Richard in action at the recent Toronto employee experience group meeting which was hosted by Microsoft
DRAFT - NOT YET POLISHED AND DONE
In an age of AI-driven workflows and hybrid or remote setups, how do we keep our people at the heart of communication?
During our recent Employee Experience group session hosted by Microsoft in Toronto, I tried to tackle this head-on with the help from the group. Drawing on tactics for AI-powered communications, lessons on psychological safety, and the importance of hyper-personalized messaging, together we illuminated what it truly takes to reclaim genuine connection.
Below are the “big questions” that framed our discussion—and the key takeaways every employee experience and digital workplace leader needs to know.
1. How Can AI Tools Actually Strengthen (Not Replace) Human Connection?
AI is reshaping how we discover insights, share knowledge, and connect with one another. Yet the real question is how we maintain a human-centric approach in all of this. Richard emphasized that AI should be embraced as an enabler, not a replacement for genuine communication.
Key Insight
Human Stories Matter More: As organizations embrace AI communication is impacted in a very real way as employees begin reading summaries of articles from their Intranet and internal enterprise community feeds. These summaries of news or across topics and more mean that highly interesting and engaging content for that employee matters more so that they click through and immersive themselves further by reading an article that helps foster alignment and shared understanding.
Above is a visual representation of this AI impact on communication that Richard shared.
AI emphasizes the value of emotionally engaging and more ‘human’ articles with far less corporate speak, or articles coming from real employees and real situations within the organization, something that aligns with more effective employer culture and more proactive communication teams.
Work Out Loud with AI: Tools such as Microsoft 365 Copilot can accelerate the process of sharing insights, experiences, and outcomes from meetings and projects. This makes it easier (and faster) to publish content to platforms like Viva Engage, ensuring knowledge exchange becomes a habit, not an afterthought.
Example Prompt for Work Out Loud Sharing
Use this sample Copilot prompt to spark longer, more thought-provoking social posts as any leader within the org (not just as comms). This is an example of how AI might unlock more sharing and accessiblity to communication across an organization from real work and all employees.
Generate a series of long social posts that emphasize a surprising and novel idea, with a focus on challenging commonly understood patterns or expectations. The ideas should be rooted in insights from email exchanges and meetings I participated in last week. Requirements for Each Social Post: Engaging Headline: Create an h3 headline that grabs attention, hints at an unexpected twist, or provokes curiosity.
Source Insight Summary: Provide a brief summary of the core insight, specifying its origin (e.g., "From a discussion in a team meeting on AI adoption challenges").
Long Social Post Copy: Write the main social post that introduces and explains the idea in detail, ensuring it disrupts familiar thinking or explores a surprising angle.
Unconventional Lens: For each post, explicitly push to either:
Offer a perspective that contradicts the general consensus, or
Present a novel analogy/metaphor that reveals an unexpected connection.
Action Items (Optional): If appropriate, include a list of related and recommended action items for readers, focusing on steps that are uncommon or could create an "aha" moment.
Summary and Hashtags:
Suggested hashtags that highlight the topic, the surprising aspect, and the people involved.
Include a summary of where the insight originated, specifying the date and names of those involved, to make it easy to mention them.
Here’s an example of recent LinkedIn post I shared generated with AI in this way.
This type of prompting helps teams and individuals reflect on what they’ve learned—and share those insights widely. This new wave of employee led shared insight can then be connected and amplified by corporate communications, thus adding important alignment and shared understanding connections to key campaigns or messages. You don’t have to lead the communication transformation with AI alone, it’s better to find ways to distribute best practices and ideas like this and then amplify those articles for more employee led and human connection in this era of AI.
If you are looking for more prompt suggestions, ideas or inspiration you might be interested in this 50 Copilot Starter Prompts Toolkit that Richard shared during the meeting as you work on your own proactive communications team transformation.
2. Are We Harnessing the Full Potential of AI to ‘Share More’?
Too often, we get bogged down in day-to-day tasks, leaving little energy for writing up lessons learned or best practices. AI can drastically reduce that friction.
Key Insight
AI for Reflection & Recommendations: Beyond just creating content, Copilot can help leaders reflect on their communication style. By reviewing emails, meeting transcripts, and other content, Copilot can surface suggestions on how to be more inclusive or more effectively use “we” language instead of “I.”
Example Prompt for Reflection
“
I am trying to do better at using inclusive language in meetings and emails where there is more use of “we” instead of “I”. This can help frame challenges as collective ones, experience as collective experience, and more.
What are some recent emails or meetings where I could have better used this approach? Please provide specific detail on what I said or wrote, how it could be rewritten, and the date/time it occurred.
“
Leaders using prompts like this can accelerate self-improvement and share these learnings with others via Copilot galleries. This not only benefits one individual’s growth but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.
3. What Role Does Psychological Safety Play in an AI-Centric Workplace?
Psychological safety is crucial for driving change, fostering open communication, and nurturing collaborative cultures. AI can be a double-edged sword: it can open new avenues for conversation or, if not handled carefully, increase fears and insecurities.
Key Insight
AI-Powered Content & Keyword Alerts: As an example of how AI empowers new ways for communication leaders to work... In Viva Engage, moderators can gain visibility into conversations across the network, set alerts for harmful or heated content, and take action. For instance, muting a problematic post ensures it won’t appear in feeds or digests, thereby supporting a healthier workplace culture rather than censoring all content.
AI can help improve or “amplify” good conversation. It’s not about controlling employees’ every word but about spotlighting positive communications and addressing harmful or negative sentiments quickly. This means Communications leadership needs to be highly engaged around the AI rollout since communications is the number 1 and top used use case for digital assistants like Microsoft Copilot today in the workplace.
