Microsoft is one of the market leaders paving the way to a new “future of work”.
Not only does Microsoft provide users with Microsoft Teams – a collaboration solution that supports more than 115 million daily active users – but it’s constantly rolling out new services too. For instance, Microsoft Viva is the latest offering designed for the modern team.
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Jared Spataro[/caption]
Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform intended to combine various tools for employee wellbeing, engagement, learning, and knowledge discovery. Built to augment and enhance the existing Microsoft 365 applications, Viva promises a new way for team members to stay productive and continue delivering their best work.
The Microsoft Viva EXP (Employee Experience Platform), is an environment built to improve remote work, in a world where anywhere work is growing more common. According to the Head of Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, Viva responds to the idea that we should stop thinking about work as a “place” and start looking at ways to “harness human ingenuity” and connect employees in a changing world.
What Does Viva Include?
Viva integrates Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft 365 solution with a selection of tools for employee engagement and experience. The functionality of Viva is split across four segments:
- Viva Connections
- Viva Insights
- Viva Learning
- Viva Topics
All these solutions work together and individually to provide today’s team members with a more aligned environment for employee productivity. Viva is the all-in-one EXP solution designed by Microsoft Teams to empower the modern employee in a time of remote work. It could also be one of the most valuable tools on the market for team leaders who want to ensure the ongoing productivity and wellbeing of their remote staff members.
What is Viva Connections?
Viva Connections is Microsoft’s solution for amplifying culture and communications in the digital workspace. It provides access to a personalised gateway, where employees can access useful company resources and internal documents. Through a customisable app within Microsoft Teams, you can supply your employees with all the latest news and insights from your organisation.
Connections isn’t just a hub for internal communications and resources; it’s also designed to be a valuable place staff member can visit if they want to get to know their colleagues a little better. Spataro describes it as the “gateway to the digital workplace”.
Viva Connections builds on the technology of Microsoft SharePoint and offers everything from employee resource groups and communities to town halls, company news, and quick access to recently opened apps and documents. Viva Connections aims to help employees stay engaged within the company, no matter where they’re working from.
A modernised “hub” for the workplace of the new normal, Connections is where business leaders can ensure that team members have access to all the tools, announcements, and conversations they need, through a branded dashboard. Features included:
- A brandable and customisable dashboard environment
- Easy access to broadcasts for team leaders
- Organisable documents and company policies
- A constantly updating news feed, similar to social media
- A resources tab where customers can access useful information
- Communities and town hall environments
Microsoft says Connections will evolve the standard intranet to help users communicate across the organisation, engage employees, and connect with more knowledge and information.
What is Viva Insights?
Viva Insights is sure to be an exciting component of the Viva experience in a world where business leaders need help tracking their employees’ productivity. Through Insights, managers and leaders can access personalised and actionable information about the workplace.
To some, Microsoft Insights might seem like another step in the same direction as the “Productivity Score” for Microsoft Teams, which caused some controversy recently. Microsoft has already been criticized for allowing managers to drill into individual employee data too far. Fortunately, Viva Insights builds on a focus for greater privacy and employee comfort.
Personal experiences and insights are only available to the employee, and Microsoft says they will help individuals to adjust their workdays for productivity and wellbeing. People will be able to see when they should be making time for regular breaks, and the Insights section can also offer information on how teams can strengthen colleague connections.
Managers and supervisors also benefit from Insights by being able to view trends at an organisational and team level. This should help companies to make better decisions to support productivity and wellbeing. The insights available on the organisation are deidentified to maintain more privacy for workers. Features include:
- Comprehensive insights for personal workers
- Support for tracking trends in the wider organisation
- A dashboard for combining employee feedback with Viva insights
- Actionable advice to improve productivity and wellbeing
- Integrations with third-party services
- Guides to employee burnout and wellbeing
Interestingly, Viva Insights focuses heavily on not just productivity in the workplace, but better wellbeing for people working remotely too. As many remote workers can struggle to find the right work/life balance, Microsoft believes it’s important for teams to promote good mental and physical health. There are even full integrations with apps like Headspace for meditation, and a “virtual commute feature”.
