Accelerating Frontier Transformation: Enrich employee experience

This blog is part of Accelerating Frontier Transformation , a four-part series exploring how organizations are turning AI into business value. Based on conversations with industry leaders at Microsoft Frontier Tours ( formerly Microsoft AI Tours ), the series looks at AI’s impact across employee experience, customer engagement , business processes, and innovation. This first post focuses on enriching employee experience. Empowering people to thrive at work When thoughtfully integrated into everyday work, AI has the potential to expand what we can do. It can help us explore and solve new kinds of problems, synthesize information to support decisions, and reduce time spent on some repetitive tasks. This can ultimately create more space for us to apply our expertise, develop new skills, contribute ideas, and focus on more meaningful, higher-value work. The leaders we spoke with at several Microsoft Frontier Tours around the world described how these changes can give employees greater opportunities to learn, create, and grow. They also shared how a stronger employee experience can contribute to better outcomes for their organizations. This is one part of what  Frontier Transformation  looks like in practice. Providing broader access to AI at work Two factors can help accelerate AI adoption: broader access and deeper integration into everyday workflows. When AI is embedded in the tools people already use, it becomes part of how work happens rather than a separate initiative. Leaders at EY, a global professional services organization, describe a shift from experimentation to everyday use. By making AI broadly available across the workforce, they have helped create a culture where employees at every level are finding new ways to work and create value. The biggest shift in our organization with AI has been moving from curiosity to everyday use. Jenelle McMaster, EY Regional Deputy CEO and People & Culture Leader, Oceania There are a couple of things that help you get beyond the experiment. One is democratizing AI for everyone […] As a result of that culture, we don’t have a constraint around AI adoption. Katherine Boiciuc, EY Regional Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Oceania Watch the conversation with EY Regional, Oceania For Scope, a UK disability equality organization, accessibility is central to its approach. Leaders of this organization see AI as a way to put powerful capabilities into the hands of more people regardless of technical expertise, helping more people contribute ideas and participate in problem-solving across the organization. You do not have to be a coder. You do not need to have studied AI for four years at a college or university. All you need is a desire, a problem you are trying to solve, and the passion to see it through and resolve that problem. Kwesi Afful, Executive Director for Digital, Data, and Technology, Scope Watch the conversation with Scope The Salvation Army UK and Ireland has taken a people-first approach to adoption. Rather than starting with technology, the organization focused on helping employees, officers, and volunteers build confidence using AI so they could better serve communities and further their mission. When it came to AI, it started off with putting people at the center. Our first major focus was rolling out Microsoft Copilot across the organization and supporting the rollout with structured training to give every officer, employee, and volunteer the confidence to serve our people with compassion and innovation. Lev Malinin, Head of Enterprise Systems, Data and AI, The Salvation Army UK and Ireland Watch the conversation with The Salvation Army UK and Ireland Measuring returns beyond efficiency Organizations often begin their AI journey looking for efficiency gains. But the leaders we spoke with described returns that go well beyond time savings. They shared that AI can help reduce repetitive work and administrative burden, giving employees the opportunity to focus more on activities where their expertise creates the greatest value. At EY, one of the biggest benefits has been enabling people to apply their knowledge and skills in new ways. One of their leaders describes seeing employees become more confident in their ability to create value with AI and contribute in ways that were previously out of reach. The most meaningful outcome for employees at EY because of AI is the ability to do something new. We sell expertise, we sell knowledge, content and information. We still do that, but AI enables us to do that in a new way. Mary Elizabeth Porray, EY Global Vice Chair, Client Technology Watch the conversation with EY Global At The Salvation Army UK and Ireland, value is measured by helping people focus on the work that matters most. As the organization expands its use of AI, leaders have emphasized the importance of implementing it thoughtfully and responsibly so it can deliver lasting impact. It’s really about maximizing value over everything and doing things right. Starts with caution and thinking about what you need to get right. Lev Malinin, Head of Enterprise Systems, Data and AI, The Salvation Army UK and Ireland Watch the conversation with The Salvation Army UK and Ireland The same theme emerged at Advania UK, an IT services provider. Leaders there see AI creating value not simply through efficiency, but by helping employees spend less time on routine work so they can focus on applying their expertise to higher value activities. It’s actually about the experience that we’re creating for our employees in the workplace […] It’s going to help us all to become better versions of ourselves as we work across the businesses, and allow our staff to really enjoy the work that they do because they’re not doing the mundane […] they’re able to apply their skills to higher value activities, whether they’re in creative roles or analytical roles. Nick Isherwood, Chief Operating Officer, Advania UK Watch the conversation with Advania UK AI that works alongside people Based on these and other customer conversations, we can see that the most effective leaders use AI to support their people while keeping them in charge of making decisions. Organizations pursuing lasting value view AI not as a replacement for human expertise, but as a tool that helps people achieve more. Baringa, a global management consultancy that helps organizations navigate AI transformation, encourages clients to focus first on building trust and proving value before scaling their efforts. Have the bigger picture. Have a vision. Have a strategy. But start from a use case, which is going to be small enough for you to be able to build trust and to build confidence that that use case is going to deliver value. Stela Bokun, Partner, Baringa Watch the conversation with Baringa Educators can use AI tools to support learning, while remaining responsible for evaluating outputs and directing the learning experience. Teach For America, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding educational opportunity, is using AI for exactly that. Through AI incubation programs and hands-on experimentation, employees and educators are exploring new ways to support learning while keeping teachers at the center of the experience. We don’t want AI to replace great teachers. We want it to augment that. We want it to help them in the classroom. I need to transform this organization to really reimagine how learning happens through AI. That’s virtual coaches and tutors and things like that. Things that we couldn’t do before that. Alan Murray, Chief Data & Technology Officer, Teach for America Watch the conversation with Teach for America The organization’s Reinvention Lab illustrates what happens when employees are given both the tools and the freedom to experiment. Educators have been trained through hackathons and hands-on learning experiences, resulting in hundreds of AI-powered tools designed to address real classroom challenges. We have our Reinvention Lab. They have educated over 1,200 educators through a whole bunch of hackathons to educate these folks on how to use AI. That has then resulted in over 720 tools that these educators have built. And these are all kinds of things built in AI for the classroom. Alan Murray, Chief Data & Technology Officer, Teach for America Across these stories, we can see a common pattern: organizations can create value when AI works alongside people, supporting human judgment, creativity, and expertise rather than replacing them. Make three practical moves now Start with the friction. Find the repetitive or draining tasks that slow people down, and identify appropriate ways AI can help address those moments. Widen who can contribute. Use AI to help more people build skills and take on higher-value work, expanding what the team can achieve together. Build confidence. Keep people in the lead, make the role of AI clear, and show where it adds value and where human expertise should guide decisions. This is where Frontier Transformation to enrich employee experience begins. As Kwesi Afful of Scope put it: AI is the train that won’t wait for us. If we avoid it, we will probably be doing a disservice to your organization or the community or customers […] so cautiously embrace it, start small and look for the practical value. Kwesi Afful, Executive Director for Digital, Data, and Technology, Scope Watch the conversation with Scope Learn more Visit the Frontier Transformation site to explore how you can put AI to work, build trust, and scale transformation with Microsoft across everyday workflows Download the e-book Four Paths to Business Value with AI to learn how you can move from AI experimentation to Frontier Transformation with intelligence and trust. Next in the Accelerating Frontier Transformation series: Reinvent customer engagement . The post Accelerating Frontier Transformation: Enrich employee experience appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog .