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Overview: Microsoft Viva for the hybrid workplace

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The hybrid workplace is becoming the norm for many businesses. People working together, both online and in person, from the office and from home or other remote locations can be challenging to navigate. How do you ensure that hybrid work is engaging, productive, and efficient while considering the health and well-being of your employees who face new challenges in the hybrid world? Now more than ever, it’s time to ensure your employees can be their absolute best from anywhere.

Viva

Microsoft Viva is the employee experience platform that brings together collaboration, learning, organizational knowledge, and wellbeing in the flow of work to create an integrated experience where your employees are so they can be their best. Here are some scenarios you may be familiar with:

  • When everyone can’t be in the same room, communication can be challenging. Getting all of your employees on the same page is paramount.
  • Onboarding new employees or employees who are changing roles requires that knowledge, information, and learning can be discovered and assigned easily.
  • Frontline workers want to be able to see their schedules, be able to check in and check out of their shifts easily and get important communications in one place.
  • Employees want to learn new skills in the flow of their work wherever they are.
  • You want your employees to balance their work and lives so they can avoid burnout.

This guide will show you examples of how to use Microsoft Viva and your existing infrastructure in ways to help ensure a successful hybrid work environment. Don’t have Microsoft Viva yet? Find out all of its benefits and how to get it.

Example tasks and scenarios

Requirements

Plan

Every organization is different. Determining the needs for your organization is the first step in planning a successful hybrid work environment.

  • Identify the organization’s internal structure. This may start with the overall hierarchy, departments, teams, and project groups.
  • Identify the places and locations where your employees work
  • Find out the needs of your employees as they work from their particular locations
  • Determine the ways in which your employees communicate and collaborate the best
  • Understand the goals of leadership communication.
  • Discover what your employees need to learn in the flow of their work
  • Discover what your employees struggle with and give them the tools and insights they need to focus their time and take time to rest
  • Consider the culture of your organization and the ways people connect with each other

According to the results of your needs assessment, your next steps can be:

  • Identify key tasks and scenarios that can be supported by Viva
  • Align stakeholders and business owners around common goals
  • Plan for security and governance
  • Prepare content
  • Create an adoption plan and training for end users
  • Consider success metrics and maintenance over time

Example key tasks and scenarios

Following are examples of key tasks and scenarios that your organization may identify. Select the links to learn how to pull together Viva modules and other services to fulfill these scenarios.

Onboarding or changing roles

Onboarding new employees and employees changing roles need to get up and running, learning, and feeling comfortable and productive quickly. Having all the information in one place streamlines the process for both your human resources team and employees.

Learn more in the Onboarding employees who are new or changing roles scenario.

Frontline workers

Frontline workers who are not on site need to be able to see their schedules and check in and check out quickly and easily. They also need to be able to access organizational communications easily and all in one place.

Learn more in the Frontline worker scenario.

Work/life balance

Supporting work/life balance is essential to the health and well-being of your employees. Viva Insights can provide the information to help employees balance their work and life whether at the office or working remotely, and you can make the information easy to find.

Learn more in help ensure work/life balance.

Leadership communications

Leadership communications are often delivered in an all-hands or town hall scenario. With a hybrid workforce, some of your employees will be onsite and can attend such events. Others may be at home or in remote locations. How do you bring everyone together?

See how in the Leadership communications scenario.

Learning

Employees in a hybrid organization can’t always attend on-site training. Providing learning in the flow of their work is what Viva Learning provides.

See how to help your hybrid employees learn in the flow of work.

Security

Microsoft Viva benefits from the advanced security and compliance capabilities that are built into Microsoft 365 and Office 365 as well as specific settings and policies of the apps each module interacts with. For example, Viva Connections uses not only Microsoft 365 security and compliance features, but also the security settings in SharePoint, Teams, and other apps that are used with Viva Connections. For more information, see Overview of security and compliance in Microsoft Viva | Microsoft Docs.

Licensing

See information about Microsoft Viva licensing under Frequently asked questions. Learn more about the Microsoft Viva features available across Microsoft 365 plans in the Microsoft Viva service description.

Roll out Microsoft Viva

Let your employees know about Microsoft Viva and the employee experiences available to them, and provide resources on how to use Microsoft Viva.

One way to do this is to create a SharePoint news post which can then be added to your organization home site and also shared and distributed in Teams, Outlook, and Viva Engage. You can even target specific audiences for the news post.

News is shown as a personalized feed on the SharePoint start page and in the mobile app. It can also be shown on team sites, communication sites, and hub sites. You can share the news in an email to your employees, and you can show News in a Teams channel.

Learn how to create and distribute SharePoint news.

Use Viva Learning to train your employees on all of the great tools you've rolled out to them. Get started with Viva Learning. Don't have Viva Learning set up yet? See Introducing Microsoft Viva.

You can find additional resources such as email templates, how to build Viva champions, training resources and more at Microsoft Viva – Microsoft Adoption.

Next: check out the Employee onboarding and changing roles key scenario.