If you are interested in more ideas on how to improve your communication or Intranet you might find this Intranet Planning Toolkit: A Blueprint for your Modern SharePoint Intranet resource shared by Richard in the meeting helpful or this related article: Transforming Internal Communication with the Intranet Launch Kit and Viva Amplify.
4. Are We Building a Culture That Fosters Open Sharing or Reinforcing Silos?
Organizations are becoming more complex, with dynamic silos forming and dissolving at a rapid pace—sometimes reinforced by security measures or specialized work streams. Where does AI come in?
Key Insight
Silos in the AI Era: According to Richard, AI can break down silos by making it easier to discover content, connect with peers, and access knowledge across previously isolated teams or communities. However, short-term concerns around data security and job insecurity could reinforce some silos, though these will be addressed over time and should be proactively addressed by organizations and leaders today.
Proactive Measures: Encourage org-wide Q&A or Answers experiences instead of each silo having its own mini knowledge base. AI can help identify trends, frequent questions, and topics that span departmental boundaries. Richard highlighted how technologies like Answers in Viva from Microsoft already help address this.
By focusing on bridging these silos—rather than allowing them to evolve unchecked—organizations unlock more dynamic, cross-team collaboration. Richard shared this research, some unpublished insights and this helpful article on A Quick Guide to Enhance Community Development with Viva Engage.
5. How Do We Translate Data Into Truly Effective Communication Strategies?
Measuring readership and engagement only scratches the surface. The real magic is understanding why certain content resonates, who is sharing it, and what that sharing indicates about your communication channels.
In the above visual Richard shared how organizations often under utilize Teams, Viva Engage or some other important enterprise channels and mainly use Intranet and Email limiting their reach, engagement and what they can learn and optimize over time.
Key Insight
Amplify Insights: Some organizations track not just clicks and views but also how often content is shared amongst specific cohorts, like communication champions or frontline workers. High sharing might indicate that the information isn’t easily accessible via normal channels—or that it’s especially valuable to these roles.
As an example in Viva Amplify additional reporting can be provided across channels on how much content has been promoted or shared. This insight when combined with filterable parameters that let you narrow in on a population can answer questions like what content are people struggling to find or people proactively distributing to others (sharing) which might highlight related gaps in navigation, discovery or distribution.
Close Gaps & Improve: If front-line workers are consistently having to reshare certain policy updates or training resources, perhaps it’s time to optimize the intranet, adjust email distribution lists, or provide more targeted training sessions.
Marrying Quantitative & Qualitative Feedback: Combine the hard data on open rates, engagement, and channel usage with qualitative input from employee interviews or small-group sessions. This helps refine and fine-tune your strategy: the right message in the right channel at the right time.
By analyzing where friction exists, teams can design better content pathways and distribution strategies—ultimately improving employee experience.
6. Why Is Personalization the Future of Employee Communications?
One of the biggest mistakes is to treat communication style as a “sliding scale” of either more or less frequent updates. People want hyper-personalized communications that meet them where they already are—and at the right time.
Key Insight
Learning Employee Ways Of Working: Today many organizations are running programs where they are helping employees, teams and groups automate and improve with AI. During this work we gather insights around how employees, teams or groups of employees work and this insight is extremely helpful for communication leaders as it can enable them to personalize not just the communication they put out with AI, but further personalize how to meet these employees based on how they work.
Insights-Driven Personalization: Example with Viva Insights and Copilot Analytics we can better understand the indirect digital behaviors of that same population of employees, combined with other indirect signals such as those in Viva Amplify across the channels that same population reads and engages in. For instance, some teams might respond best to Monday morning digests in Teams, while others need short, midday updates via Viva Engage. Using modern tools and AI we can get a more comprehensive picture of how to further personalize the distribution of communication and a way to action that insight in ways we could never have in the past.
Not only should our strategy around modern employee communication embrace adaptive AI in brainstorming, authoring, improving and publishing but by doing this the right way we also improve the employee experience and can proactively make things easier for our employees. The secret is to use data, insights, expertise and AI together. This helps refine and fine-tune personalization echoing the strategy of: the right message in the right channel at the right time.
Conclusion: Stepping into the AI-Empowered Future—Together
Our group meeting underscored a powerful message: AI isn’t here to diminish the human element of communication; it’s here to enhance it. From using Copilot prompts for reflective leadership to leveraging AI-driven analytics for more personalized communications, the possibilities are immense. Yet successful adoption hinges on mindful implementation and psychological safety. By addressing insecurities, building inclusive cultures, and constantly iterating on communication strategies, we can embrace the best of AI while keeping our people and their experiences at the center.
Ready to harness AI for a more employee-centric future? Start by experimenting with prompts, encouraging “work out loud” habits, and building cross-functional guardrails for psychological safety. The goal is not to automate human connection—it’s to empower it with insights, speed, and inclusivity.
This article is based on discussions and insights shared at the Boye & Co Employee Experience group meetup, featuring Richard Harbridge. Special thanks to the attendees who contributed their challenges, stories, and perspectives, ensuring an engaging conversation that helps every organization reclaim connection in an AI-driven world.
Learn more about employee experience and connect with your peers
Richard has already shared two blog posts based on sessions at the January peer group meeting in Toronto. Read more:
Accelerating Transformation: Employee Digital Success in an AI-Driven World - based on work by Scott deVeber at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids)
Reclaiming Connection: Building a People-First Culture in a Changing World - based on work by Ciara Byrne at Doane Grant Thornton LLP (Canada)
We’ve also shared more in the past —- you might enjoy some of these related posts:
The conversation on employee engagement naturally continues at our upcoming group meetings in Europe and North America.