The future is now. The way we work has changed forever – with the 9-5, 5 days per week replaced by flexible, hybrid working either at home, remote or in the office. Microsoft has driven this working revolution, with powerful Cloud-based to help you get your job done from anywhere.
Microsoft constantly add to their portfolio of apps, to help businesses achieve more every day. In early 2021, they launched Microsoft Viva, empowering people and teams to be their best from anywhere. So, what is Microsoft Viva? And how can it help your business?
Introducing Microsoft Viva
Microsoft describe Viva as an employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights in the flow of work. Unlike most of their offerings, Viva isn’t a standalone app. It’s more of a platform for improving remote work and helping businesses adjust to it.
Viva integrates into Microsoft Teams and works rather like the intranet of old by collecting essential parts of a business into a central location. There are four specific areas in Viva: connections, insights, topics, and learning.
Microsoft Viva Connections
Viva Connections is all about encouraging culture and communications in the digital workspace. It offers a personalised gateway, where employees can access useful company resources and internal documents. It’s also designed to be a valuable place staff member can visit if they want to get to know their colleagues a little better.
Connections is built on SharePoint, and offers everything from employee resource groups and communities to town halls, company news, and quick access to recently opened apps and documents. Viva Connections aims to help employees stay engaged within the company, no matter where they’re working from.
Microsoft Viva Insights
Through Insights, managers and leaders can access personalised and actionable information about the workplace. It allows companies to make data-driven improvements in their processes and policies. Additionally, the insights pave the way for enhanced employee well-being and productivity.
Insights doesn’t just focus on productivity in the workplace, but better wellbeing for people working remotely too. As many remote workers can struggle to find the right work/life balance, Microsoft believes it’s important for teams to promote good mental and physical health.
Microsoft Viva Topics
Viva Topics is all about empowering the workforce with the expertise and knowledge they need to thrive in a changing workplace. Viva Topics helps people to connect to information and leaders around the company, with AI insights to assist with better connections. Think of it as your company’s version of Wikipedia.
The idea behind Topics is that when AI can pull information from both Microsoft and third-party services, there’s less jumping between apps. Clicking on a topic card opens a related page with access to various useful pieces of information.
Microsoft Viva Learning
Viva Learning is about employee learning and development. This is where employers will house training materials, courses, and other content for employee education. This will include content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and even a business’ own content, alongside training material from third-party providers.
Viva Learning allows people to share the resources and lessons just like they’d share other content types. So, employees can discuss and share lessons in chats or tabs. More importantly, team managers can also assign courses or lessons to certain teams or individuals, fostering a culture of development and learning in the company.
Microsoft Viva has the potential to become the next big thing in improving employee experience. Businesses should employ it in their day-to-day tasks to make sure employees learn, connect, and collaborate effectively. If you’d like to learn more about using Viva in your organisation, get in touch with ACUTEC today.
