How Will the Company Handle This Change?

The client came to us with a real business problem: cloud storage costs were rising, and they needed a way to bring them down. Their proposed solution was a 45-day auto-deletion policy for Microsoft Teams messages that could be categorized as temporary, things like lunch plans, quick check-ins, or short-lived action items.

Before they moved forward, they wanted to understand how that policy would actually affect the people using Teams every day. That's when they came to my team.

In early 2024, I led a UX research initiative to evaluate the impact of the proposed policy. Aimed at improving data governance, the policy raised immediate concerns about workflow disruption and records management. Using mixed methods, I explored user behaviors, awareness of retention policies, and file syncing habits across Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, all to inform a user-centered policy decision.

I designed a two-phase study combining quantitative breadth with qualitative depth. That combination was intentional, the numbers would tell us the scale of the issue, and the conversations would tell us why it mattered.

Survey

Distributed internally to gain a broad perspective, gathering 61 responses across multiple departments. The survey established baseline patterns in Teams usage, file management behaviors, and awareness of existing retention policies.

1:1 User Interviews

Conducted 9 in-depth interviews with participants from a variety of roles and offices to contextualize survey data and uncover nuanced behaviors. The most critical finding came directly from these conversations, specifically from the legal team.

What Most Employees Think of MS Chats

• Teams is integral to daily workflows; users rely on chats to store links, decisions, and documentation
• Many treat Teams chats as equivalent to email for record-keeping
• Some reference chats going back over a year

Impact of Auto-Deletion Policy Implementation

• Erasure of critical evidence, especially for Legal
• Increased manual effort across teams
• Major loss of historical knowledge

What we found was more nuanced than a simple yes or no. For contributors in fast-paced environments, auto-deletion would have had minimal impact. But for contributors with slower, more documentation-heavy work, Teams chats had quietly become their personal record-keeping system.

Microsoft Teams Chat Use

Teams is deeply integrated into daily workflows. Most users rely on chats to reference past discussions (some over a year old), store links, decisions, and documentation. Many users view Teams chats as equivalent to email in terms of record-keeping importance.

Auto-Deletion Policy Concerns

Nearly all users responded negatively to the idea of automatic deletion. Major concerns included:

• Loss of valuable historical knowledge and decisions
• Potential erasure of evidence (e.g., harassment or inappropriate behavior)
• Increased cognitive and workflow load (e.g., needing to manually copy/save chats)

SharePoint & OneDrive Syncing

• Most users were confused about syncing and unsure of its implications
• The majority manage files in-browser; syncing is used only for convenience
• Some power users (e.g., illustrators) rely on syncing to work with non-Office file types

User Quotes & Insights

The research also produced a proactive change management roadmap for any future revisit of the policy:

Before Policy Implementation

• Outreach campaign: Educate users on the what, why, and how of the new policy
• Quick guide: Define "official records" and explain records management best practices
• Policy co-design: Involve Legal, EEO, and power users in defining defensible exceptions (e.g., for harassment reporting or synced files)
• Habit shaping: Encourage proactive documentation habits and create transition support

Change Enablement

• Recruit change champions within departments to model best practices
• Pilot the policy with opt-in groups before a full rollout

Alternative Communication Strategies

Consider promoting Teams Channels and Teams Teams as more permanent spaces for storing work-related conversations, providing a better-suited home for documentation-heavy communication without the deletion risk.

I presented findings to the head of Records and Management, the head of Cyber Security, the head of Operations, and other executive stakeholders.

The most critical data came from the legal team's interviews: implementing an auto-deletion policy would put the company at severe legal risk if implemented incorrectly. Good research doesn't just validate decisions, sometimes it's the reason a decision doesn't get made.

What Was Next for the Policy After a Year?

This research was cited as the reason that the organization decided to not continue with the policy. The roadmap I produced gives the organization a structured path for revisiting the decision in the future, one that centers user needs, legal requirements, and change management from the start.