3 Ways to Boost Your Employee Experience with the New Microsoft Viva Enhancements

In our last Microsoft Viva Engage blog post, we talked about the practical ways Viva Engage can empower your users by bridging the gaps in employee engagement brought by hybrid work.

With The Great Resignation and quiet quitting still looming behind organizations, leaders are now looking beyond employee engagement to try and realign their entire employee experience strategy.

What needs to be addressed?

Microsoft Viva exemplifies the saying, “When employees thrive, companies flourish.” This has never been more true, especially as we’re seeing organizations lose their top talents for not being able to provide for their most important needs.

Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index Pulse Report provides new insights on hybrid work and the three most pressing gaps that challenge organizations today:

New Microsoft Viva Enhancements to Close the Gap

To help organizations boost employee experience and improve employee retention, Microsoft recently announced a new Viva expansion and enhancements that aim to target the three key issues mentioned above:

1. Combat productivity paranoia with transparent goal-tracking and feedback instruments.

Viva Goals: Viva Goals was recently released as an objective and key results (OKR) management solution. It aims to help managers align employees’ everyday work to the business outcome, ensuring a clear transfer of understanding about what employees need to accomplish and what their managers expect them to do.

Today, Viva Goals include new integrations that make it more accessible. It is now integrated with apps used in users’ usual flow of work:

• Teams apps to access and collaborate on OKRs within the Teams activity feed
• Azure DevOps for item completion
• PowerBI for datasets that track key performance indicators (KPIs) and key results
• Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project for automation of project management updates

Viva Pulse: A new app that allows team leaders to ask for feedback right in Microsoft Teams. It helps managers address the right team needs by gaining honest feedback from their team members without needing to switch platforms to fill out feedback forms.

2. Create authentic connections among leaders and employees with improved communication platforms.

Leadership Corner: A new platform within Viva Engage where leaders can encourage open dialogues and feedback across communities and teams by delivering news, information, and feedback all in one central dashboard.

Viva Amplify: Another communication platform where corporate leaders and HR can create better communication programs by having the ability to publish news and updates to multiple channels simultaneously.

Users can also manage campaigns as well as metrics to consistently track improvements in communication programs.

3. Provide learning and development opportunities with easily accessible learning and information banks.

Viva Learning’s integration with LinkedIn Learning Hub: Employees can now easily navigate across both systems to encourage custom learning and curated learning paths for employees.

Answers in Microsoft Viva: A new experience in Viva Engage where employee questions can be easily matched with expert answers to address open questions. This helps better manage collective knowledge that now exists in Viva Engage.

Make Hybrid Work, Work

Even the biggest organizations around the world are fumbling their way through hybrid and remote work. One policy would never work as an one-size-fits-all solution, so taking the time to get to know how you can maximize Microsoft 365 for your organization will be key to finding which solutions work and which do not.

Build your ideal modern workspace with us! Learn more about AvePoint’s WFH-ready kit.

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