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Episode 130 | July 29, 2021
For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work.
In this episode of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Senior User Research Manager Matt Brodsky examine how the level of IT support available during the shift, including the ability to provide hardware and software, made the difference between laying off staff and weathering the challenges brought on by the pandemic. They also explore why remote work came with a spike in phishing threats, what the biggest thorn in the sides of IT administrators has been this past year, and where opportunities exist to prepare to keep up with tech advances and tackle future disruptions.
Learn more:
- Project page and report: The New Future of Work
- Future of Work digital magazine: WorkLab
- Guide: Hybrid Work: A Guide for Business Leaders
- Guide: Hybrid Workplace Flexibility Guide
- Group: Microsoft XC Research
- Blog post: A global shift to remote work: How IT administrators are coping with COVID-19
- Microsoft Research Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news from Microsoft Research
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Editor’s note: The privacy and protection of data is of the utmost importance to Microsoft. Research under The New Future of Work initiative, which includes qualitative and quantitative data, is conducted in accordance with the rigorous privacy standards developed by the company.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYS UNDER DIALOGUE]
MATT BRODSKY (TEASER): Some of the most important things that IT admins and security organizations are dealing with right now is really educating their end users on how to use new technology and how to be safe. And that’s something where organizations are employing their own tools and everybody has their own system of learning and their own system of training. And that’s something that I see as being a—a difficulty in the future, is really how do we make sure that that learning and training happens quickly so that if, hopefully not, but if there’s another pandemic or event like this, how we can train people quickly, how people can adopt the software or the technology that they need in order to work and stay afloat, how we can do that quickly so we don’t face situations where organizations are laying off people or, you know, forced to perform poorly for a significant amount of time while everybody comes up to speed.
JAIME TEEVAN: Welcome to the Microsoft Research Podcast, where you get a front-row seat to conversations on cutting-edge technology. I’m Jaime Teevan, and I’ll be your host as we investigate how work practices have changed because of COVID-19 and what it means for creating a new and better future of work.
[MUSIC ENDS]
In this episode of the series, we’re exploring the “IT and Security” chapter of The New Future of Work report published by Microsoft. Matt Brodsky is here to help us understand the role that IT and security professionals played in helping information workers remain as productive as possible as they moved to remote work. He co-authored that chapter with Adam Coleman. Matt is a senior user research manager here at Microsoft who focuses on the Microsoft 365 administrative experience and understanding the best way for organizations to adopt and manage cloud solutions. He has a PhD in neuroscience and behavior from the University of Washington, where he studied neural circuitry, underlying drug reward, and addiction. Specifically, Matt identified novel roles of serotonin receptors in the mechanisms underlying the motivation to take cocaine. After finishing his PhD, Matt then took a postdoc at Seattle Children’s Research Institute to study brain circuitry underlying the motivation to exercise. Welcome, Matt.
MATT BRODSKY: Thank you for having me.
TEEVAN: So, I’m curious, Matt. What was the path that brought you from studying addiction and motivation to, uh, IT and security?
BRODSKY: Uh, well, it was a long and convoluted path, but to sum it up, when you go from a field where you study what motivates rats to take cocaine to studying how humans take Windows, a lot of the thinking around how we design our experiments and problems are similar. So, obviously [LAUGHS] not the same. I’m not equivalating, uh, or, um—
TEEVAN: Windows isn’t cocaine? [LAUGHS]
BRODSKY: Windows is not cocaine, [LAUGHTER] but, um, surprisingly, you know, some of the ways that we structure studies at Microsoft, uh, mimic some of the ways that we did academic research at the University of Washington.
TEEVAN: You know one of the things that surprised me before I came to Microsoft was how important IT and security are to Microsoft. As an end user, I sort of thought of Microsoft as, like, Word or PowerPoint or the tools that I used, and I didn’t really think about how, uh, Microsoft is really essential in ensuring that companies can provide their workers with a safe, reliable technology. Can you tell me a little bit more about why IT and security are so important to Microsoft?
