to the current site
are always displayed here.

Effectively combining a user’s personal links with links that have been promoted by the organization.
The user can pin Promoted Links suggested by the
organization as useful.
The user can add Personal Links of their choosing.
Sorting based on user’s preferences

PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
Most organizations don’t know who created a digital space (SP Site, Team, Yammer Community,
etc). What was its purpose? It’s department? It’s product, client, project, etc?
As an end user this makes
navigating these spaces
extremely challenging.
Think it’s better as an
administrator or digital
workplace/intranet leader?
It’s not.

SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
With improvements coming to global menu design can we leverage that to fill the hub mega menu
gaps? ADD your own app to this bar for a DIRECTORY as these default ones are not sufficient.
Out Of The Box
●

Design and implement a simplified experience that gives you quick access to teams, sites, communities, and
more. Complimenting your Intranet and Digital Workplace Strategy. www.M365Sprawl.com

ESTIMATED COMPLEXITY
Digital Workplace
Directories
Organizing the Digital Workplace
Navigating sites, teams,
communities and enterprise digital
workspaces can be a challenge, but
with metadata, user-led filtering and
effective directory experiences you
can solve this challenge. Implement
the most important investment for
solving governance-related
challenges with sprawl while
providing a better experience.
See A Demo Of This In Action Today
2toLead Solution Discover Another 40+ Solution Ideas In Our eBook

M365Sprawl.com
Understand how to
solve common Sprawl
issues, and how they
impact end-users and
IT, in our eBook.
Download: M365Sprawl.com

Answer 3
Personalization is a good start, but
better navigation design and
digital workplace directories are
important.

Question 4
How has the way we engage
employees evolved and how do
we connect more in a hybrid
world of work?

Yammer is evolving and for corporate communications there are new ways to engage,
design and integrate Yammer capabilities into your digital hub experiences.

Company
Communicator for
Microsoft Teams
Employee Communications
Take company communications to
the next level with an enhanced
company communication experience
that enables pushing key messages
to people and channels in Microsoft
Teams.
Try It Yourself Today
Microsoft Solution Discover Another 40+ Solution Ideas In Our eBook

Enhancements for
Company
Communicator
Employee Communications
Take your company communications
to the next level with this powerful
enhancement. User experiences,
authoring and publishing methods
have been improved inside the
Company Communications Solution
in Microsoft Teams.
See A Demo Of This In Action Today
2toLead Solution Discover Another 40+ Solution Ideas In Our eBook

A LIMITED NETWORK…
42% of IWs rarely meet new people at their company; when they do meet new people, it’s most
often through a formal or informal company event. Managers rarely make those connections.
Limited
network
42% of IWs rarely meet
new people at their
company, managers rarely
make those connections

New Employee
Onboarding
Assistance
Employee Onboarding
With the New Employee
Onboarding Assistance solution
new employee checklists,
feedback capture and the
ability for new hires to
introduce themselves using the
app are all available. Managers
can even approve the
introduction and it can be
shared with relevant teams.

Icebreaker: Connect
Employees Together
Employee Networking & Connection
Enable employees to extend and
strengthen their networks within
the organization with virtual or in-
person connections that improve
retention and engagement. Pair
team members up for a meet up
every week and let the bot help
find an available timeslot for both
parties.

Grow Your
Skills App
Employee Networking & Connection
Grow Your Skills is an app for
employees to discover & contribute
to gig projects or volunteer activities
based on their interest which will
help them to acquire new skills or
master the ones that they already
have right inside teams.

Answer 4
Communities and places to
connect are a great starting
point, but with Hybrid Work we
need to pro-actively connect
employees.

Question 5
How are organizations automating
and improving recruitment,
onboarding and retention?

Human Resources
We have been focusing more and
more on employee engagement.
We need more than policies; we
need to help people adhere.
We need to make it easier for
employees to get support.
Hybrid work and new recruiting
demands require change.

Human Resources
Hiring &
Expectations
Employee
Engagement
Employee
Experience

AUDIENCE TARGETING MATTERS…
Every organization should be targeting information and experiences for new staff. The more
specific the type of new staff the better. Out of the box many experiences support this.
Example 2
The navigation you use should have some ‘getting
started’ links and material for new employees.
Navigation
Pages
News
Documents
Quick Links
Events
Dashboard Cards
Example 1
You could organize news with a special news
item that shows up first for new employees.

New
Employee
Corporate
Onboarding
Site
1.Onboarding Center
Overview
2.Your Organizations Story
Sample
3.Meet The Leadership
Team
4.Building Connections
Links
5.Org Onboarding Quick
Links
6.Sample Curated
Resources
7.New Hire Community
Integration
New
Employee
Departmental
Onboarding
Site
1.Departmental Welcome
2.Departmental
Onboarding Checklist
3.Insights Into
Departmental
Culture/How We Work
4.Departmental Quick
Links Examples
5.Meet Other New Team
Members In This
Department
6.Departmental Insights
New
Employee
Pre-Onboarding
Site
1.Pre-Onboarding Center
Sample
2.Example Of Leadership
Welcome Messaging
3.First-Day Preparation
Checklist
4.FAQs Example
5.Our Leadership Team
Example
6.Our Values Example
Workplace
Transformation
Site
(Hybrid
Work)
1.Showcases The
Importance Of Helping
Support Employees With
Hybrid Work
Expectations
2.Examples Of Quick Tips
& Key Messaging
3.Sample Managers Only
(Targeted
Tips/Resources)
4.Examples Of In Page
Navigation
5.Creative Use Of
Sectional Layouts
6.Sample Hybrid
Workplace Checklist
7.Sample “A Week In The
Hybrid Workplace”
ACCELERATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING…
There are great starting templates provided for Microsoft 365 that provide effective Onboarding sites
that you can configure and make your own. Each one serves a key employee portal purpose.

Today Microsoft not only matches this need with great experiences but even adds intelligence to
those experiences to improve collaboration further whether for the individual, team or org.
Blurred
boundaries
75% of people have
experienced burnout at
work with 40% of people
report work disrupts
personal/family time at
least weekly

Help your employees have the tools to manage and improve their wellbeing and personal
productivity. Start by leveraging the capabilities built into Insights.
Blurred
boundaries
75% of people have
least weekly

We need solutions that help us manage our time, our conflicts, the things we might have forgotten or
missed and more. These options need to be available in Outlook, mobile and where we work.
Blurred
boundaries
75% of people have
least weekly

Answer 5
It’s about more than just
automating the onboarding
experience but looking at the
entire employee journey and how
we can do more.

M365Intranets.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Campaigns.com
Explore 800+ Pages of
Free Expert Guidance…
M365Metrics.com
M365Resources.com
SharePointMigrations.com

Let’s connect and find ways to do more and work together.
Message me on LinkedIn or email Richard@2toLead.com
200+ Awesome Presentations at:
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
Super Friendly
Thank You
Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
800+ Pages of Whitepapers at: 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
Elsewhere…
M365Resources.com
Office365Campaigns.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Intranets.com
M365Metrics.com
SharePointMigrations.com

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