Demand for tools that help organization optimise employee performance and wellbeing are steadily growing as workplaces become increasingly digitally native.
Microsoft is one of the biggest vendors of digital business solutions, and for many years now, their focus has been on optimizing the professional user experience through their products. This can be seen in the work they have put into Microsoft 365 – their flagship productivity suite – and in their advocacy of modern working practices, including remote work and hybrid work. We discussed this with TechQuarters, a Microsoft Solutions Partner based in London. TechQuarters have been helping Microsoft Office 365 companies get the most out of these products since 2010. When we asked them about how Microsoft 365 can help organisations support their workforce to be more productive and efficient, and they pointed to Microsoft Viva.
What is Microsoft Viva?
Microsoft Viva has been described by Microsoft as “the employee experience platform with Microsoft 365 and Teams”. It combines intelligence and content from across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and curates it all within a series of mini apps that can be accessed from within Microsoft Teams. The purpose of Microsoft Viva is to help businesses manage and improve the employee experience within their organisation. This is achieved in a number of different ways:
- Connection – This involves functionalities relating to building a network to make it easier for users to contact people in the organisation with expertise relevant to their work.
- Insight – Viva includes capabilities for workplace analytics and employee feedback to turn data into actionable business decisions.
- Purpose – Viva also includes functionalities relating to keeping personnel in the organisation aligned with business goals.
- Growth – Viva has several features relating to encouraging employee growth through training and streamlined content discovery.
What is Included in Microsoft Viva?
Microsoft Viva may be one of the newer products in the M365 family, but its intelligent features are already making a significant impact. TechQuarters said that many of their clients are using the Viva products to great success; and as a motivated provider of IT support Central London businesses rely on, TechQuarters themselves rely on these types of intelligent features to keep their workforce running optimally.
The various features and functionalities in Microsoft Viva are divided across a number of different Viva-branded apps that users can access in the Microsoft Teams platform. There are seven different Viva products in total, which are as follows:
- Viva Connections – This app, which is accessible in Microsoft Teams, acts as the home page for Microsoft Viva. Its purpose is to forge a network of company content – from news, to conversations, and more.
- Viva Engage – This app is similar to Connections. However, it focuses on people, rather than content. It is professional relationships network that helps employees connect with one another more meaningfully.
- Viva Insights – This app pulls metrics from across the different apps in Microsoft 365 to provide user insights – such as how many hours of collaboration a user has engaged in throughout the week. These types of insights can be used to make wellness and productivity suggestions.
- Viva Goals – This app is designed to record goals and visualise the progress being made to them. Goals can be linked to users in Viva to ensure that teams and individuals remain aligned on priorities.
- Viva Learning – This app pulls together all kinds of learning resources within Teams to ensure that users have access to growth opportunities.
- Viva Topics – This app curates company content so that it fits into specific topics. This makes it easier for users to discover content that is relevant to their work.
As an IT support company London based businesses have been relying on for thirteen years, TechQuarters told us that in their opinion, leveraging technology to support the work and activities of employees in an organisation is definitely a crucial part of modern work practices. In their opinion Microsoft Viva helps achieve this very well.
