Microsoft Viva is the first platform that provides tools for employee engagement, learning, wellness and knowledge discovery directly in the workflow, all for the future of the remote work.
According to the company, the Viva platform is designed to help employees “learn, grow and thrive” with new experiences that integrate with productivity and collaboration capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
The announcement comes as economic and social trends are driving lasting changes in the workforce, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Microsoft, the nascent category of “Employee Experience Platforms (EXP)” encompasses a fragmented market of services, infrastructure and tools, which are unfamiliar or underutilized in enterprises.
What is Microsoft Viva?
Microsoft Viva builds on Teams and Microsoft 365 to unify the employee experience in four key areas (engagement, well-being, learning and knowledge), with the goal of achieving an integrated experience.
The platform will debut with an initial set of modules in Viva:
Viva Connections: through Teams, provides personalized access to the digital workplace, where employees access internal communications and company resources, such as policies and benefits, and participate in communities such as employee resource groups. It will be available during the first half of 2021 for the desktop version and with a mobile app later in the year.
Viva Insights: provides practical insights that help people in an organization. Personal experiences, visible only to the employee, help protect time for breaks, focus work and learning. Managers can see trends at the team and organizational level to balance productivity and well-being. In addition, a new dashboard allows organizations to combine feedback in LinkedIn’s Glintwith, enabling leaders to more accurately identify where teams may be struggling. The Viva Insightsapp in Teams and dashboards are now available.
Viva Learning: makes training and professional development opportunities more visible and accessible in the workflow. It aggregates all of an organization’s learning in one place, from traditional courses to microlearning content. The app is available in a private preview and will be released in late 2021.
Viva Topics: offers a knowledge discovery experience that helps people connect with information and experts across the enterprise. Using artificial intelligence, Viva Topics automatically displays topic cards in conversations and documents in Microsoft 365 and Teams. It is generally available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 business plans.
Nadella said that in the future, organizations will need a “unified experience” that considers continuous collaboration, learning and growth. “Viva brings together everything an employee needs to be successful, from day one, in a single experience integrated directly into Teams,” he said.
