Microsoft Viva is set to become the companies first employee experience program, operating directly from Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365. The tool will help employers gauge employee experience and feedback across key metrics, creating a better workplace for everyone.
What Is Microsoft Viva?
Microsoft Viva is a new employee experience platform that will “help employees learn, grow, and thrive.” The platform will bring engagement, learning, wellbeing, and knowledge discovery modules directly into the workplace, delivered using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
Helping gauge those four key areas are modules, each featuring different capabilities and integrations to help employees better understand and access the employee experience platform. The first four Microsoft Viva modules are:
- Viva Connections: A personal gateway where employees can access company resources, participate in company communities, and more.
- Viva Insights: Provides individuals, managers, leaders, and employees with “personalized and actionable” insights into the workplace. Insights will work with data from LinkedIn Glint, Zoom, Slack, Workday, and SAP SuccessFactors, helping to make third-party services part of the conversation.
- Viva Learning: A module that should make company and employee learning easier to access, helping employees grow and expand their skillset. Viva Learning will feature company-focused content from LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn, along with third-party learning portals such as Skillsoft, Coursera, Pluralsight, and edX. The company can upload internal content, too.
- Viva Topics: Helping to connect people to information and experts within the company.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said:
We have participated in the largest at-scale remote work experiment the world has seen, and it has had a dramatic impact on the employee experience. Every organization will require a unified employee experience from onboarding and collaboration to continuous learning and growth. Viva brings together everything an employee needs to be successful, from day one, in a single, integrated experience directly in Teams.
The Viva platform is designed as an open and extensible platform built so that companies can import existing employee experience hubs into the new portal. Microsoft Viva will feature numerous third-party integrations (some of which you can read above), and I would expect many more to arrive as the platform gets up and running.
When Will Microsoft Viva Launch?
As per Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro’s Microsoft 365 Blog, “Viva Topics is generally available” as of February 4, 2021. Furthermore, the blog post announces a “public preview of Viva Insights and a private preview of Viva Learning.” You can learn more on the official home of Microsoft Viva.