Launched last February, Microsoft's platform aims to foster engagement, training, well-being and knowledge sharing within the employee work environment. Let's take a closer look at its first four modules.
In recent years, a new category of HR and productivity solutions has emerged: Employee Experience Platforms (EXP). EXP platforms provide middleware connectivity, process and knowledge management to help organizations offer employees a single place to manage work-related tasks, collaboration with colleagues, HR processes, career transitions and learning.
EXP solutions protect employees from complex and heterogeneous systems and provide them with a single place to access a wide range of services. When properly implemented, EXP platforms can also enable artificial intelligence, mobile applications and cognitive interfaces to make employees' work lives much more productive and engaging.
However, care should be taken to ensure that the integration of these tools is accompanied by an approach to making workstations safe
Adoption depends on management: according to Gallup (2024), managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
Microsoft Viva: first four modules
It is in this context that Microsoft launched Microsoft Viva, its platform dedicated to the employee experience, in February 2021. According to the publisher, Microsoft Viva is designed to "foster engagement, training, well-being and knowledge sharing within the employee work environment. Integrated with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, Viva is designed to accelerate business collaboration and enable every employee to grow and thrive in their work environment."
Microsoft Viva is integrated with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365. It offers, through four distinct modules, an experience for a new approach to company culture. Initially, Microsoft Viva includes the following four modules: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning and Viva Topics. Others are currently being developed.
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Viva Connections: commitment and belonging
As a result of the rise of teleworking during the health crisis and its subsequent generalization, interaction between employees has decreased significantly. The sense of belonging that employees feel towards their company, which is materialized on a daily basis by moments of conviviality, but also by extra-professional exchanges, has suffered greatly. Employees find it difficult to recapture the closeness created by general assemblies, outdoor activities and other collective events. If this situation is difficult for current employees, it has an even greater impact on new recruits.
Accessible within Microsoft Teams, the Viva Connections module provides a single point of access to employee engagement and internal communications capabilities. It leverages Microsoft 365 features such as SharePoint to provide employees with an interface that is organized in the company's colors. Managers can communicate with their teams in large-scale virtual meetings or even general assemblies. Employees can view company news, policies and benefits, or access employee resource groups and clubs through Microsoft Viva's integration with Viva Engage.
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The module also provides a customized workflow and dashboard to help employees identify all the useful resources in Microsoft Viva and other applications available in their work environment. Content can also be customized for specific positions within the organization, including frontline employees, to provide them with a comprehensive view that displays only useful resources.
Viva Insights: promoting well-being at work
The right to disconnect is an employee's right to digital rest. It requires compliance with a certain number of rules for the use of collaborative tools (e-mail, instant messaging, videoconferencing, etc.). However, it is clear that many employees (and their managers) have adopted new habits during the health crisis, especially at a distance. This has made the notion of working time more elastic...
Viva Insights was designed with this in mind. It aims to distil personalized and immediately actionable recommendations for employees, their managers and business leaders. Its aim is to help all members of an organization to progress in terms of well-being at work. It offers suggestions for action from Working Time Analysis and MyAnalytics, within the users' own workflow in Microsoft Teams. For example, it encourages employees to block out time for breaks, focus on their work and training.
Viva Insights provides managers with recommendations, enabling them to determine whether their team is at risk of burnout. They can then invite employees to turn off notifications, set limits on their workload and prioritize their daily tasks.
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Viva Learning: Lifelong learning
The increasingly changing and uncertain business environment, the need to retain talent by allowing them to learn... All this contributes to developing a learning culture within organizations. This is the purpose of the Viva Learning module, which helps to make training part of the "daily routine" of employees.
Viva Learning provides a centralized platform for training in Teams and relies on AI to recommend content to teams. It aggregates content from LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn, as well as organisation-specific content and training from providers such as Skillsoft, Coursera, Pluralsight and edX. It is also compatible with the main training management systems(Training Resource Management Systems).
Viva Topics: connecting employees to available knowledge
Finally, the Viva Topics module helps employees leverage the knowledge of their organization and connects them to that knowledge within the applications they use every day. It leverages AI to automatically organize available content and expertise into relevant categories (projects, products, processes and customers).
In concrete terms, when an employee encounters an unfamiliar topic or acronym, he or she simply places the mouse cursor over it. Viva Topics automatically provides topic cards while users are working in applications such as Office, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. Employees can click on a card to display a topic page with documents, videos and links to people.
In addition to content from the Microsoft Cloud, Viva Topics displays information from third-party services such as ServiceNow and Salesforce, and leverages integrations from partners such as Accenture, Avanade, BA Insight, Raytion and ClearPeople. Graph connectors also provide access to more content that can help employees.
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