This story reflects updated guidance from Microsoft Digital—it was first published in May 2024.
Thanks to our strong relationships with our works councils, we’re receiving valuable feedback that we’re using to improve our products while also deploying them faster and more fully to our employees.
How are we doing this?
By addressing compliance requirements raised by our works councils early in the process and by working with them in more collaborative ways. In fact, our relationship with our works councils has grown so strong that we—Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization—have formalized using their feedback to strengthen our products.
This relationship was particularly helpful when we recently deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot—they agreed to take a position of conditional tolerance on the product, which meant they allowed it to be used in their countries under certain restrictions while they reviewed it. This allowed us to both quickly deploy it across the company and to give them the time they need to assess the product to see if they want to block certain features or provide suggestions on how we can improve it.
How works councils work
Our works councils serve as the voice of our employees in some geographies, advocating for their rights and interests within the workplace. As AI technology grows in influence across industries, these internal organizations, and labor in general, are at the forefront of discussions regarding the implications of AI for the modern workplace.
While our relationship with our works councils has always been cooperative and collaborative, how we engaged with our works councils for product reviews has evolved over time from impromptu and inconsistent engagements to more strategic and programmatic opportunities for feedback that can improve our products for the benefit of all our customers.
Irina Chemerys, a global program manager overseeing the intake process for works councils at Microsoft Digital, is among those who sought to streamline the approval process for new technology across works council countries from around the globe.
Chemerys proposed a global approach using a single request form and platform for works councils worldwide to communicate with Microsoft Digital, product groups, legal, HR, and others at the company. This streamlined communication across the board and facilitated collaboration among all works councils, allowing smaller countries to take advantage of resources from larger ones and creating a more cohesive global community. The unified approach significantly improved coordination, collaboration, and, importantly, trust among works councils.
“We built this standardized community, and we were able to discuss Copilot as an AI technology and how we should proceed with this in a globalized setting,” Chemerys says.
When it came time to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot products, this process was in place and ready to help the works councils quickly evaluate it. “This helped us navigate the tolerance phase that Germany introduced not long after,” Chemerys says.
Germany opens tolerance phase for Copilot
Our German works council initially resisted allowing AI technology development and deployment, raising a number of concerns about how Copilot was responding in ways that could be interpreted as evaluating individual employee performance or making impermissible inferences about individual employees without the data to support those inferences. Building trust with the works councils was the first step in alleviating concerns and building a collaborative approach to AI technologies.
“In my conversations with works councils, I would emphasize that AI is akin to a speeding train—the technology is evolving faster than we can review all aspects of it,” Chemerys says. “Our best course of action is to prepare and steer its direction.”
The country’s works council eventually agreed to a tolerance phase for Copilot and other AI tools, with an emphasis on the need for controlled deployment rather than attempting to halt inevitable technological advancement.
“From a legal and ethical perspective, generative AI is a tool that could be used to establish performance and behavior control in a company,” says Carsten Schleicher, chairman of the Microsoft works council in Germany. “But we don’t give resistance or feedback because we don’t want AI—we want to address the potential impact of a tool.”
The Copilot might, if prompted, generate a summary and ranking of employee performance during a meeting. That kind of assessment fell outside the aims of our Microsoft AI principles. Recognizing the importance of getting these issues right, our engineers engaged directly with our works councils to understand their feedback and identify ways to address it in the product.
“Another market-wide concern is the potential for AI tools to hallucinate false information it generates without a clear source,” Schleicher says. “AI represents an exciting evolution in our interaction with computers, yet the ultimate decision-making should always remain in human hands, ensuring thoughtful analysis of the insights provided by AI.”
Some members of works councils were early adopters who took part in the first Copilot deployment wave, and as such, they had time to get to know the tool by trying it out and by asking questions during regular meetings. Their feedback was channeled to the product engineering team. This early access helped the works councils quickly reach an agreement that the deployment of Copilot could continue and led to product improvements that will benefit all our customers.
France agrees to the tolerance phase
Because of how fast our AI products are evolving, France became one of the countries where we had to shift the typical way we work with our works councils.
“We didn’t have all the answers regarding what the impact of Copilot would be,” says Juliette Reigner, a manager of works councils in France. “Usually, in a consultation process, we are required to have all the details—but AI requires us to be more agile and flexible in our approach than ever before.”
Our works council in France decided to also implement a tolerance phase that was more flexible and innovative than usual.
Microsoft France asked the councils to nominate people to be part of a new technology committee. The committee organized weekly sessions to examine new technologies such as Copilot, with council members having deep involvement in testing new technologies.
“We suggested that works council members be part of pre-deployment testing and product planning to be part of innovation, and to better understand the impact of new technologies like Copilot,” says Edith Dubuisson, a senior business program manager in Microsoft Digital who manages our relationship with the Microsoft works council in France. “Copilot is not proactive in what it does—it will not perform tasks that it is not tasked with and has limitations in place to protect workers rights and well-being.”
Final consultations with French works councils happened in February 2024. The consultation results? A green light from the council to continue with Copilot development and deployment.
After Germany and France were able to get to a state of tolerance, other countries followed quickly with the Netherlands being the last to agree to tolerate the rollout after its works council had the time to review its potential impacts on our employees in that country.
In the end, our works councils continue to be a source of invaluable feedback in this new fast-moving AI era; playing a role that transcends mere oversight and instead embraces proactive engagement. For us, works councils serve as trusted partners in product development and innovation, spotting potential issues, and opportunities.
“If the councils raise concerns about a feature or capability, it’s likely our customers will share those concerns,” Chemerys says. “By capturing their feedback in early stages, we can design better products, so we have shifted to thinking about works councils as competitive advantages and co-innovators.”
Here are some tips for working with your works councils as you deploy AI products like Microsoft 365 Copilot at your companies:
- Works councils can play a powerful role in driving digital transformation and representing employees’ interests in the new era of AI. They can be co-innovators, early adopters, champions, and business partners, instead of showstoppers.
- Enabling your works councils to be early adopters can improve your partnership with them, especially if you take their feedback seriously.
- Offer training and education to your works councils members to help them address their concerns and empower them to deeply understand the product or service you want their help to deploy.
- Trust can only be established if you ensure works councils are involved early, and if you are fully transparent with them.
- Get our tips for partnering with your works councils.
- Read our story on how we deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot internally at Microsoft.
- Learn how we’re getting the most of generative AI with good governance.
- Visit our content suite where we share the story of how we’re deploying AI internally at Microsoft.
