Introducing Pronouns in Microsoft 365

Microsoft recently announced the ability for people within organizations to share pronouns within their Microsoft 365 profile. This is an exciting change, enabling organizations to create greater opportunities for inclusion.

We highlighted the new capabilities in Episode 93 of the Microsoft 365 Voice:

It’s great to see Microsoft supporting everyone in our community. Pronouns matter. Letting people choose their pronouns and having these pronouns reflected in Microsoft 365 are an important part of respecting everyone’s individuality.

The feature is disabled by default. IT administrators must enable pronouns before users will have the option to provide pronouns in their M365 profile cards. IT administrators should plan for this configuration change to take several hours to fully propagate in their tenant before the pronouns are available for editing.

Employees can choose whether to provide pronouns. Employees aren’t required to add pronouns to their profile cards. Employees that choose to add pronouns will have the pronouns appear on their M365 contact cards.

Microsoft has said more functionality is coming later this year. Stay tuned to the Microsoft 365 roadmap for further news.

Organizations that enable pronouns need to share the news. Consider how you’ll alert your employees that they can now provide their pronouns. Consider using Viva Connections or Viva Engage to spread the news. We provide several ideas during the episode on how to share this news across your organization.

Links to Microsoft articles: Creating the conditions for inclusion: Introducing Pronouns in Microsoft 365, https://aka.ms/M365PronounsUser, https://aka.ms/M365PronounsAdmin

Have a Microsoft 365 question? Submit it online! Your question may be featured in a future podcast episode.

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on March 11, 2023.