BRODSKY: Yeah, absolutely. You know, um, IT and security organizations at large corporations, at, uh, schools, at, um, nonprofits, at small businesses, you know, they exist and they’re really important for the efficient functioning of the organization as a whole, right? So, one of the ways that I like to think about it is, if we were to—again, this is me bringing up my biologist background—if we’re to think of an organization as an organism, the IT professionals and IT org are almost like the neurons that are, you know, stemming out throughout the system that help make sure that HR is functioning efficiently, make sure that the information workers are able to do their core work, and make sure that the businesses is—is successful and functioning. So, the IT organization is really crucial in making sure that that works. One of the things that brought me to IT is that the population that we study, the actual IT professionals themselves, are a really highly technical population, and they’re really invested in making sure that the user experience for their end users is appropriate. So, as a user researcher, we actually have a lot of the same goals, right? My goals are for IT admins to have a good experience, and their goals are for their end users to have a good experience. So, we have a lot of things in common, and it, uh, can really lead to fruitful collaboration on the future experiences that we create for them.
And some of the most exciting things about studying IT experiences at Microsoft is how many people they affect. When you really break it down, there may be millions of IT admins who are using our tools, and, from that, hundreds of millions of end users who are affected by them. So, making sure that Microsoft administrative experiences work is crucial in making sure that those hundreds of millions of people are efficient at work.
TEEVAN: So, what makes a great IT organization?
BRODSKY: Oh, so, a great IT organization is one that is really a silent IT organization. Um, we hear this a lot from IT admins across the board. If you hear a lot from your IT organization, that means something’s not going well. Another analogy that I—I like to make, and maybe this is a little cliché to go to a sports analogy, but a good IT organization is kind of like the goalie in a soccer game. You know, they can’t necessarily win the game for you, but they can certainly lose the game for you. So, an IT organization, if it’s functioning well, if it’s a—an efficient organization, you really don’t see or hear much of what they’re doing, but they certainly are doing a ton.
TEEVAN: So, has the criteria for a good IT organization changed over the course of the past year? Um, you know, there are clearly new challenges that they’re dealing with.
BRODSKY: There’s certainly new challenges. You know, a lot of them have to do with how they’re able to support their end users, and it really depends on the type of organization. One of the benefits of the team that I work on at Microsoft is we really care about IT experiences across the board, so we don’t just focus on our larger enterprise customers or on schools or on, um, small businesses. We want to make sure that the tools work for everybody. So, really, depending on the business, the criteria have changed, right? And one of the major ones is how IT organizations are able to support their end users. So, some things still work well, right? Um, if the organization was able to deploy most of their solutions in the cloud, support has gone surprisingly well over the last year, right? They’re still able to support remotely. When it comes to things like hardware and on-premise servers and things like that, it becomes significantly more difficult. So, IT organizations and some IT admins were the essential workers who were, you know, back in the workplace, um, firsthand. And when it came to supporting some workers who were, you know, significantly further away remote from the office, that was certainly a challenge that has come up.
TEEVAN: Uh, you know, in many ways, IT admins have been real heroes this past year. You know, they’ve really—they are who have enabled us all to work even though we can’t go into the workplace. I can’t imagine that this would have even been possible 10 years ago, and all of the information workers, you know, would have had to have been furloughed or laid off. I know the sorts of changes that we’ve seen tend to be very planful, like, these big shifts. How have people enabled us to do it so quickly?
BRODSKY: You know, lots of hard work and long hours. Uh, you know, when we’ve spoken to some organizations that really had to sacrifice a lot in this switch—you know, to give kind of a— I’ll give kind of a tough example that we’ve heard. You know, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we spoke with a few smaller organizations that did choose to lay off a majority of their organization because they didn’t have the technology to enable them to work from home, right? Um, particularly, uh, what jumps out to mind was a call center we spoke with on the East Coast. I think they were New Jersey-based. They had to lay off over 200 people because they were not able to provide them with voice over IP software at home in order to make those calls and to provide them with laptops that would work. So, uh, you know, that’s a really hard thing to hear. You know, on the other hand, we’ve spoken with organizations that really didn’t have much trouble. And, you know, the timing, as you mentioned, 10 to 15 years ago, probably wouldn’t have worked. Um, you know, a ton of organizations were mid-rollout of Teams, right? And, um, this switch forced them to roll out Teams much more rapidly. And that rollout for most larger organizations went pretty successfully from what we understand. We spoke with an IT director at Comcast, actually, who made it clear to us that, yes, they had to buckle down and roll out Teams to a much wider population than they expected, but that it worked well and that they were happy with it and that it was, you know, actually ended up being beneficial to their business because a rollout typically would have taken, um, you know, years, and they were done within in months.
TEEVAN: So, have we learned anything enduring from having to make these changes overnight that will help us with them in the future, even when they’re not so emergency-based?
