Microsoft as we speak unveiled its employee-experience platform, Viva, which the corporate calls a digital “gateway” for workers to entry related information, studying, analytics, and information inside their group.Four Viva “modules” — Connections, Insights, Learning and Topics — will turn into obtainable in Teams on a staggered foundation over the subsequent few months, Microsoft stated, leveraging present capabilities inside the Microsoft 365 portfolio, together with SharePoint and analytics instruments.The platform can be designed to supply managers and leaders higher insights into the well-being and efficiency of staff, the corporate stated.“Today we are bringing together collaboration, learning and well-being, in order to create a complete new product category: [the] employee experience platform or EXP,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated in a pre-recorded briefing forward of the announcement.Just as enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) purposes related accounting and finance to core enterprise operations three many years in the past, companies are actually in search of related alignment with employee-facing techniques, Nadella stated.“We believe the same paradigm shift that happened with ERP then will happen with EXP today,” he stated. “People operations will no longer be limited to HR, but will be integrated across every aspect of the business in order to improve the overall health and resilience of the organization.“Every organization will require a unified employee experience, from onboarding and collaboration to continuous learning and growth,” Nadella said. “These can no longer be siloed functions.”The launch of Viva comes as an enterprise concentrate on distant staff continues to develop, significantly through the pandemic-driven rise of distributed workforces. Microsoft argues that the “fragmented” marketplace for worker expertise instruments, masking every thing from worker coaching to advantages, analytics, and different wellness points, is already value a staggering $300 billion globally. “But too often, these technologies are fragmented, hard to find and disruptive to the flow of work,” Jared Spataro, company vice chairman for Microsoft 365, stated in a weblog put up on Thursday.As firms put together to assist a big distant workforce post-pandemic, curiosity in instruments that monitor and handle worker expertise is on the rise. SAP’s profitable Qualtrics IPO and HR software program vendor Workday’s $700 million acquisition of worker engagement analytics supplier Peakon are two latest examples. And Salesforce in 2020 launched its worker expertise platform Work.com.“Without a doubt, the pandemic has [placed a] bigger focus on employee experience because of the conditions many had to adapt to,” stated Carolina Milanesi, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies. “This, in turn, has highlighted the gaps many organizations had when it comes to support, train[ing] and manage talent. …People realized that the way they worked does not reflect the way we should be working. This, coupled with higher visibility given to working conditions, societal issues and upskilling creates a very good moment for Microsoft to deliver an holistic platform.”Microsoft’s present strengths round office productiveness — and the growth in Teams use, which now has 115 million every day lively customers — put the seller in a superb place to introduce worker expertise capabilities, stated David Johnson, a principal analyst at Forrester.“Microsoft understands how important technology is in people’s daily working lives, that it is a huge part of their overall employee experience,” stated Johnson. “Drawing awareness to this and creating solutions to help companies create a better experience for their employees is a good move.”Milanesi additionally famous that Microsoft has a wider attain than most firms centered on worker expertise. “The biggest advantage that Microsoft has is that it builds on solutions that are already present in many organizations — like Yammer — and leans into a strong cloud- and AI-enabled platform. Other solutions are more limited in scope and do not necessarily get the advantage of plugging into as many resources and will be judged on a much narrower return, which might bring more scrutiny to their cost.” For Microsoft 365 clients, the launch of Viva may enable IT to play a extra lively position in managing and coordinating worker expertise for his or her group.“Unless we work in HR, most of us don’t use HRIS [HR information system] software every single day; we use Microsoft or other productivity software to get our jobs done,” said Johnson. “What [the Viva launch] is doing is to make the CIO’s role in employee experience much more prominent, something that we’ve been predicting for several years.“By integrating capabilities into Teams, it puts them more in the flow of people’s work, and most importantly, it raises awareness.”Viva ConnectionsThe shift to distant work has affected workers’ sense of neighborhood and belonging inside their group, particularly for brand new hires, with 60% of staff feeling disconnected since going distant, based on Microsoft analysis.Viva Connections is a customized digital office constructed on SharePoint. From right here, workers can entry a variety of content material, together with inside firm information, insurance policies and advantages, and work together with numerous teams and communities, because of integration with Microsoft apps together with Yammer, SharePoint, and Stream. Microsoft
Viva Connections is a single customizable Teams app that highlights firm information and assets.
