In this pandemic stricken time, businesses and particularly service providers are trying their best to ease out the pressure on their employees. Falling on the same spectrum, Microsoft pushes for the new Microsoft Viva that is designed to act as a portal for both businesses and employees to navigate the complexities of telecommuting and distant work.
Microsoft figures Viva will help in this innovative computerised period of work. Viva isn’t an assistance or application, it is instead set up as a stage for improving distant work:
Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365 says:
“We need to stop thinking about work as place and start thinking about how to maintain culture, connect employees and harness human ingenuity in a hybrid world”
Spataro had predicted early on in the pandemic that it would forever change the way we work and learn, and that Microsoft Viva will be the very result of trends Microsoft has been witnessing.
Viva is intended for this new advanced and adaptable period of work, incorporating into Microsoft Teams and works instead of the prior intranet through gathering fundamental pieces of a business into one area. Microsoft separates Viva into four specific modules namely insights, learning, connections and topics.
Connections includes resources such as company policies, internal communications and benefits. It’s designed to be the portal you would go to if you just started at a given company and you have never met your colleagues due to the lockdowns. Viva Connection is designed on top of Microsoft’s Sharepoint technology that includes town halls, company news and employee resource communities or groups. Essentially, it’s a dashboard for connecting coworkers remotely.
Microsoft states Viva Insights will include data for leaders and managers to monitor work trends, patterns and that privacy shall be protected. Spataro says “ This means personal insights are visible only to the employee, while insights for leaders and managers are aggregated and de-identified by default to protect individual privacy”
Viva learning is Microsoft Viva’s third module, and as the name implies, it is about employee development and learning. This is the module where employers house courses, training materials and content for employee education. This includes content from Microsoft Learn, LinkedIn Learning and even an organisation’s own content along with training material sourced from third-party providers.
Viva’s last module is Topics which uses AI to automatically surface topics cards with videos, documents and organises content automatically. Viva Topics generates topics cards from apps such as Sharepoint, Teams and Office.
Microsoft launched Viva on Feb. 4, 2021, with parts of the platform to roll out within 2021.
Microsoft launches Viva, a new push on the future of remote work
