Why HR need to know about Microsoft Viva

"It's going to be a game changer."

Those were my initial thoughts on Microsoft Viva.  Coming from a background in HR, Information systems, Analytics and Information Management.  Most of my areas of professional interest were engaged.

Chances are you probably already have access to elements of Viva if you use Outlook or Teams.  Check out your Teams sidebar, click on the ellipses (3 dots ...) and add in Viva Learning and Viva Insights.

These are just two of the areas in the Viva suite of products the others being Viva Connections, Viva Goals and Viva Topics.

Insights

I'll share my personal experience with Viva Insights another time, but just to say that virtual commute really can help if you dream about work. Amongst pointers on wellbeing, Insights is like the manager and mentor you never had.  Sharing more insight on your work/life balance on ways you can achieve more balance, focus and growth, all based on the telemetry of your activity online (works for those always on mobile devices too).  You may have even already seen emails from Insights too.  

In the background this mountain of information can be securely and anonymously sliced and diced (Insights won't provide manager insights for a company with 1 person and less than 9 direct reports).  The strategic advice HR always wanted to present now comes out of the box, supported by the millions Microsoft have spent of research in this area. Weave in your single source of the truth from your HR solution and you have a critical springboard on the pulse of your organisation. Absolutely critical if you have a hybrid or remote workforce.  In a virtual working world, having a mirror on our behaviours can help us understand how we can become more resilient and stronger.

Topics

We spend around 1 hour on average searching for or replicating information on a daily basis.  Worse still for those joining a company and they can't find any structure, or any information on what they should do, they ways of working, the values, culture and organisation of a business.  As HR professionals we've known the importance of information management and categorisation for sometime.  Equally we all know what a pain it is to categorise every single file to ensure robust management.  In walks Viva Topics,  it using AI to look at your information, and categorise for you.  Ok it needs a bit of training but that's what it does.  Then it looks at you the things you follow, it curates the information for you, and ideally you with it.  In a mature information management landscape you'll see Topic curators looking after particular subjects in an organisation, and helping manage knowledge.

Connections

Self service out of the box with Dynamics HR is pretty awesome, but it's not perfect.  Once again we have strong engine but the experience lacked shine.  Like a new fashion it came out it a new print which faded quick as the hyper-investment in digital experience outpaced it.  It's getting more of it's shine back though and I hope to see some awesome improvements now we have the ability to change things again in it's original home in Dynamics Operations.  Connections however gives us that experience side of things once again, essentially some repackaged Sharepoint with a host of adaptive cards and connectors that will enable you to mash up comms feeds, policy locations, and all the other pieces of information and learning in one place.  The one stop shop for self service with a high end feel has arrived (well its still arriving).  But unlike other early arrivals from Microsoft we know this is tried and tested technology.

Learning

Some of the best learning comes from the stuff we never expected to learn, Viva Learning is already there for many of us, and will guide and signpost us to some of the most important information from out learning providers whether that be LinkedIn, the Harvard Business Review or your own Learning Management Solution.  Complement this with parameters that define the boundaries for your workforce on how many hours they should be setting aside for learning, and make sure your HR policy is enforced equitably and without toxicity.

 

Goals

Dynamics HR has this super strong record structure, but when it comes to the experience around performance it fizzled out.  A few years ago Microsoft paid out for Ally.io a consumer grade performance experience.  I breathed a sigh of relief, and a little bit later we now have that morphing into Viva Goals.  An organisation can achieve so much when it's going in the right direction (assuming it has a strategy that is). Viva Goals will enable that strategy to be driven top down and bottom up through a business finally in a visually appealing way, with a proper mobile grade employee experience.