Manulife makes work easier, better, faster with existing cloud-led investments and Workday for Microsoft Teams

Smarter workspaces adapt and serve

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading global financial services and insurance provider with more than 38,000 global colleagues and 119,000 partner agents serving over 33 million customers in 2021. The company strives to make work easier, better, and faster by revolutionizing its existing tool stack and creating more seamless digital experiences for colleagues. To reduce email-dependent tasks, platform-specific workflows, and support desk interactions that interrupt the flow of work, the company focused on embedding more agile digital workspaces that do more while maximizing the value of its investment in the Microsoft Cloud.

“Our mission at Manulife is decisions made easier, lives made better,” says Linda Hayes, Product Owner, Employee Experience and Analytics at Manulife. “We live and breathe that with customers, but it starts with listening to our global colleagues.”

The drive to engage colleagues with beneficial tools that help automate tasks prompted a cross-functional team to collaborate on creative cloud strategies optimized for its existing Microsoft Cloud technology stack, including Microsoft 365. Workday is a leader in developing and delivering cloud-based human capital management solutions that help optimize workers’ efforts, and when it released the Workday for Microsoft Teams app, the teams recognized an opportunity. By coupling Microsoft Teams capabilities with Workday, they could deliver a more complete solution that would benefit all colleagues with reduced support desk interactions and fewer email- and platform-dependent workflows to manage essential tasks.

“Integrating tools to manage basic tasks, such as time off requests in Workday, eliminated the need to create a separate workplace experience,” says Hayes. “Now, the flow of work won’t get interrupted by switching platforms, and colleagues stay engaged in the tools they use to deliver value for our customers.”

Workday for Teams addresses feedback on existing task workflow processes and introduces more agile experiences in the tools colleagues prefer. It also maximizes the value of Manulife’s investments in cloud-first technology.

The right information at the right time

Manulife pinned Workday to the Teams application taskbar for easy access to the tool in the flow of work and to help colleagues find what they need quickly. Now, colleagues can access information and request time off with straightforward tasks and within the flow of work. Managers receive notifications and action approvals, and colleagues receive alerts about those approvals directly in Teams. The integration created a single source for colleagues to access data, automate routine tasks, and manage workplace benefits designed to help motivate and engage them alongside their existing work.

The company also uses Workday for Teams to deliver value from shared data across its applications, better understand colleague needs, and deliver more personalized experiences. And by removing the inefficiencies of signing in to different systems, finding and submitting forms, and exchanging emails, Manulife reduces activities that often spur the need for technical support.

“We analyze how many Workday Assistant transactions occur in Teams compared with the Workday browser assistant tool,” says Jennifer Smart, HR Employee Enablement Lead at Manulife. “We have about 4,000 to 5,000 unique Workday users per quarter, and 65 percent use Workday actions in Teams. Our colleagues have more self-service capabilities, and that’s deflecting support calls from our contact center.”

Seamless self-service

Manulife delivered a seamless Workday for Teams deployment to more than 38,000 colleagues. Its IT team worked proactively with Microsoft, Workday, and internal information security and compliance stakeholders to handle the risk reviews and approvals necessary to meet data compliance standards in the heavily regulated finance and insurance industry.

“The Workday for Teams integration is an excellent example of strong collaboration among our HR team, colleague experience group, administrators, and the risk team,” says Hayes. “Together with Microsoft and Workday, we had all the checks and balances in place to manage our security and risk requirements and prevent rollout delays or issues that affect adoption and satisfaction.”

By proactively committing to the same nimble information access and approval processes it sought to optimize for its colleagues with the Workday for Teams integration, Manulife helped simplify IT management and delivered a streamlined Workday experience for those who need to work from anywhere in a highly secure manner. The investment in user experience and adoption also creates momentum for future Microsoft 365 app integrations that augment self-service capabilities in Teams and deliver on a broad set of technological use cases that can help facilitate further efficiency and continuity in the company’s digital workspaces.

“The success of the Workday for Microsoft Teams initiative aligns with our core principle to make every day better and simpler,” says Smart. “Living that value through this project and improving our colleagues’ workplace experiences is rewarding.”

Modern and maximized apps

Manulife aims to be the industry’s most digital, customer-centric global finance and insurance company. Its investment in the Microsoft Cloud helps it deploy services on an agile platform that promotes faster delivery of new digital experiences to customers and colleagues. By delivering on the colleague experience imperative with Teams-related integrations, Manulife can meet colleagues where they’re already working while introducing efficiencies that reduce strain on HR and IT through increased self-service capabilities.

“Colleagues tell us that they love being able to request time off and manage approvals directly in the flow of work with Workday for Teams, without having to navigate to a browser or rely on email reminders,” Smart says. “And they love accessing their time off balances in Teams with Workday Quick Actions.”

Self-service tools and technology provide a path forward for Manulife to inspire higher levels of engagement, satisfaction, and productivity, and the company will continue to do more with the Microsoft Cloud technologies already at its disposal. It plans to create more unified colleague experiences and further deliver on the promise of modern workplace productivity by helping them focus on their most important and rewarding work. Initiatives like Workday for Teams highlight how investments in cloud-first digital experiences can help companies embrace colleague-centric initiatives and respond to feedback, which can help optimize the digital workplace.

“In the HR Employee Experience team, our guiding mandate is to create experiences that colleagues love,” says Smart. “Through our Workday for Microsoft Teams initiative, we’ve reduced the barriers to work and are building workplace experiences that our global colleagues love.”

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