Spotlight On... AI Transformation & the Frontier Firm Playbook
Introduction AI transformation is not a single launch – it’s a multi‑phase journey that blends strategy, change management, and measurable business outcomes. The Frontier Firm Playbook captures how leading organizations move from AI pilots to pervasive impact by aligning use cases to business value, scaling responsibly, and building momentum with the right metrics. This article shares how to apply that playbook in practice – and how Viva Glint and Viva Pulse together serve as the employee listening and insights backbone of the transformation, capturing signals of readiness, trust, adoption, and impact that usage telemetry alone cannot reveal. Pulse enables rapid, scenario‑specific feedback early and often, while Glint provides the enterprise‑grade analytics, benchmarking, and trend analysis required to govern and scale AI transformation. Why Follow the Frontier Firm Playbook? Frontier Firms are those that consistently turn AI’s potential into a durable competitive advantage. What sets them apart is how they manage the transformation: Intentional sequencing: They sequence initiatives from foundational readiness to pilot-scenario quick wins, to scaled adoption. Measuring what matters: They go beyond raw deployment counts – tracking usage, behavior change, and business outcomes together. Building trust & capability: They invest in upskilling, clear communication, and responsible AI guardrails to foster confidence and competence. Continuous feedback loops: They continuously listen to employees (and customers), using feedback to refine the program as it evolves. Crucially, Frontier Firms treat AI adoption as an organization-wide people transformation, not just a tech rollout. HR: Co-Owner of the Journey In successful AI transformations, HR is a named co‑owner of the Frontier Firm journey alongside IT and business leadership. That’s because lasting AI-powered change depends on new behaviors, skills, and cultural shifts at scale – domains where HR excels: Workforce transformation: AI adoption reshapes roles, skills, incentives, manager routines, and culture. HR functions as the strategic enabler for these workforce changes, ensuring people are prepared and supported. Skills and enablement: HR drives role-based training, upskilling, and change communications, so employees feel confident and know why and how to use AI. Employee listening & trust: HR uses Viva Glint and Pulse to gauge sentiment, trust, and pain points, giving leaders evidence to steer the change effectively. Bottom line: AI transformation is as much about people as technology. Empowering HR to co-lead – backed by robust employee insights – greatly increases the odds of success. Viva Glint & Pulse: A Layered Listening Model Frontier Firms use a layered listening approach. Viva Pulse captures fast, situational feedback during early rollout and experimentation, while Viva Glint consolidates sentiment, comments, and outcomes into a durable insight layer that leaders use to steer, govern, and scale AI adoption. Different data sets answer different questions: Telemetry (e.g., Copilot usage stats and license dispersion) shows what is happening – who is using AI, how often, in which apps. Business outcomes (KPIs like productivity or quality metrics) show what changed as a result of AI. Glint and Pulse measure why those results are happening in a way to guide direct action to address the feedback – revealing human factors like confidence, trust, friction points, and enablement gaps. Simply put, Glint and Pulse track workforce sentiment and adoption motivators throughout the AI journey, allowing organizations to continuously check in with employees and to leverage advanced analytics to uncover key insights. This real-time input highlights challenges or wins that metrics alone can't provide—such as identifying whether low usage stems from inadequate training, apprehension about AI, or workflow mismatch. By using Glint and Pulse, HR and leaders gain a trusted, central gauge of organizational readiness and sentiment. This allows them to address issues (e.g., low confidence or ethical concerns) proactively and to celebrate successes (e.g., improved productivity and morale) with credible data. The Frontier Firm Phases & What to Measure Successful AI transformation follows a deliberate, phased path. Frontier Firms progress through three stages: Foundation, Expansion, and Frontier. Across all phases, Frontier Firms follow a consistent measurement journey: early readiness feedback (Pulse), deep sentiment and trend analysis (Glint), and usage/outcome correlation (Viva Insights + Copilot reports). Phase 1: Foundation Goal: Ensure the organization is prepared — strategically and culturally — to adopt AI. Frontier Firms start by aligning AI scenarios to business priorities and establishing clear guardrails. Just as importantly, they assess whether employees understand why AI matters and feel confident using it. What to measure: Employee confidence and trust in AI Enterprise