New internal Microsoft memo shows shifting employee sentiment

According to a recent internal memo, Microsoft employees are feeling positive about producing meaningful work, but less so about coaching, feedback and motivation from managers, Business Insider reports. In Microsoft’s biannual “Employee Signals” survey, Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman shared the “top strengths” of the company, naming a “focus on addressing security challenges” and “feeling included in teams.” Coleman also named the “top opportunities” that arose in the survey. “Comments surfaced challenges around strategy, communication, processes, customer focus, and speed of execution,” Coleman wrote. In the survey, employees responded most favorably to questions about feeling included and acting in ways that reflect Microsoft’s culture. Those numbers dipped in relation to questions about having opportunities to broaden their experience and be productive, as well as seeing a “a clear link between my work and my org’s objective.” Employees rated their managers most highly for embracing new challenges to drive innovation, fostering an inclusive environment and inviting diverse perspectives. The lowest-rated areas centered on direct people management, like coaching through day-to-day challenges, delivering clear feedback and motivating the team—with all three points showing decline since the last survey. Earlier this year, Microsoft offered voluntary retirement to 7% of its workforce of more than 220,000 globally. The company also overhauled its HR team responsible for compensation and promotion policies. On the last day of its fiscal year, Microsoft canceled most of its Claude Code licenses and pushed employees to instead use GitHub Copilot CLI for greater control over internal tools and to combat rising AI costs, especially in data center infrastructure. During the Microsoft Build Live event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company has added more data center capacity for Microsoft Azure in the past 18 months than i