BRODSKY: In terms of what would lead to a successful organization, I think always having business continuity plans and making sure that you are able to make drastic changes and provide a more inclusive workplace where people can work from home or can work in different geolocations, I think, is really important, you know. So, having that ability—so, the organizations that had that at a very low level were more successful than organizations that didn’t have that at all, right? And so being able to plan ahead of time, I think, um, that’s really helpful.
TEEVAN: So, some of that is being proactive about the digital transformation, too, and having the functionality already there made it easier.
BRODSKY: Certainly. Certainly. And some of that functionality, you know, it’s still—well, let me take a step back here. Maybe, uh, so even certain schools that we spoke with, you know, struggled to really move into this fully remote environment because they lost a lot of their student workers who would have been kind of help desk or would have been, uh, work-study students who provided certain support, right? And so, those IT organizations, you know, specifically at the schools, were able to cope and had these plans in place and had, you know, the ability for remote learning, but maybe not quite for the remote support. So, I think that there are elements that have changed there, you know, maybe, uh, making sure that you really cover all the bases of what a remote workplace would look like.
TEEVAN: Yeah, I’m interested in diving into remote support a little, too. I have four kids, and with the four kids online and me, uh, my husband’s been our tech support, and it’s been awesome. Um, he actually did this huge internet upgrade at home right before the pandemic, and I was very angry at him for—for doing this [LAUGHS], and I ended up very grateful. Um, do you have a sense for how people are dealing with the problems as they arise working from home?
BRODSKY: That’s not an uncommon experience. We are hearing parents are now, you know, functionally the IT admins for classrooms, for schools. And that’s something that we are, you know, rapidly trying to fix and work on, make sure that these IT experiences that we provide, that we build, are accessible to people who may not have an IT education or may not have a technical background but are still able to make sure that students are, you know, have email addresses working, that students are able to access their lesson plans, things like that. So, really almost democratizing the IT space is something that we’ve been focusing on.
[MUSIC BREAK]
TEEVAN: I know, uh, security threats have increased a lot this past year, as well. What can you tell us about that?
BRODSKY: Oh, certainly. Uh, so, one of my partner teams is the security research organization, and they’ve been publishing research on information coming from security admins and security operators at these organizations, and phishing threats have increased significantly. It may be the fact that people are just so much more attached to checking email and being on their computer that, you know, this is an opportunity for those threats to come in, but particularly phishing has been a huge concern. And so, security teams have had to adopt and enable new functionality to really combat that.
TEEVAN: Yeah, I thought that phishing data was super interesting ’cause at first blush, it actually wasn’t obvious to me why we’d see an increase in phishing campaigns tied to working from home. Uh, what are some of the things that make working from home, you know, more vulnerable to various security threats?
BRODSKY: Well, when all your communication is digital, there’s certainly just more opportunity for the threats to break through, right? That’s one. The other thing is, people are using home networks, which may not be as secure as using the corporate network at their organization. So, these are certainly things that come up. So, home network, the increased communication, and also some folks who may not have had quite the level of—or experience with digital communication now having to quickly learn on the job and have to—take a phishing threat, for example—um, having to sort through a ton of emails in the morning and make sure that that one threat that looks like it’s coming from your HR organization is actually coming from your HR org and not from somebody who’s phishing. Some of the most important things that IT admins and security organizations are dealing with right now is really educating their end users on how to use new technology and how to be safe. And that’s something where organizations are employing their own tools and everybody has their own system of learning and their own system of training. And that’s something that I see as being a—a difficulty in the future, is really how do we make sure that that learning and training happens quickly so that if, hopefully not, but if there’s another pandemic or event like this, how we can train people quickly, how people can adopt the software or the technology that they need in order to work and stay afloat, how we can do that quickly so we don’t face situations where organizations are laying off people or, you know, forced to perform poorly for a significant amount of time while everybody comes up to speed.
TEEVAN: Yeah. So, you mentioned home networks and I alluded to the challenges we had with our home network, as well. Like, it doesn’t really seem like our infrastructure is necessarily set up even to be connecting everyone to be working from home. Like, all the big pipes are going into the—
BRODSKY: Mm-hmm.
TEEVAN: —big businesses. What have you seen, uh, happening with connectivity over the past year?
BRODSKY: Oh, connectivity is the No. 1 issue that IT admins are dealing with on a regular basis. And in many cases, there’s nothing they can do about it, right? If they have their, um, end users, um, their information workers, who are in maybe more rural or, um, areas that don’t quite have the same infrastructure, you know, that’s something that they really can’t deal with. Um, there are certain people who can only be online for a few hours a day, right? So, network connectivity and speed is the No. 1 issue that’s been coming out from IT admins during this.