cultural readiness Awareness of priority AI scenarios and enablement coverage Awareness of strategic mission aligned to AI investments Early signals of hesitation, risk, or uneven preparedness HR’s role: HR co‑owns this phase by shaping the change narrative, segmenting the workforce for targeted enablement, and ensuring managers are equipped to lead adoption. Phase 2: Expansion Goal: Prove value quickly in a small number of high‑impact scenarios. In this phase, Frontier Firms focus on 2–4 pilot scenarios that demonstrate tangible benefits and build confidence across the organization. What to measure: Copilot usage depth and repeat use in pilot groups Self‑reported time savings and quality improvements Employee feedback on usefulness, accuracy, and friction HR’s role: HR partners with business leaders to reinforce new habits through role‑based learning, manager routines, and peer sharing. Phase 3: Frontier Goal: Embed AI into everyday work and sustain momentum responsibly. Once value is proven, Frontier Firms scale adoption with consistent enablement, governance, and continuous listening. What to measure: Adoption patterns by role, team, and region Links between AI usage, employee experience, and strategic business outcomes Ongoing trust, confidence, and enablement effectiveness HR’s role: HR helps embed AI into role expectations, capability models, and performance conversations, ensuring adoption is sustainable and inclusive. Why this matters Across all three phases, telemetry shows what's happening — but employee sentiment explains why. By pairing usage and outcome data with workforce sentiment, Frontier Firms reduce transformation risk, accelerate value realization, and scale AI with confidence. Your AI Transformation Measurement Stack To manage an AI transformation, you will draw on multiple sources of data and insights. Viva Glint and Pulse sit at the center of this measurement strategy, complemented by usage analytics and workplace analytics across Viva. The table below summarizes how each tool or signal contributes: Measurement Tool / Signal Role in AI Transformation (What It Captures) Viva Glint and Pulse – Copilot Survey Templates Employee sentiment and readiness. Pulse is typically used for early and recurring checks tied to specific Copilot/AI Transformation moments, while Glint is used to aggregate, analyze, and correlate sentiment with usage and outcomes over time. Purpose-built surveys templates for Readiness, Adoption, Impact can be deployed in Viva Glint or Pulse designed to capture baseline and ongoing sentiment on AI: e.g., awareness, confidence, trust, perceived usefulness, and enablement effectiveness. Reveals why people are or are not adopting. M365 Copilot usage & adoption analytics Usage telemetry. Dashboard and admin reports showing who is using Copilot, how often, and in which scenarios (when available). Key metrics include active users, active days per user, and usage trends by team or role. Shows what AI usage looks like across the org. Viva Glint + Insights – Workplace Patterns report Work pattern changes. Analyzes how work habits are shifting as AI is adopted: meeting hours, focus time, after-hours workload, cross-collaboration patterns, etc. Compare teams using Copilot vs. those not using it to see if work is getting streamlined (e.g., fewer meetings, more focus time). Viva Glint + Copilot – Employee Experience Outcomes report Experience vs. adoption link. Combines the above data to see if higher AI adoption correlates with improved employee experience. For example, do people who use Copilot feel they “can do my best work” more often? Is workload perception changing? Understanding sentiment with Copilot also helps us uncover: -high adoption but low satisfaction signaling, e.g., the need for more enablement -low usage/low satisfaction signaling, e.g., the need to explore deeper barriers and root causes Viva Glint + Engage - Ambient Signals report (in development) Integrated telemetry + outcomes + sentiment. In development: advanced analytics to link behavioral data with outcomes and sentiment in real time. This can pinpoint moments that matter – e.g., correlating a spike in AI usage with a boost in productivity or identifying where low trust feedback coincides with low adoption. Viva Glint - Employee Feedback agent (in development) Continuous listening at scale. In development: an on-demand, conversational feedback tool enabling quick pulse checks on specific topics. For instance, a manager could ask their team about a new Copilot feature, and an AI-driven summary of responses would feed into the program's next steps. Together, these tools provide a 360° view of your AI initiative. But it is the voice of your employees, the qualitative “why” layer as measured by Glint and Pulse, that gives context to the quantitative numbers. It ensures you do not misinterpret raw data and helps HR and leaders make informed adjustments (whether that's more training, tweaking a use case, or communicating success stories to build confidence). Example 