Remote and hybrid work has transformed company culture and employee needs, with employee experience and well-being becoming just as important as employee performance. It has become utmost important for employees to work in a workplace where they are cared for, which requires an empathetic mindset from managers when considering the employee lifecycle. A thoughtful and holistic approach has become essential to the success of the organisation following three key factors: seamless experience no matter where employees work, retention over recruitment, and successful business outcomes. An employee experience platform can achieve all of these goals, considering that employees can better collaborate and drive business results when they have access to a comprehensive, integrated system of employee experiences. 

To achieve a good employee experience six factors are necessary to be considered:

• Purpose - my work impacts others and helps the company succeed.
• Growth - building on my strengths, developing myself to increase my impact within the organisation. 
• Clarity - I get regular feedback to help me stay on track to achieve my goals. 
• Empowerment – people trust me in the organisation, my decisions, my ideas.
• Connections - I am respected, reliable, an integral part of the organisation, connection between colleagues is cooperative, respectful. 
• Wellbeing - I manage my time, energy and talents to maintain my health and happiness. 

Microsoft Viva is the only employee experience platform that goes beyond what makes employees more productive and combines communication, learning and knowledge, resources, insights and goals into one seamless system. Microsoft Viva provides several ways to do this, four company experiences are described below.

Achieving a healthy work-life balance

One of the most difficult challenges of working from home is the separation of work and private life. The typical issues in work-life balance include lack of time away from work, using meeting time inefficiently, trouble setting priorities, and missing focus time to work. Organisations need to find a way to gather employee needs and perspectives and then develop a system to find a work-life balance that ensures both performance and employee well-being. Viva Insights is a powerful tool for collecting and analysing survey data and developing solutions. Building meeting proposals into the Viva system reduce the growth of meetings, thereby reduce the number of unnecessary meetings and the number of participants. Setting priorities, goals and key deliverables using Viva Goals help employees understand their goals and what work they need to do to achieve them, meanwhile a holistic approach ensures employee empowerment, personal feedback and support.

Seamless knowledge sharing through Viva Topics

In remote or hybrid workplaces, employees may find it challenging to collaborate across the organisation, so it is particularly important to ensure the most efficient and rapid retrieval of information in the digital environment. With the introduction of Viva Topics, effective communication and collaboration can be easily ensured without impacting the existing systems of the role. Because Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence technology to sort, process and organise resources, employees can more easily discover and use the knowledge available within the organisation. Employees can easily find the best person to consult with, or quickly access related resources or experts on a particular topic while chatting in Teams or browsing a SharePoint site.

Fostering inclusivity and sustainability in the workplace

A personalised employee experience is particularly challenging for organisations when working in different countries and cities. 73% of employees want flexible remote options to continue, meanwhile 67% of employees wish they had more in-person time with colleagues. By combining Microsoft Teams with Surface Hubs, employees can feel included in every meeting and face-to-face interaction. Remote employees can see everything that on-site team members can see, and communication is seamless with the integration of Teams into presentations and meetings. Also, Viva Insights helps employees keep an eye on how their time is spent and make adjustments to their schedule on Microsoft Teams.

Wellbeing as a virtue of the employee experience

Taking care of people's mental health has become an essential factor in employee engagement and therefore retention, 42% of employees are more likely to stay at their current job if offered comprehensive mental health and wellbeing benefits. Viva Connections, integrated with Microsoft Teams, can automatically notify employees of relevant mental health events or initiatives. Also, Microsoft's security solutions ensure maximum user experience and effective access to wellbeing benefits.

The benefits of Microsoft Viva

• Prioritize communication and culture by bringing together relevant news and resources in the applications you use to interact every day.
• Improve productivity and wellbeing by enabling employees to see how they spend their time and focus on the tasks that matter most.
• Eliminate the cumbersome chain of experts and time wasted sifting through thousands of documents by placing relevant knowledge right where you need it.
• Empower employees to easily carve out time for growth and skill development with access to learning modules and resources right from their everyday applications.
• Align employees’ everyday tasks and individual goals with the larger mission and aspirations of the company. 

Learn from practices in different organisations and choose Microsoft Viva employee experience platform within Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 support. Ask our experts for help integrating Microsoft Viva into Microsoft Teams.

The article is an extract from Microsoft's ebook “Create a holistic employee experience - Four ways companies have used Microsoft Viva to address the changing needs of employees” which can be downloaded here after registration: https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-create-a-holistic-employee-experience.html