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Engage your frontline workers and focus on wellbeing

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 for frontline workers

Nurture a sense of belonging among your frontline team by empowering to engage with your entire organization.

Survey's like Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Pulse Report show that many frontline workers:

  • Wish more was being done to support their mental health
  • Say leadership does not prioritize building culture
  • Believe that work stress will either stay the same or worsen in the coming year

You can help your frontline team overcome these challenges and feel supported in your organization by using Viva Connections, Viva Engage, Praise, SharePoint, and Microsoft Stream.

Connect frontline workers to your broader organization with Viva Connections

Viva Connections brings the power of SharePoint into Microsoft Teams, so your frontline workers can easily access everything they need on the go. Use the Viva Connections app for Microsoft Teams to:

  • Connect frontline workers and create opportunities to engage, communicate, and collaborate
  • Make it easy for frontline workers to access important news and announcements
  • Empower frontline workers around a common mission and goal
  • Create a sense of belonging and provide tools that help foster wellbeing.

Increase engagement with communications

Viva Connections is comprised of three main components that can be set up and customized in different ways to highlight tools and resources: the dashboard, feed and resources, shown below.

Viva Connections dashboard, feed, and resources.

Component Description Capabilities
Dashboard The Dashboard is your employee’s digital toolset and enables quick access to popular tasks. Prioritize cards that help frontline workers accomplish popular tasks like clocking in and out, or viewing assigned tasks. Cards can be targeted to distinct roles and regions.
Feed The Feed aggregates content from Viva Engage, SharePoint news, and Stream to display a personalized news stream. Content in the Feed gets automatically aggregated based on sites and Viva Engage communities that the user follows. Content can be prioritized to display more prominently in the Feed. Use audience targeting to display content to specific audiences.
Resources The Resources surface links to popular SharePoint portals and other content. Resources are inherited from global navigation in SharePoint. Link to popular SharePoint portals like HR benefits and training resources. Modern SharePoint portals will display in Teams to provide the best possible viewing experience.

There are several ways to use Viva Connections to communicate with your workforce. Viva Connections features a Feed where news, content from Viva Engage, and videos are aggregated and displayed in a personalized view based on the sites and communities that the viewer follows. The Dashboard can also be used to highlight certain cards that link to important news sources.

As you prioritize and align the scenarios to support, consider how and where certain tools and resources should be located. Learn more about the differences between desktop and mobile apps.

Empower your workers to share feedback

Creating channels for your frontline workers to share feedback helps these teams feel engaged and like their voices matter. In addition, getting feedback from these teams can provide insights into how your organization can improve processes.

Promote health and wellbeing

Frontline workers need extra support when it comes to managing health and wellbeing. Not only are their jobs fast paced, but they can also be physically and emotionally demanding.

Create a supportive digital ecosystem

Empowering frontline workers with the right technology makes their jobs easier and helps your organization quickly adapt to ever-changing work conditions. Use Viva Connections to create a digital ecosystem and curated employee experience.

  • On the Dashboard: Use Adaptive card templates, the Card designer, and third-party integrations to create custom cards and quick views that help workers access information and complete every day tasks such as:
    • Finding or securing parking spaces
    • Accessing pay and benefits information
    • Requesting new uniforms and supplies
  • In the Feed: SharePoint news posts and Video news links allow you to digitize organizational announcements. News posts are highlighted throughout the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem, can be translated into different languages, and can be easily found when employees are searching for content.
  • In Resources: Link to tools that your teams use to manage work, such as Teams apps.

Get started planning, building, and launching Viva Connections

Review Viva Connections capabilities, technical requirements, and customization options. Then, work with stakeholders (such as representatives from HR and operations and process owners) who can accurately represent the needs of your frontline workforce. Take inventory of the highest priority needs and align them to Viva Connections capabilities to build a custom experience in Teams. Get started planning, building, and launching Viva Connections for your organization.

Create communities with Viva Engage

Viva Engage is an internal social network that gives members of your organization opportunities to connect with each other. You can create communities where members of your organization can post messages and communicate. Having a variety of communities that span both frontline and non-frontline teams helps your on-the-ground workforce connect to each other and the broader organization. Communities can be based on:

  • Location
  • Roles, such as cashiers or nurses
  • Interests, such as outdoor activities or pop culture
  • Identity groups
  • And more

Host live events

Members of your leadership or management team can host live events on Viva Engage where employees can engage and ask questions in real time over chat. Your communications and management teams can use live events to share announcements, host morale events, and more.

Note

Only users with an E3 or E5 license can host live events, but users with F licenses can join them. Learn more about who can host and join live events in Viva Engage.

Learn more about Viva Engage.

Boost morale with Praise

The Praise app in Microsoft Teams lets managers and employees congratulate each other and share appreciation by sending badges in Teams chat and channels. Praise helps employees feel recognized for achievements such as meeting goals and going above and beyond to help customers.

Learn how to manage Praise for your organization.

Support engagement with SharePoint and Microsoft Stream

One of the biggest struggles for frontline workers is feeling included in the broader organization. By recording important meetings in SharePoint and hosting videos in Microsoft Stream.

Record Teams meetings and store them in SharePoint

If your organization already uses Microsoft Teams, you may have recorded some of your meetings so that team members can catch up on meetings that they missed. Recording meetings can also benefit your frontline team by making them feel included in the organization. Some ways you can use recorded meetings to help frontline teams include:

  • Give them earlier access to announcements such as product releases and new policies.
  • Help them understand your organization's broader business goals.
  • Familiarize them with the leadership team that drives decisions that affect them.

Learn how to record Teams meetings and store them in SharePoint.

Once a meeting is recorded and saved in SharePoint, your corporate communications team can add a card in Viva Connections to make it easily accessible for your frontline team.

Host live events and share video content on Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream is your organization's own streaming video platform. With Stream, anyone in your organization can record and upload videos to share. Ways you can use Stream to engage your frontline workers include:

  • Share announcements such as product releases and new policies so your frontline team isn't the last to know.
  • Members of the leadership team can introduce themselves and discuss their goals so your frontline team understands who drives decisions and why.
  • Frontline teams from different locations can create videos introducing themselves and showcasing their location so workers in different places can feel connected.

Note

Only users with an Enterprise license can host events or publish to stream. Users with F licenses can join events and view videos.

Learn more about Microsoft Stream.

Your corporate communications team can make sure everyone has easy access to stream videos by adding a card in Viva Connections.