What Microsoft Viva Means for the Future of the Employee Experience
With the recent announcement of Microsoft Viva, there’s been plenty of discussion around how this new platform can fit into the current organizational structure of businesses. In this post, let’s dive into what Viva is, why it’s promising, and what to expect when it releases later this year.
For Microsoft Viva, the ultimate goal is to tie engagement, learning, wellbeing, and knowledge discovery directly into the flow of peoples’ work within Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork.
Today, organizations spend over $300 billion a year on employee experience. It’s no wonder that Microsoft is creating–or, more accurately, packaging–already exciting services with the Viva brand to drive more momentum to their partners and customers. Viva (just like the Modern SharePoint era) will attract lots of new companies into the Microsoft ecosystem, as this marks the beginning of a major new market: the EXP era.
The Viva offering comes with four existing products:
- Connections = SharePoint home sites
- Topics = SharePoint syntax
- Learning = Microsoft Stream + LXP
- Insights = Workplace analytics
For those curious about what Microsoft Viva means going forward, my recommendation would be for users to stay agile and enjoy the ride. Microsoft Viva is shaping up to be the platform of platforms and doesn’t matter if you’re a consumer, vendor, or partner; as long as you’re adding value on top of Microsoft’s innovation instead of competing against it, you’re on the right track.
The Components of Microsoft Viva
A question being asked by many is, “What will Microsoft Viva enable my organization to do?” The truth is, Viva is not the enabler; it’s the modules that are packaged within Viva that will enable us to work in more efficient ways. With this in mind, I feel it’s only fair to talk about each module and what that module will empower you to accomplish.
Connections will allow an organization to surface existing stories and information in an easily accessible way within Microsoft Teams. Instead of information being hidden away in SharePoint or Yammer, Connections will bring it to the forefront resulting in the content being more visible across the organization.
Insights will bring in aspects of MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics within the Teams application. Again, this gives users better access to data on how they work with a big focus on wellbeing. This will help boost productivity since Insights will reveal patterns in how people work and act.
Learning will give you that one space where you can link existing learning materials–whether internal or external–to create a one-stop-shop for learning. This means users will be able to access learning resources directly from within Microsoft Teams.
Finally, Topics is looping in Project Cortex and, with the use of AI, will organize content and expertise across systems to present this information in a user-friendly manner. Topics will save users time by making knowledge easy to discover and use, taking away the need to search or recreate existing information.
Something that’s worth mentioning is that these modules do come at a cost. Insights needs MyAnalytics licensing for personal insights, and if you want the manager and leader insights then you’ll need to have a Workplace Analytics license. Topics comes at a $5 per user per month cost and sits separately from SharePoint Syntax licensing.
Meanwhile, Learning does come as a free resource, but there will be additional costs if you want to use plug-in subscriptions for learning platforms such as Pluralsight. Microsoft is yet to release a pricing model for Connections, but watch this space to keep up with the latest developments!
Hungry for more Viva info? Check out the resources below:
- Blog post: 4 Microsoft Viva Features That Could Change How We Experience Work
- Microsoft’s overview video: Announcing Microsoft Viva
- Microsoft’s eBook: The People-Powered Workplace
