Director, Modern Workplace and Digital Experience

Location: Chicago (Hybrid – 2 days onsite per week)

The Director of Modern Workplace and Digital User Experience is a strategic leadership role responsible for defining, executing, and evolving the company's digital workplace vision. This leader will ensure a seamless, secure, and productive technology experience for all employees, focusing on the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem, with a keen emphasis on driving user adoption and maximizing the value of AI tools like Microsoft Copilot. This role bridges the gap between infrastructure engineering, application support, and user-centric design to deliver a world-class employee experience. The role holder is a senior stakeholder in internal business engagements as well as external relationships with vendors and providers within the supported products and services. As part of the senior Central IT leadership team, this role helps define and execute the enterprise IT strategy, ensuring Central IT delivers maximum business value through alignment and innovation.

Digital Experience, Adoption, and Change Management: Champion a user-centric digital workplace strategy, focusing on measurable improvements in employee productivity and satisfaction through effective change management.

• Define and track Digital Employee Experience (DEX) metrics (e.g., time to task, application performance, user satisfaction) and translate insights into actionable technology and process improvements.
• Lead user research, feedback loops, and usability testing to understand employee needs and pain points across all digital workplace tools.
• User Adoption and Training: Develop and execute comprehensive user adoption strategies for new and existing Microsoft 365 applications and features, moving users from legacy tools to modern solutions.
• Direct the creation and delivery of engaging training and educational materials (webinars, short videos, quick-start guides) tailored to different user roles and proficiency levels.
• Build and maintain a network of Digital Champions across the business to facilitate grassroots support, best-practice sharing, and enthusiasm for the modern workplace.

Microsoft Copilot and Generative AI Integration: Drive the strategy, governance, and adoption of Microsoft Copilot and other generative AI tools to transform user productivity and collaboration across the organization.

• Copilot Strategy and Adoption: Develop and own the rollout and adoption roadmap for Microsoft Copilot (across Microsoft 365 and other relevant applications), focusing on maximizing its value proposition for key business functions.
• Work with business unit leaders to identify and prioritize high-impact use cases for Copilot that enhance individual productivity, automate routine tasks, and improve data discovery.
• Establish and lead initiatives focused on 'prompt engineering' education to empower users to leverage Copilot effectively and derive optimal results.
• Collaboration and Improvement: Monitor, measure, and report on the impact of Copilot on user productivity and collaboration metrics, continuously seeking ways to optimize the employee workflow.
• Partner with other teams in IT, Legal and Compliance to establish and enforce a Responsible AI Governance Framework for Copilot, ensuring data security and privacy.
• Stay current with emerging generative AI capabilities from Microsoft and other vendors, evaluating their potential for integration into the modern workplace ecosystem.

Microsoft 365 Engineering and Platform Support: Lead the technical strategy, engineering, and support for the core Microsoft 365 platform and its associated applications, ensuring stability, security, and optimal performance.

• Platform Engineering & Back-end Support: Oversee the management and operational support of the Microsoft 365 tenancy, including core services like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive.
• M365 Product Ownership: Monitor M365 feature releases, assess applicability to environment and oversee timeline for testing, rollout and adoption. 
• Collaborate with the teams responsible for back-end security, governance, compliance, and lifecycle management of the platform and related infrastructure (e.g., system engineering and endpoint management via Microsoft Intune/Endpoint Manager).
• Front-end Application Support: Own the technical roadmap for the front-end deployment, configuration, and integration of core Microsoft 365 applications (e.g., Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Manage L2/L3 support teams to resolve complex user-facing application issues quickly and effectively, ensuring a low-friction employee support experience.
• Establish technical standards and governance for the creation and management of collaborative spaces (e.g., Teams channels, SharePoint sites).

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree in computer science, information systems, business administration, or IT related field preferred 
• 15+ years of experience in Information Technology, with at least 5+ years in a senior leadership role overseeing Digital Workplace, User Experience, or a related function.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem, including engineering, governance, and application support.
• Proven experience developing and executing large-scale user adoption, change management, and training programs for enterprise technology.
• Demonstrated ability to develop a strategy and deployment plan for Microsoft Copilot or other GenAI technologies in an enterprise environment, including governance and user enablement.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences up to the executive level.
• Professional certifications preferred

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