Each worker will get a personalised information feed, which inside communications groups can use to focus on necessary data — it is accessed within the dashboard that serves because the Viva homepage. The Connections app will be custom-made with company branding and curated content material to focus on teams of workers with centered data and instruments. Connections is slated to be obtainable on the Teams desktop app within the first half of 2021, with the cellular app following in the summertime.Viva InsightsAn analytics instruments, Viva Insights, is aimed toward each particular person workers and managers and might monitor productiveness and well-being at a private and business-wide degree. Viva Insights, which replaces two present Microsoft 365 instruments — MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics — will supply an outline of productiveness ranges, stated Microsoft. The purpose is to make sure worker well-being and keep away from burnout by, for instance, detecting when an worker has too many conferences and never sufficient focus time. Additional options corresponding to digital commutes and integration with the Headspace meditation and mindfulness app shall be obtainable within the “coming months,” together with an integration with Viva Learning. Microsoft
Replacing present Microsoft 365 analytics capabilities, Viva Insights shines a lightweight on worker well-being and productiveness for people and managers.
In addition to tapping into knowledge from Microsoft’s personal merchandise corresponding to Teams and Outlook, Viva Insights will incorporate knowledge from third-party purposes, together with video instruments like Zoom and HR platforms from Workday and SAP SuccessFactors.Microsoft has drawn criticism for its Productivity Score device in latest months, which may enable managers to watch particular person productiveness ranges. The firm stated that private knowledge derived from Viva Insights is simply viewable by the person worker, whereas higher-level information is accessible by enterprise leaders and managers solely after being aggregated and anonymized, with privateness set by default. Viva Insights will be downloaded for Teams as we speak, with private insights obtainable for Microsoft Exchange Online customers in public preview, and supervisor insights obtainable to present Workplace Analytics clients.Viva Learning The Viva Learning app for Teams, now in non-public preview, is a central repository for studying supplies. The goal is to assist workers simply search out data wanted to do their job, from coaching movies to PowerPoint displays. Teams customers can search and share studying content material in chat and create their very own “tab” inside the collaboration platform to arrange their content material.Microsoft
Viva Learning gives entry to studying supplies from a variety of Microsoft and exterior instructional sources.
Learning content material is offered from a variety of sources, from Microsoft Learn and LinkedIn Learning to third-party suppliers corresponding to Coursera and PluralSight. Viva Learning can even combine with studying administration techniques from Cornerstone OnDemand, SAP SuccessFactors, and others.Viva Learning is at present being piloted with choose Microsoft customersl a normal launch is pegged for “later this year.”Viva TopicsLastly, Viva Topics is a information administration platform that helps an worker entry the data that pertains to their job position.Topics makes use of AI to gather content material throughout a company into subject areas corresponding to initiatives, merchandise, or clients, collating data from inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem in addition to third-party suppliers corresponding to Salesforce and ServiceNow. These subject pages are robotically collated by Microsoft’s AI, with a company’s “experts” in a position so as to add and edit the wiki-style pages.Topic “cards” are additionally obtainable inside Microsoft 365 apps, highlighting matters once they seem in sure messages or different content material inside apps, offering fast context round unfamiliar acronyms or phrases, for instance.Topics are organized round a “topic center” which is able to finally be viewable from Teams and SharePoint, permitting staff to find content material really helpful to them based mostly on matters they observe, and customized by the Microsoft Graph.Viva Topics is usually obtainable as of as we speak for all Microsoft 365 clients.Microsoft
The Topics module acts as a Wikipedia-style information base for inside paperwork and data.
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