TEEVAN: Have you, um, seen either IT or security challenges evolve over the course of the past year? I mean, I know that connectivity was a huge problem right at the beginning. Has that gotten better, or is it still as big a challenge?
BRODSKY: I think connectivity is still one of those things that’s a huge challenge. The other things that have changed is kind of hardware, office setups. Those types of things were a major challenge. And, really, you know, when we first sent out surveys, I think we turned around some research within the first few weeks of the pandemic, and hardware and office setup was one of the top issues then, and I don’t think that’s quite as much of an issue, talking to admins now. You know, at a higher level, things that have changed over time is how IT budgets and the business have been affected. You know, we at first were made aware that close to two-thirds of IT budgets were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and most of those would be decreasing budgets. I think over time, we’ve heard that now that’s not the case. Um, especially at maybe some of the more cloud-enabled organizations, we’re hearing that budgets are staying the same if not IT budgets increasing while other budgets may be cut back. IT is, you know, clearly a—a much more important piece of the infrastructure that needs to stay up.
TEEVAN: Uh, so, as we start moving back to the workplace, do you think there’s gonna be some new challenges that are gonna come up?
BRODSKY: For IT admins, certainly. I think that they’re gonna have to, you know, deal with, um, kind of that in-person, help-desk element again, um, which they may have not had to deal with for a while. I know that personally I—I went into the help desk at Microsoft and spoke with a seemingly very frustrated, uh, IT admin, and I let him know, you know, “This is what I do. I study your frustrations.” So, you know, he was a little nicer after that. But I certainly think that there’s gonna be a huge volume of issues that are right now not being reported that will be reported as soon as folks are back in the office.
TEEVAN: Are there things companies should be doing to get ahead of things so they sort of don’t get caught behind the transition?
BRODSKY: Uh, they could be investing in making sure that devices are working, that infrastructure’s working in the offices, things like, you know, we mentioned network connectivity, all of those things, because there is—there is a worry that, you know, whenever there’s a major change, there will be problems. And making sure that that volume of problem is something that’s manageable for the IT admin, that’s really important.
TEEVAN: What are you most worried about looking forward?
BRODSKY: I don’t know if I—I’m necessarily worried about them, but the things that I’m paying attention to is how much of IT is being outsourced from organizations. We hear a lot from kind of the higher-level, um, IT directors and people like that about outsourcing IT, outsourcing major pieces of IT, and just how that’s gonna end up affecting organizations. Obviously, that might come with a bit of job loss at the organization itself. But, you know, what technologies will be needed and what that will look like, um, on a large scale as how much, um, IT will be outsourced. Along with that, you know, we’ve seen the IT organizations—both titles and skills needed—are changing rapidly, right? And so IT organizations are dealing with, “How do we make sure that the people that we’re hiring have the right skills and have the right skills that we’ll need in five years and not just right now?” Right? And so lots of IT organizations are dealing with education and learning, you know, on the job. What can we do to make sure that our more senior IT admins are staying current? Since the technology is evolving much more rapidly than people, we need to make sure that folks are still, you know, getting the appropriate training and retaining the right skills.
TEEVAN: Has, um, what you’ve learned through your research and the research that you’ve read changed your own work practices?
BRODSKY: Um, oh, yeah. I mean, maybe, uh, just mentioned the way that I spoke with the help desk person on campus, on Microsoft campus. But, you know, I’ve certainly been more conscious of how much time I’m spending in front of my machine and talking to the folks on my team, you know, really trying to build in healthy habits around meetings and—and, you know, Zoom and Teams usage, things like that, because I know that there’s a lot of fatigue that can come from that. So, I’ve been changing my practice personally around that. I’m also a bit more cautious about bringing new things onto, for example, the laptop that I’m using at home. I’m not adopting new software that may put me at risk, right? I am incredibly dependent on a very singular piece of technology here, right? In the past, if it had failed, I could still go to meetings. I could still collaborate and work on the things that I would need to. Here, uh, working from home, I don’t have that luxury. I—I really am dependent on my—my technology.
TEEVAN: Well, great. Thank you very much, Matt. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We hope you’ll continue to join us as we explore the new future of work. You can learn a lot more about the research that we discussed today at aka.ms/newfutureofwork. Also, be sure to subscribe for new episodes wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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