Microsoft Viva – Here Is What You Should Know

Microsoft has set up a new work and learning hub through Microsoft 365 and Teams, putting learning, well-being, and collaboration resources closer to employees and organization. And, it is called Microsoft Viva. 

Viva aims to eliminate the division between work elements by enabling employee experiences in four areas: engagement, well-being, learning and knowledge. Viva has also been recognized as part of a new technology segment through the "Employee Experience Platform." 

What Modules Are Included in Microsoft Viva: 

· Viva Connections: Provides a personalized portal for employees to go to internal communications, company resources like policies and benefits, and participate in communities like employee resource groups, all from a single customizable app. 

Powered by SharePoint, Connections offers people a curated space to stay updated on what's happening in their organization. And you can even create communities within the Connections space. 

· Viva Insights: Provides individuals, managers and leaders with personalized insights and actionable insights that enable employees to thrive in organizations. These insights enable individuals to get some time for regular breaks, focused work and learning. It provides insights into the team at the organizational level and recommendations to improve productivity and well-being. The insights are aggregated, deidentified by default to preserve personal privacy.

Additionally, a new dashboard enables organizations to combine employee feedback from LinkedIn's Glint with team collaboration data from Viva Insights, allowing leaders to identify areas of team struggle more accurately, adjust work norms accordingly, and measure the impact of those changes over time. Viva Insights in Teams, the Glint and Viva Insights dashboard is now available for public preview. Customers/users can incorporate data from third-party services like Zoom, Slack, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors. 

· Viva Learning: Provides greater visibility and accessibility to training and professional development opportunities. In addition to LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn, the system contains the content from third-party providers such as Skillsoft, Pluralsight, Coursera, and edX and the content from within the organization. Users can find, share, assign, and track a wide range of learning content, including traditional courses and microlearning. The Viva Learning app is now available in preview, and later this year, integrations will be made to leading learning management systems, including Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba, and SAP SuccessFactors.

· Viva Topics: Delivers a knowledge discovery experience that helps people get in touch with experts and information throughout the company. Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to automatically surface topic cards within conversations and documents across Microsoft 365 and Teams, Viva Topics integrates information from a wide variety of third-party services such as ServiceNow and Salesforce. Viva Topics is now available from Microsoft 365 as an add-on to Microsoft 365 commercial plans. Clicking on a card opens a topic page with related documents, conversations, videos, and people.

Who is going to benefit most from Viva? 

Microsoft has started to experiment with the capabilities of Viva. Microsoft Viva is likely to appeal to all kinds of businesses looking for a new approach to the old-fashioned intranet and services. The open and extensible platform is poised to grow significantly in the future as business leaders continue searching for new ways to improve remote working practices. Viva allows you to bring a complete SharePoint site and various helpful resources into Microsoft Teams system that your employees use every day. Viva is perfect for companies who want to offer a single pane of glass environment to their distributed workforce.

Microsoft Viva combines communication and collaboration environments beyond what Microsoft offers. You get everything your team needs to communicate and collaborate in one place – access to training resources, knowledge, information, and business news. 

As the business landscape continues to evolve, tools like Microsoft topics within the Viva platform will help onboarding employees worldwide. Viva Connections keeps new employees up to date, while Viva Learning allows employees to develop skills. 

Viva Insights gives team leaders and employees a view of what is happening in the remote working environment without compromising privacy.

A New Benchmark In Employee Experience 

The Microsoft Viva offering has the potential to be a ground-breaking solution in employee experience. With this technology, companies can usher into a new era of software that focuses completely on the needs of the evolving workforce. Viva will give teams the power to be more productive and informed wherever they are. With Viva, companies can finally enter an aligned digital environment for work that mimics the standard office environment without restrictions.

Is Microsoft Vica a Replacement For Microsoft Teams? 

Microsoft is positioning Viva as a tool that adapts to the pandemic, and changes at the workplace, head-on. Even before the pandemic, Microsoft had claimed that online collaboration would be the next step in the evolution of its users editing their Word and PowerPoint documents. It then tweaked its messaging once remote work became a reality as a consequence of the pandemic. Microsoft is now aiming to use Viva as an online community—a place where new employees can learn about the company, its policies, and who their coworkers are and what they know, similar to the intranets some companies already maintain.

Microsoft thinks of Viva as a virtual office that employees can visit remotely. Microsoft continues adding new features to Microsoft Teams. As a multi-billion-dollar company, Microsoft is increasingly focused on online collaboration, and Microsoft business customers are along for the ride. We believe both Teams and Viva are different from each other, and comparing their features at this point would be premature.

Microsoft's Digital Decision-Making Pitch to HR 

Microsoft is promoting its employee experience to appeal to HR. Human Resources is spending more than Internal Communications, so HR often has more influence over the C-Suite, which generally explains why IT has championed many Office 365 deployments. Analysts have widely cited viva, but the question remains whether it is what HR wants. After all, there are already giant players such as Workday, Peoplesoft and SAP Success Factors.

Employee insight may be increasingly interesting, but rival offerings often neatly fill a gap. According to a source, Workday recently acquired Peakon, for example. Viva's offering is likely to be seen as a bonus rather than a strategic HR solution. Smaller organizations are more likely to utilize HR process automation first.

Accenture, EY, and PwC and several international partners will provide advisory services to help customers integrate Microsoft Viva into existing employee experience investments.

Final Word: 

The Microsoft Viva offering has the potential to be an innovative solution in employee experience. With this technology, companies can usher in a new software era that allows for more productivity wherever employees are. Viva has the power to transform the employee experience.

With Viva, a company can finally get access to a digital workspace that mirrors the standard office environment without limitations.

Tools such as Microsoft Viva will be critical to helping companies improve their productivity, collaboration, and wellness as more and more people work remotely.