Microsoft Viva Launched as New Employee Experience Platform to Enhance Workflow

Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform powered by Microsoft 365, has been launched. It integrates a company's resources and support with productivity tools that employees use on a daily basis to create a seamless workflow regardless of where they are working from. Microsoft says that it was working on Viva even before the pandemic. This digital tool essentially allows employees to be connected, provides insights, brings opportunities to learn, and easily search for information.

Microsoft Viva includes four modules — Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics, according to an official blog post from Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365. Citing research from Microsoft Work Trend Index, the post says that 60 percent of workers feel less connected to their team ever since work from home started. This is where Viva Connections come in as it “provides a single-entry point for employee engagement and internal communications”.

“You can think of it as a gateway to your digital workplace,” says Spataro.

It uses Microsoft 365 capabilities like SharePoint to create a collaborative work space and also allows team leaders to interact with employees through company town halls. Microsoft Viva also integrates Yammer, an internal social networking service for communication within the organisation.

Viva Insights offers tools to reduce a sense of burnout by offering personal wellbeing experiences, insights, and recommended actions from Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics, according to the post. It is available for individuals, managers, and company leaders. It also integrates LinkedIn's Glint that makes use of real-time data to help organisations increase employee engagement.

Viva Learning brings together content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, trainings from Skillsoft, Coursera, Pluralsight, and edX, as well as custom content specific to an organisation to create a hub for learning in Teams. Microsoft has also partnered with Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba, and SAP SuccessFactors for Viva.

Lastly, Viva Topics uses AI to organise company-wise content for employees into categories like projects, products, processes, and customers. It automatically shows topic cards when an employee hovers over acronyms while using Office, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. Clicking on it would show a page with documents, videos, and related people to give employees all the information they need. Viva shows information from Microsoft Cloud, BA Insight, Accenture, Avanade, ClearPeople, and Raytion.

Viva Topics is available for employees and so is a public preview of Viva Insights. Viva Learning is in private preview for now.

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