Microsoft makes sweeping overhaul of HR organization, internal memo shows
Microsoft’s chief people officer just announced a sweeping overhaul of the human-resources team charged with compensation and policies for the company’s more than 220,000 employees, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.
“We’re in a time when technology, the way we work, and our org structures are all evolving,” the email from Amy Coleman, who took over as the company’s chief people officer in March 2025, states. “The pace of change is exceeding what our current operating model and decision rhythms were built for. We’re no longer being asked to scale for stability; we need to scale for adaptability and help set a new pace.”
Coleman announced a series of promotions and departures within her organization. Microsoft Chief Diversity Officer Lindsay-Rae McIntyre is leaving the company March 31 to “take the next step in her career to be a Chief People Officer,” according to the email.
Leslie Lawson Sims will take over for McIntyre with a new title VP, People & Culture and a “remit that spans both accelerating the people team and shaping culture across the enterprise.”
Coleman’s promotion in 2025 came after Microsoft fired 2,000 employees deemed low performers last year, launching an overhaul of its performance review and management processes. She also took the role amid an overall shift in the tech industry toward more rigor and less coddling of employees.
Under Coleman, Microsoft also introduced a new three-day return to office policy.
Coleman replaced long-time HR boss Kathleen Hogan. Hogan spent 10 years in the role, and she and Nadella crafted a new workplace management system around the concept of a “growth mindset.” Hogan, in March 2025, took on a new role as executive vice president of the “Office of Strategy and Transformation.”
The most recent HR leadership changes come as the company attempts to radically reshape how it builds and funds its products in the AI era. Microsoft combined teams for its Copilot AI tools and named a new executive in charge of them, moving AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman to focus on the AI superintelligence team formed in November. The company also recently promoted new executives to take over businesses like Office, Teams, and Windows for Rajesh Jha, who is retiring and was one of Microsoft’s longest-serving executives.
Read the memo
Sharing an important update on our People team, spanning the principles that guide our work, key structural and leadership changes, and our path forward.
We’re in a time when technology, the way we work, and our org structures are all evolving. The pace of change is exceeding what our current operating model and decision rhythms were built for. We’re no longer being asked to scale for stability; we need to scale for adaptability and help set a new pace.
Given this, our function has to evolve for the Microsoft we are becoming. To accelerate the business, we have to simultaneously build experiences that reflect how employees and leaders actually work today and that anticipate their needs tomorrow.
Today, I’m sharing a set of organizational updates that will help us work more closely, move faster, and make things simpler, all to better support our customer, the employee.
Engineering HR
To deepen the quality of our engineering partnerships and accelerate our ability to align with our product priorities, we are bringing all the engineering HR teams together under one team, led by Mel Simpson, CVP, Engineering HR.
Mel has a deep understanding of the engineering functions and today partners closely across our Copilot, Microsoft 365, Windows, Devices, MAI and OCTO teams. In this expanded role, she and her team will partner across all engineering leaders.
Employee Experience
As we bring HR capabilities closer together, it’s critical that our tools, insights, and experiences are clearly connected to the business outcomes they support. Nathalie D’Hers, CVP, Employee Experience and the team have driven clarity, speed, and alignment while enabling our function to lead the next phase of AI-powered transformation across the company.
To deliver AI-first products and experiences, we need to more intentionally connect how we design experiences with how we generate and apply insights. With that in mind, the People Analytics team, led by Kanwal Safdar, GM, People Analytics, will join the Employee Experience organization, reporting to Nathalie. This brings analytics capabilities closer to the experiences and decisions they inform, enabling faster learning and stronger insight to action loops.
The leaders will work together over the next month to define how we bring analytics resources closer to the business while preserving the strengths of the team’s partnership model.
Total Rewards
Compensation and benefits are central to both the employee experience and business outcomes. As we continue to evolve how we work, how we reward and invest in our people matters more than ever.
Mike Cyran will lead this work as CVP, Total Rewards, reporting to me. Mike brings deep expertise, a strong growth mindset, and a proven ability to turn complexity into opportunity. His approach to developing and implementing global programs has driven significant impact in key areas, including global pay equity, supporting a high performance culture, and differentiated compensation programs in support of all of our businesses.
I’m also happy to announce that Fred Thiele has been promoted to CVP, Global Benefits and Mobility. He and Mark Breer, who leads Executive Compensation, Global Equity Programs, and MAVS TR, will report to Mike Cyran. Together with their teams, they will bring deep domain experience to strengthen how we support our people and make a difference across Microsoft.
Global Talent Acquisition (GTA)
Talent strategy is competitive strategy and our ability to win depends on whether we can hire the very best talent at a moment when competition is intense and accelerating.
This work needs a single owner who is fully dedicated to helping the business scale, move faster, and make the right calls in an increasingly competitive, high-pressure market. I’m pleased that we are in the final stages of hiring a dedicated Global Talent Acquisition leader, reporting directly to me. We’ve been intentional about finding the right leader, with the skills, experience, and leadership required for this moment and I look forward to introducing them soon.
Until this new leader is in role, Kristen Roby Dimlow will continue to lead GTA. I’m grateful for her leadership and for the progress GTA has made in the last few years.
