Introducing Microsoft Viva. A new employee experience platform

The shift from office to remote and hybrid work quickly made the use of digital tools an essential need for businesses globally. Take Microsoft 365, for example. Globally, 365 generated more than 30 billion collaboration minutes in a single day.

Businesses invest over $300b a year in improving employee experiences. This figure includes employee development, training, benefits, wellbeing and experience technologies. With many technologies being fragmented and difficult to find or disruptive to workflow, Microsoft have taken a new approach to battle this issue with the launch of Viva.

What is Microsoft Viva?

Microsoft’s new approach introduces a new category of technology solutions called ‘Employee Experience Platforms’ (EXP). The idea of an EXP is to provide employees with a digital platform equipped with the necessary resources and support. But to improve the experience and collaboration, Microsoft has created a solution that integrates into the day-to-day tools­­ used by employees.

Microsoft Viva is the first EXP built and designed for the new digital era and modern working methods. The integrated experience is powered by Microsoft 365 and is combined with communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights. Viva can be experienced through Microsoft Teams and various other 365 apps.

Viva will begin with four core aspects: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics.

Viva Connections

Since the shift to remote work, Microsoft’s research has indicated that as many as 60% of workers feel disconnected from their teams. To provide workers with a single entry point for employee engagement and internal communications, Viva Connections has been introduced as ‘a gateway to a digital workplace’.

Leaders can stay connected with their teams via company town halls, and employees can access company news, policies and benefits within employee resource groups.

Additional features include personalised feeds and dashboards to help them locate helpful resources in Viva or other apps across 365. For further personalisation, content can be configured to specific roles in the company.

Viva Insights

Viva Insights has been specifically designed for employee well-being. It provides individuals, managers, and leaders with personalised and actionable, privacy-protected insights to help battle burnout and fatigue.

Individuals 

Viva Insights has been personalised for employees to stay connected with their co-workers whilst allowing time for timely breaks, focused work and learning.

Experiences announced last year, such as virtual commute and integration with Headspace, will also now be a part of Viva.

Managers

Viva Insights are great for managers who are looking to gain insights on the welfare of their staff. Viva can suggest recommendations to enable healthier, happier and success teams. For example, a manager can determine if a certain team member is at risk of burnout. Viva can then make suggestions such as the encouragement of setting daily priorities, turning off notifications and setting boundaries on their calendar.

Leaders

Insights can help business leaders on responding to change within organisation work patterns and trends. For example, wellbeing opportunities or space planning as companies can reimagine their offices for hybrid working. Leaders can access organisational network analysis to recognise the levels of connection and cohesion across teams.

The platform also ensures that privacy and security is considered and protections individual privacy. Aggregation, de-identification and differential privacy are all used. With this, personal insights are only viewable to the employee. Meanwhile, insights will be aggregated and de-identified by default for leaders and managers to ensure individual privacy.

Viva Learning

Discover new ways of learning with Viva Learning. The platform creates a central hub for learning within Microsoft Teams, integrated with AI. This ensures that appropriate content is suggested at the right time.

Viva Learning combines content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, personalised business content, and lessons from leading training providers.

Viva Topics

Viva Topics is a Wikipedia-like experience that uses AI to automatically organise company content and expertise into appropriate categories, such as projects, processes, products, and customers.

When users are unfamiliar with topics or acronyms that appear on the screen, they can simply hover for more information. When clicking on a card, a topic page containing documents, videos, and related people will appear. Companies can also organise information shown in Viva Topics through customisable websites called Topic Pages.

Microsoft Viva is now generally available, if you’re looking to learn more about Microsoft Viva and advice on how you can get started, get in touch with our team today!