90‑Day Plan To illustrate how all these pieces come together, here is an example of a 90-day rollout plan that can be piloted with a subset of the employee population before rolling out function –specific or enterprise-wide initiatives for kicking off the Frontier Firm journey: Weeks 0–4: Awareness & Readiness Deploy short readiness and expectation surveys using Viva Pulse to capture early sentiment on AI confidence, trust, and perceived value. Use Viva Insights to establish baseline Copilot usage and adoption patterns. Segment early adopters to inform a targeted pilot rollout strategy. Set clear adoption and experience success metrics and develop enablement materials. Weeks 5-8: Pilot, Learn, and Adjust Launch pilots with defined scenarios and success criteria. Continue Pulse check‑ins to monitor usefulness, friction, and enablement gaps. Analyze sentiment heatmaps and early resistance signals to refine the pilot approach. Begin correlating early sentiment with usage using Copilot Employee Experience Outcomes data where available. Weeks 9-12: Scale with Confidence Conduct Viva Glint engagement or Copilot Impact surveys to measure sustained confidence, trust, and enablement. Correlate Glint sentiment insights with usage and Workplace Patterns data to identify what is driving (or blocking) adoption. Identify success stories and positive adoption signals to amplify across the organization. Establish a recurring measurement rhythm using Glint and Pulse as the systems of record for ongoing governance. Throughout these 90 days, the insights from Glint, Pulse and other analytics are crucial – they ensure you’re not just checking technical metrics but truly understanding how employees are experiencing the change. Early feedback helps you iterate the program for greater success in subsequent waves. “What Good Looks Like”: Key Success Signals How will you know if your AI transformation is on track? Here are some leading indicators that Frontier Firms watch for: Adoption: ~60–70% of target users actively using AI at least weekly by the second month, with the average frequency of use per user rising steadily. This shows not only broad uptake but deeper habitual use. Employee Experience: Improvement in employee survey ratings on items like “I can do my best work” or “I have the tools and support I need,” indicating that people feel more effective and supported with AI. Productivity Gains: Measurable time savings in key workflows – for example, a 10–20% reduction in routine meeting time for pilot teams, faster completion of tasks like document preparation or case notes, etc. Quality Improvements: Signs of higher quality output in pilot areas, such as fewer revision cycles required or fewer escalations and errors in AI-assisted processes. Confidence & Trust: Increasing user-reported accuracy ratings and confidence in AI recommendations over time, reflecting growing trust as the technology proves its value. Sustainability: A growing and active community of champions, an expanding library of shared best-practice prompts, and a visible improvement backlog for the AI program. These all indicate that the initiative is building self-sustaining momentum beyond the initial push. These metrics should be interpreted in combination. For instance, a jump in usage is encouraging – but if experience or trust scores drop, it flags a risk (perhaps people feel pressure to use AI without support). That's why Glint’s qualitative insights are so vital to pair with quantitative metrics. Frontier Firms watch both, ensuring increased AI adoption also means employees feel more effective and empowered, not frustrated or threatened. Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them) Even with a solid plan, there are missteps to guard against. Here are a few common pitfalls in AI transformation – and how Frontier Firms avoid them: Staying vigilant about these pitfalls will help ensure your AI initiative delivers sustained results. In particular, never underestimate the people side – unaddressed fears or lack of support can derail even the best technology. By measuring and responding to the human signals, you mitigate transformation risks (e.g., catching early signs of fatigue or compliance concerns) and strengthen your case for scaling AI responsibly. Resources Embarking on the Frontier Firm journey requires both strategic vision and tactical execution. Here are some resources to help you move forward: Frontier Firm Playbook – Detailed guidance on AI transformation patterns, example scenarios, and maturity stages (Microsoft’s playbook) Frontier Firm Scenarios – A library of industry-specific AI use cases to spark ideas By following the Frontier Firm Playbook – and leveraging Glint and Pulse to keep a finger on the pulse of your organization – you can turn AI from a promising experiment into a sustainable, enterprise-wide capability. The result is not just successful AI adoption, but a more engaged, empowered workforce ready to innovate continuously. Good luck on your journey to becoming a Frontier Firm!
