LinkedIn+Microsoft: What it means to HR

When Satya Nadella visited India to earmark the 25 years of operations in the country last November, his keynote provided a deep dive on Microsoft’s new mission “Empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more,” and what will it mean mainly for the enterprise customers. 

And this is the first of what Nadella’s ambitious plans are. Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. for $26.2 billion not only reflects new horizons for both the companies, but also reflects Microsoft’s commitment to bet on how a layer of data from professional social network can transform current enterprise services. Nadella, through this acquisition has aspired to lead workplace transformation for the future and offer tools, apps, technologies that employees and leaders would want to use at the workplace. Not only is this move seen to strengthen Microsoft’s bottom-line but it also aims to cushion its position in the market.

“It’s really the coming together of the professional cloud and the professional network,” Mr. Nadella stated in an interview. 

At People Matters, we keep following the industry trends and its impact on people excellence and HR. I am excited about how this deal is going to provide further value to business and HR leaders to enhance workplace productivity and engagement. This deal could bring more opportunities for companies to increase empowerment, productivity of individuals and teams, enabling collaboration in the workplace. Here is how: 

Of course all these opportunities will need to materialize. Finding theoretical synergies and benefits to corporates, in this case to HR too, is one thing. The proof of the pudding is as always in the implementation and execution. The past record of Microsoft’s inability to integrate and derive value from previous acquisitions, from Nokia to aQuantive, or even Yammer, make analysts raise questions on how successfully Microsoft can implement and execute this deal. But this is Nadella's first acquisition in his tenure and it seems in alignment with his new strategy and the vision of the organization – a vision that is ambitious and provides a huge opportunity to both organizations.