Using technology to work smarter, more meaningfully and more flexibly
In today’s world, we all want more flexible remote work options, and meaningful in-person collaboration. Empowering people to thrive in a more flexible work world requires rethinking everything—from how you empower people to be their best, to how you create culture, to how to ensure proper work/life balance.
And that’s where Microsoft Viva comes in.
Over the past few years, the way we work has changed drastically – not only as a result of the pandemic and move to hybrid working, but in the next generation of workers who demand true work/life balance. And although hybrid working brings many benefits, it has led to an increased feeling of disconnection and burnout as many work away from their colleagues on a daily basis.
Microsoft Viva was built out in response to this changing working dynamic and helps reimagine the employee experience, uniting an interactive and personalised intranet, learning, topics and wellbeing to ensure employees feel happier and more productive.
The more engaged employees are, the more successful an organisation will be.
Since the shift to more remote working, employees feel less connected to their team. Which brings about the important question of “How can we create connectedness remotely?” And equally as important, how do we stop burnout and stop the lines between work and life from blurring with the “always on, always connected” culture we’ve built since the pandemic?
So what is Microsoft Viva?
It’s a digital platform that helps businesses create culture and engagement with staff. It puts people at the centre by bringing together communication, learning, knowledge, resources and useful insights, in order to empower people to be their best, no matter where they work.
Viva Connections
This is a company branded employee app in Teams. It displays personalised news, communications, upcoming tasks, people and resources. Leaders can easily communicate with employees, and employees can easily access all the resources they need in one place.
It builds on existing tools in 365 such as SharePoint and Yammer, and pulls it all together into an app in Teams, that can be accessed on mobile or desktop.
Viva Topics
Focuses on knowledge and expertise. Topics uses artificial intelligence to identify knowledge and experts and organise them into shared topics. It’s like Wikipedia for the business where the first draft is created by AI and can then be tailored by the business. Topic pages are surfaced as Topic Cards right within Teams, making information available for staff from anywhere.
Viva Learning
Allows employees to easily discover training resources within Microsoft Teams. It combines content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn and 3rd party training content, as well as your own content – all in one place. Along with bringing everything into one place and providing recommendations, it also allows managers to assign and track training, as well as report on training across teams.
Viva Insights
Microsoft Viva Insights is a data driven tool that gives employees control over their focus time, helping them stay positively connected with their colleagues and collaborative teams. It empowers employees to control their workload and ensure they aren’t being overwhelmed, which then helps improve their productivity. It also helps remote workers achieve better work/life balance by offering a ‘virtual commute’ allowing them to wind down at the end of the workday.
It enables you to see how you work, and what changes you can make to ensure you maintain a healthy work/life balance. Offering useful recommendations such as setting out time for regular breaks, focused work and offering learning. These recommendations help develop better work habits which will help increase productivity and prevent burn out.
