Reimagining the employee experience with Microsoft Viva

As organisations begin to transition to the future of work, one of the key challenges facing HR leaders is to create a more productive and inclusive work culture, where happy employees find meaning in the work that they do.

What then, are the top drivers of a great work culture? According to the latest Glint Employee Wellbeing Report May 2021, the top three drivers of a great culture include:

• Providing employees with opportunities to learn and grow.
• Ensuring employees feel included and have a sense of belonging.
• Employees need to believe their organisation lives its values.

Highlighting how these drivers have differed to those deemed priorities in 2019, Georgina O’Brien, Head of LinkedIn Learning & Glint, APAC, told HRM Asia, “Organisations need to capitalise on these revamped expectations to keep people energised and focused, or risk losing them to new opportunities. That means building growth cultures that support the development of new capabilities and internal mobility. Investments in technology and training will be a critical part of competing in the work-from-anywhere, learn-from-anywhere world.”

“Organisations need to capitalise on these revamped expectations to keep people energised and focused, or risk losing them to new opportunities.” – Georgina O’Brien, Head of LinkedIn Learning & Glint, LinkedIn Asia Pacific.

At LinkedIn, there is a recognition that engaged employees look forward to going to work, know their job responsibilities and understand how their efforts contribute to the success of the business, O’Brien revealed.

She continued, “We take a thoughtful approach to measuring EX and by using Glint data, we look at different factors, including: Building moments and relationships with managers and peers, providing opportunities for personal growth, as well as creating meaningful work.”

To help organisations personalise their approach to employee experience and wellbeing, LinkedIn and Glint have partnered with Microsoft Viva Insights, one of four initial modules of Microsoft Viva, to provide data-driven recommendations.

With Glint and Microsoft Viva, HR and business leaders can combine de-identified and aggregated employee feedback from Glint (how people feel) with de-identified and aggregated collaboration data from Microsoft Viva Insights (how people work) to deeply understand key aspects of EX and, most importantly, identify concrete and objective ways to bring about improvement.

Microsoft Viva offers a new approach to Employee Experience

To truly empower people to feel connected, supported, and able to bring their best selves to work, Microsoft decided that a new approach, coupled with a new category of technology solutions called employee experience platforms or EXP, is required, leading to the launch of Microsoft Viva.

An EXP is a digital platform that puts people at the centre by bringing together systems of work with systems of support into an integrated solution; specifically, Microsoft Viva is an EXP that empowers people and teams to be their best, no matter where they are working.

Providing an organising layer for employee experiences, Microsoft Viva unites people to share knowledge, skills and connections, and delivers personalised and actionable insights.

Microsoft Viva Insights, one of the modules within Viva, provides personal insights visible only to the user, while insights for managers and leaders use aggregated and de-identified data, with privacy protected every step of the way. It also provides an open and extensible platform, and a strong and growing ecosystem of partners, including LinkedIn and Glint.

The other modules within Microsoft Viva include:

• Viva Connections: Keeps employees informed, connected and inspired to bring their best to work every day.
• Viva Topics: Frees up time by making it easy for people to find information and put knowledge to work.
• Viva Learning: Empowers people to gain targeted skills in the apps they already use, so everyone can learn and grow.

Collectively, these initial modules help HR leaders address the agility and flexibility that is required of their organisations in a new world of work.

Leaders, while grappling with how to make a new world of work more sustainable for their people, their organisation and themselves, are realising that a new culture of resilience that enables employees and organisations to continuously adapt to changes is critical, suggested Nishanth Satheesan, Employee Experience Solution Lead, Asia, Microsoft.

“Wellbeing, team cohesion and trust are linchpins of success and catalysts for creativity, innovation and resilience, and we must nurture them accordingly” – Nishanth Satheesan, Employee Experience Solutions Lead, Microsoft Asia.

He explained, “This requires transforming traditional models of work and culture. Hybrid work is becoming the norm in many industries and location matters less as work becomes more digital. Technology is empowering us to do more, be more, and is pushing us harder as the pace of business accelerates.”

With these developments, organisations need to recognise that human productivity cannot be solely measured by efficiency; they need to empower human ingenuity by reimagining the employee experience, Nishanth urged.

“Wellbeing, team cohesion and trust are linchpins of success and catalysts for creativity, innovation and resilience, and we must nurture them accordingly,” he added.

With the increase in remote work brought on by the pandemic, many organisations, including those in Asia-Pacific, found that the less tangible drivers of work culture – growth opportunities, belonging and values – became more important to employees.

“Supporting these priorities remotely has been a completely new skill for many HR teams across the region, one that they have been forced to learn at speed,” O’Brien observed.

The new integration of Glint and Microsoft Insights will also enable leaders to understand the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’, as she explained, “Glint can help you analyse engagement data, including comment data, based on Microsoft Viva Insights metrics such as weekly collaboration hours, workweek span, and weekly 1:1 time with managers. With Narrative intelligence, leaders can get an even deeper understanding of how work patterns are influencing engagement.”

Attrition alerts further help to analyse millions of data points, including aggregated, de-identified metrics from Microsoft Viva Insights, and allow leaders to identify burnout and implement plans to increase wellbeing.

The integration of Glint and Viva Insights, also highlights how Microsoft Viva is designed to be an opened and extensible platform. As HR leaders continue to ponder their key priorities in 2021 and beyond, Microsoft Viva will also continue to grow its ecosystem of partners to help deliver a complete and inclusive employee experience in the flow of work.

Click here to find out more about Microsoft Viva Insights and how it can help your organisation reimagine your employee experience.