A Deep Dive on Achieving AI readiness in the Digital Workplace

How can we make the most of our existing digital workplace tools today to prepare for a truly smart digital workplace augmented by AI and automation?

AI readiness is about more than deploying cutting-edge tools or integrating generative AI models; it is the ability of an organisation to reimagine how it operates, solves problems, and delivers value using the transformative potential of AI. It requires a foundation of connected systems, a workforce equipped with the right skills, and a culture that fosters agility and experimentation.

Without this readiness, organisations risk underwhelming returns on their AI investments, relegating transformative technologies to superficial use cases like automating meeting notes or summarising emails.

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The challenge lies in moving beyond individual productivity gains and leveraging AI to address complex, high-value opportunities. But many organisations are hindered by fragmented systems, entrenched silos, and underutilised digital platforms. These barriers often reflect years of "transformation debt" - the unfulfilled potential of past technology investments that promised revolutionary change but failed to deliver due to a lack of strategic alignment and adoption.

One unassuming, underutilised tool in the pursuit of AI readiness is the digital workplace. As one of the few platforms where all employees connect, collaborate, and share knowledge, the digital workplace holds the key to unlocking AI's full potential. But it must evolve. It cannot remain a repository of PowerPoints and corporate comms; it must become a dynamic hub for collaboration, automation, and insight generation. AI readiness begins here, with a commitment to building smarter systems, leveraging existing tools, and empowering people at every level to innovate and adapt.

Achieving AI readiness in organisations is a multi-dimensional challenge that spans the organisational, team, and individual levels. It is not simply a matter of deploying new technologies; it requires aligning culture, skills, and workflows with the opportunities presented by AI.

The most commonly used platform, Microsoft 365 (M365), offers a powerful foundation for building this readiness across these layers when augmented by AI capabilities like co-pilots, Power Platform, and Azure AI services. So let’s use this as our example of what is possible today.

Increasing Organisational Readiness

At the organisational level, AI readiness begins with a strategic alignment of goals, tools, and processes. Leaders must foster a culture that prioritises data-driven decision-making, automation, and continuous improvement.

Working on Org-wide Knowledge Basics

For many leaders and managers, M365 is mostly a set of individual productivity tools. But with some org-wide basics in place, and a digitally skilled leadership and management layer, the opportunities for combining individual digital workplace tools is limited only by your imagination.

Individual components include:

• Federate / connect / optimise knowledge stocks and flows: AI relies on clean, accessible, and comprehensive data to provide meaningful insights and enable advanced decision-making. Federating knowledge with tools like SharePoint and Viva Topics ensures that information is stored in structured, consistent formats and is easily accessible across the organisation. This step eliminates silos, making the data-rich environments required for AI applications possible. It also ensures that AI-driven insights are based on reliable and up-to-date information, which is critical for trust and accuracy. From here, it is possible to unlock the vast potential of knowledge stores by creating an LLM in Azure AI services, that can be trained on digital workplace content.

• Automate workflows: Using Power Automate for common workflows creates a more efficient and scalable foundation for integrating AI capabilities. By eliminating repetitive manual tasks, organisations free up employee capacity for higher-value activities like strategic planning or creative problem-solving areas where AI tools can assist further. Automation also helps standardise processes, which reduces variability and improves data quality, both of which are essential for training AI systems and ensuring reliable outcomes.

• Develop real-time awareness: Real-time awareness via Viva Insights and Power BI dashboards is critical for building an agile and responsive organisation. AI thrives in dynamic environments where rapid decision-making is necessary. These tools provide actionable insights into employee engagement, productivity, and resource allocation, creating a feedback loop that enables organisations to adapt quickly. Furthermore, real-time data feeds are essential for advanced AI systems like predictive analytics and decision-support tools, as they ensure that the models work with the most current information.

With just these three components of M365, enhanced by the platform’s AI and Automation tools, an organisation could:

• Streamline the onboarding process and create a system for continuous learning to upskill employees and improve retention.

  • For example: use SharePoint and Viva Topics to store onboarding materials, training documents, role-specific knowledge, and FAQs. AI-powered topic discovery ensures employees can quickly find relevant content tailored to their roles. Implement Power Automate to create a seamless onboarding workflow, including task assignments, welcome emails, and reminders for compliance training. Automate notifications for managers to complete feedback loops and ensure timely follow-ups. Use Viva Insights and Power BI dashboards to monitor onboarding progress, training completion rates, and employee engagement during the first 90 days. Insights allow HR teams to address gaps and improve the process.

  • Going a step further, use an LLM to create summaries of key areas of the digital workplace to help new joiners and those moving teams get a clear understanding of a function, product, service, scope of content, training material.

• Ensure organisational compliance with regulations and proactively mitigate risks through automated workflows and real-time tracking.

  • For example: use SharePoint and Viva Topics to store and manage compliance documentation, regulatory updates, and risk management guidelines. Use Power Automate to schedule recurring compliance checks, send reminders for audit deadlines, and trigger alerts for missing documentation or overdue tasks. Leverage Power BI dashboards to provide leadership with a live overview of compliance statuses, risks flagged, and areas requiring immediate attention. Monitor patterns to anticipate future risks.