360 Feedback - feedback provider enquiries
Is there a limit of the max number of feedback providers (eg. peers, colleagues) that can be invited to response to the 360 feedback survey? I am aware that subject is allowed to invite more feedback provider. Can a manager invite more feedback provider on behalf of subject? If yes, how to configure this?Spotlight on… Glint and Pulse: A Year in Review Volume 1, Edition 3, December 2025
2025 has been a remarkable year for Microsoft Viva Glint and Viva Pulse—made possible by you, our customers. Your partnership, insights, and trust have shaped every step of our journey. Together, we delivered transformative integrations, reached new engagement milestones, and saw meaningful outcomes across the organizations we serve. This year, we introduced enhancements that not only strengthened the foundations of continuous listening but helped deliver more robust, actionable insights for organizations by deepening the connection across the Microsoft ecosystem – something we will continue to build upon. Furthermore, these advancements reflect the powerful momentum we can achieve through partnership with our customers. Starting Strong: No Downtime In early 2025, we announced the elimination of planned downtime for Viva Glint updates – a significant reliability win. Traditionally, updates meant 4–8 hours of system unavailability, disrupting survey-taking and reporting. With the new Zero Downtime Release (ZDR) process, updates became transparent, achieving ~99% availability for customers. Glint admins and end users no longer experience maintenance windows – a behind-the-scenes change that vastly improves continuity. Admin Self‑Service & Survey Experience Enhancements We enhanced admin self‑service to provide program owners with greater flexibility and improved efficiency. Additionally, updates were made to the survey experience to offer more data collection options and support better data quality. Here are some examples of features that were rolled out on the platform in 2025: Ability to manage attributes and hierarchies for more user data schema control. Controls to remove participants from results after cycle close—tightening data relevance. Cycle and user data management improvements, with controls to retain or remove identifiable information responsibly. Role clarity via the Viva Glint Tenant Administrator role in Microsoft Entra (dedicated permissions for admin center tasks and support) and the new Support User role for partners. Custom branding and persistent comment box in Glint surveys to allow for a more bespoke survey experience and encourage the provision of more actionable, insightful data. Pulse survey authoring delegation and large/dynamic audience capabilities introducing greater survey admin flexibility and reach. Identifiable and flexible end-date surveys in Pulse to allow for targeted pulsing and to support rolling data collection. Copilot survey templates available in Pulse, helping organizations measure AI transformation to drive ROI with consistent, research‑backed items with signals from these surveys seamlessly integrating into the Copilot Dashboard. Reporting Upgrades We took reporting beyond the dashboard and are continuing to focus on export improvements into 2026. We also brought in valuable benchmark comparisons to the platform this year: Team Summary export to editable PowerPoint—moved from static screenshots to fully editable content; widely adopted through private preview and broad availability. Executive Summary export and support for custom PPT templates are both now in private preview and will launch early next year. Global, Industry, Country & Regional benchmark suites are now available for use in the platform for all customers who opt in. All About Integrations... Glint Notifications & Teams In early 2025 we expanded Glint’s presence within Microsoft Teams, recognizing that for many managers and employees, Teams is the center of their workday. Now survey notifications, reminders, and nudges can appear directly in Teams chats and as rich adaptive cards, in addition to email. This “flow of work” integration has driven higher participation – customers report improved survey response rates when announcements pop up in Teams, where people are already collaborating. Managers also receive automated nudges via Teams, for instance a gentle reminder to share and discuss their team’s Glint results, or a prompt to follow up on an action plan. By meeting users where they are, we help busy teams close the feedback loop without relying solely on email. Glint & Pulse 2025 also saw the introduction of the new workflow allowing managers to launch a quick Pulse survey as a follow-up after reviewing their Glint engagement results. This closes the loop between less frequent engagement surveys and continuous listening: if Glint results identified, say, work-life balance as a concern, a manager could immediately send a targeted Pulse check-in on that topic to their team. Now organizations are empowered to move from insights to action faster than ever. In October 2025, we officially unified Viva Glint and Viva Pulse into a single offering. so that any customer with a Glint license automatically gets Viva Pulse as part of their subscription – at no additional cost. This change, essentially bundling the two products together, was driven by feedback and our belief that strategic engagement surveys (Glint) and agile pulse surveys (Pulse) are complementary tools for a healthy feedback strategy. Glint & Insights This broader Microsoft ecosystem integration has been a running theme, and last month, we achieved a major milestone by bringing Viva Glint data into Viva Insights and vice versa. A new Workplace Patterns report in Glint (developed in partnership with the Viva Insights team) allows HR and business leaders to overlay engagement survey results with collaboration