People & Culture
As part of today’s announcement, we are bringing together HR4HR and Culture & Inclusion into a newly formed People & Culture team, led by Leslie Lawson Sims, VP, People & Culture, with a remit that spans both accelerating the people team and shaping culture across the enterprise.
This organization is the engine for how our function works, while weaving critical inclusion work into our day to day.
Diana Navas-Rosette, GM, Culture & Inclusion, will report directly to Leslie. Inclusion shows up in how leaders set clarity and model the behaviors we want to see, how teams invite in different perspectives, and how we build products that meet the needs of our customers around the world. I’m excited to see this work continue as part of this new team.
Global Talent Development
Talent Management, Leader Development, Manager Capability, and Aspire are all part of how we develop our employees, managers, leaders and teams.
Bringing these functions together will accelerate one of the most durable business advantages we have, the capability of our people. Wyatt Cutler is returning to Microsoft to lead this work as VP, Talent Development. Wyatt has deep expertise in creatively growing manager capability and building durable succession strategies for fast-moving environments, bringing his experience from Synopsis, AWS, & PayPal.
Leah Colson, VP, Talent Management and Rawan Shalhoub, GM, Manager Excellence & Development will move to report to Wyatt.
Workforce Acceleration
Skilling, redeployment, workforce planning and the emerging human-agent collaboration form the connected set of capabilities that help us think about talent and reinvention differently and accelerate our workforce. Activating the right workforce levers at the right time is critical.
To give this work the focus and momentum it requires, we are creating a dedicated team, led by Justin Thenutai, VP, Workforce Acceleration. Karen Kocher’s Learning & Skilling team will report to Justin.
Bringing these levers together under one leader allows us to test and learn faster with the business, so we can scale what works and win in our next chapter.
Leader Transitions and the People Leadership Team
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge some very meaningful leadership transitions. At the end of this fiscal year, Kristen Roby Dimlow, Chuck Edward, and Dawn Klinghoffer will be retiring after extraordinary careers at Microsoft, and Lindsay-Rae McIntyre will be stepping into an external Chief People Officer role next month.
Each of them has shaped this function and this company in lasting ways. Their leadership, judgment, and care for people have set standards that will endure well beyond this moment. While no set of words could convey the totality of their impact, I am sharing highlights on each and we will continue to celebrate them in the weeks and months ahead.
For nearly three decades, Kristen has spanned talent acquisition, total rewards, the HR line, and finance. Through times of significant transformation, Kristen and her team ensured recruiting and rewards remained strategic assets for the company, modernizing our global recruiting platform, expanding employee benefits globally, reimagining internal talent movement, facilitating several large-scale acquisitions, enabling our rewards differentiation, and accelerating our ability to hire AI talent. She has been a consistent and trusted leader for our org and I have so many memories of learning from Kristen; how she flawlessly integrated finance skills into the people business, how she fiercely advocated for her team, and how she was always the first to tell me what I did right while also sharing where I could be better. And I’m personally grateful that her advocacy, expertise, and candor is only a phone call away.
Throughout his 22 years of service, Chuck has been a pivotal leader in both HR Business Partnerships and Global Talent Acquisition, shaping people strategy, evolving operating models, and guiding some of our most critical engineering, platform, and customer-facing teams as well as hiring some of our best HR talent from around the world. His close partnership with the engineering leaders driving our most strategic imperatives directly enabled the growth of our cloud business. His partnership, inspirational leadership, and deep commitment to how we hire, develop and retain our people have left a lasting mark on how we operate and who we are. Chuck has been a mentor and coach to me throughout my time at the company and always made me believe I was better than the last meeting or the last email. He has also taught me valuable lessons about courage and lifting others up through his advocacy work within Microsoft and beyond.
DawnK has spent over 20 years shaping the people analytics space into what it is today — one grounded in breakthrough insights, trust, rigor, and differentiated business impact. Well before many organizations were even considering analytics in HR, Dawn built and scaled an analytics function that transformed how we listen to employees and use data to improve the employee experience, helping our people thrive. She’s also influenced the broader field through external thought leadership, sharing Microsoft’s learnings on topics like employee listening, thriving, burnout, and onboarding. Dawn always makes time for our customers — learning from them and ensuring our work is grounded in real needs that raise the bar for all of us. She is steadfast and generous with her expertise, always making time to explain the story the data is telling us to help us understand and solve the problem.
Finally, I am proud to see Lindsay-Rae take the next step in her career to be a Chief People Officer. This is an exciting next chapter and a reflection of the strength and credibility she’s built across the industry and in our profession. Over the last eight years, Lindsay-Rae set a clear standard for talent development and inclusive leadership at scale. She asked thoughtful questions, challenging the status quo in service of our commitment to our company and representing our customers. Lindsay-Rae’s last day is March 31, and next week we’ll honor not just what she built, but how she built it: with discipline, care, and a deep belief that this work is fundamental to who we are.
Over the coming months, these leaders and the new People Leadership Team will be working together on the transition and org alignment plans.
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I’m excited about this moment and what’s ahead. Let’s keep learning, let go of old assumptions, and make Microsoft a place where everyone can do their best work.
Amy
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