Microsoft Viva Is Set To Transform Remote Working
Updated: Aug 20, 2021
Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft now has a new platform for employers to interact with and communicate with their employees working from home.
The company announced Microsoft Viva, the first Employee Experience Platform (EXP) designed to help employees learn, grow and thrive with new experiences while also integrating the productivity and collaboration capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft said that they wanted to build on Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365’s power to unify the employee experience in engagement, wellbeing, learning, and knowledge into an integrated one that empowers people to be at their best.
Jared Spataro, Microsoft 365’s Vice President Credit: Microsoft
“Our vision is to deliver a platform for the employee experience that helps organisations create a thriving culture with engaged employees and inspiring leaders,” said Jared Spataro, Microsoft 365’s Vice President.
Microsoft also mentioned that Microsoft Viva will come with four initial modules designed to enable customers to integrate their existing employee experience systems and tools with Microsoft Viva to make them more accessible and discoverable to employees.
Viva Connections
Viva Connections is a module that provides a personalised gateway to users’ digital workspace where employees can access internal communications and company resources as well as participate in communities like employee resource groups using a customisable app in Microsoft Teams.
A look into Viva Connections and its integration in Microsoft Teams Credit: Microsoft
The Viva Connections module will be available on desktop in public preview in the first half of 2021 and a mobile app is set to come later this year.
Viva Insights
Viva Insights, meanwhile, focuses on giving employers the ability to see how employees are doing and how to best handle them. According to a blog post, it gives personalised and actionable insights that help everyone in an organisation to thrive. These insights are protected, ensuring that only employers can see these insights.
A dashboard that combines employee feedback from LinkedIn’s Glint and the collaboration data from Viva Insights allows employers to identify a team’s difficulties, adjust work norms, and quantify the effect of the resulting changes.
A screenshot into Viva Insight’s Productivity and wellbeing experiences Credit: Microsoft
The Viva Insights module app is already available in Microsoft Teams along with the Glint and Viva Insights dashboard.
Viva Learning
The Viva Learning module allows employees to grow their skillset as it makes training and professional development opportunities more discoverable and accessible while working. The module gathers all available learning resources like Skillsoft, Coursera and Pluralsight in one place.
The Viva Learning app is already available in private preview. Viva Learning will also offer integrations with the leading learning management systems like Cornerstone OnDemand and Saba later this year.
Viva Topics
A collection of learning resources in Viva Learning Credit: Microsoft
Viva Topics is a module that helps people to easily connect to information and experts across the company. It uses AI to organise all content within a company into categories like projects, products, and customers for ease of access.
The module will also automatically ping company experts relevant to an employee’s query for clarification. Company experts can also help organise information for better understanding through Viva Topic’s highly customisable web sites called Topic Pages.
New employees and those who are still unfamiliar with company abbreviations and topics will no doubt appreciate this module.
Viva Topics is already available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 commercial plans.
Written by John Paul Joaquin