metrics from Microsoft 365. For example, you can examine whether teams with consistently long working hours or excessive meeting load also show lower engagement in certain areas – connecting sentiment with behavioral data. Early adopters of this Glint–Insights integration have seen tremendous value. In fact, by the time of general release in Q4, we saw an 18% uptick in Glint-to-Insights data flows and a 32% uptick in Insights-to-Glint usage, as organizations embraced these combined insights to drive action. This integration is a great example of how Microsoft’s employee experience tools come together to provide holistic, data-driven narratives about the world of work. This month another extremely valuable analysis for Glint and Insights customers around AI transformation became available: the Copilot Employee Experience Outcomes Report highlights how Copilot usage correlates with stronger employee engagement and well‑being, showing that even small increases in usage can lead to measurable improvements in key experience outcomes. Copilot in Glint Another integration highlight from 2025 is around the continued investment and development of AI in the Glint platform. Throughout the year, the Glint team partnered with Microsoft 365 Copilot to add new AI capabilities, including expanded localization (70+ Glint-supported languages) so users can interact with Copilot in Glint in their preferred language. We also refined the Copilot experience with key quality improvements and a major model upgrade, delivering clearer, more accurate and faster responses. 2026 will see even more exciting Copilot developments in Glint. Copilot Highlights, a dashboard experience that assembles strengths, opportunities, and engagement trends at a glance, is now in private preview and will become available later next year. Streamlining Data Ingress & Egress In 2025, we began building Glint’s connection to Microsoft’s unified data platform, known as Microsoft Organizational Data Ingestion System (MODIS), and at the end of the year we kicked off our Glint MODIS private preview. MODIS streamlines how organizations bring HRIS data into Microsoft 365, reducing setup time and enabling consistent, secure data flows across Viva and beyond. For Glint, this unlocks faster onboarding, improved data quality, and a foundation for richer cross‑M365 insights. This will become available to all customers later in the year. Also related to our efforts to streamline data ingress/egress, the Raw Data Exports (RDE) API private preview will launch in 2026. This functionality will give customers more flexible, privacy‑aware access to Glint data for internal analytics and governance. Together, MODIS and RDE API represent the next phase of our integrations journey—modernizing data ingestion and export so customers can move from setup to insight even faster. Expanding Reach and Trust Alongside feature development, the team worked hard to make the products more scalable and accessible to organizations globally. In 2025 we expanded our service footprint with a new Australia Data Center coming online in September to better serve Asia-Pacific customers with in-region data residency. We also achieved Government Community Cloud (GCC-Moderate) compliance for Viva Glint in October, enabling U.S. public sector and regulated industry customers to use Glint in a compliant environment. These investments ensure that we can meet our customer's security, compliance, and performance needs everywhere in the world. Behind the scenes, the completion of the LinkedIn Glint to Viva Glint migration was another 2025 achievement. As of publication, 100% of all legacy Glint customers have migrated onto the Viva Glint platform. This was an effort spanning more than two years involving hundreds of customers, and its conclusion means all our customers are now on the latest and most extensible version of Glint, reaping the benefits of all new features. A huge thanks goes to our customers for partnering with us through that transition. With migration largely behind us and a unified platform, we can innovate even faster and serve everyone on a single, modern system. Building a Community of Feedback Champions A highlight of 2025 has been the growth of our customer community through the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) for Glint and Pulse. This year, over 40 new organizations enrolled in our customer advisory program – adding over 80 individual customer experts (HR leaders, program owners, and IT admins) to co-create with us. Through monthly feedback sessions, early feature previews, and direct line conversations, this community has influenced our roadmap and helped us test new features, integrations and analytics before broad release. Customers who have taken part in these engagement opportunities have had direct influence on many of the wins we celebrated above. We want to thank all our VCCP members for their partnership – your feedback is invaluable. If you aren't a VCCP member yet but are interested in joining to take part in future customer engagements, please fill out this form. And so as 2025 draws to a close, a big thank you to our customers for your trust and feedback that fuel our innovation. The successes of 2025 set a high bar, and we’re excited to build on this foundation. With new features on the horizon (from more Copilot capabilities to deeper analytics and beyond), 2026 is poised to be another leap forward. We remain committed to your success and to our partnership in creating a workplace where every voice drives impact. Here’s to the year that was, and to the journey ahead in empowering employee voice and engagement and driving AI transformation! Happy New Year – and thank you for being part of the Viva Glint and Pulse story.Maximize Your Viva Glint Experience with a Microsoft Partner
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