Employee retention in Viva Engage

The Network Analytics dashboard shows a Viva Engage employee retention metric. This metric shows the difference in 28-day retention rates between employees who use Viva Engage and employees who don't. Since Viva Engage doesn't have access to customer human resources data, it uses a retention metric to note an employee's active Microsoft 365 account. Find more detail about these calculations with a numerical example in the following sections.

Note

Only Engage network admins and corporate communicators have access to the Network Analytics dashboard.

Employee groupings

The metric relies on defining the employee population on which to calculate retention. Employees classify into two groups based on Viva Engage and Microsoft 365 activity for an 84-day (~three month) period. 

Active on Engage - Employees who perform an action in Viva Engage. Actions can include viewing, writing, or reacting within any Viva Engage platform.

Not active on Engage - Employees with active accounts but who don’t perform an action in Viva Engage.

Retention proxy

As noted, Engage doesn't access customer HR information, so it must use another way to track employee retention. The metric infers the approximate date an employee left their company by using one of the following conditions:

• Their Microsoft 365 account is deleted;
• The user doesn't use a Microsoft 365 app in the previous 28 days.

Because the retention proxy relies on inactivity for at least 28 days, the retention metric must wait another 28 days after the calculation period to verify inactivity.

Calculation and comparison

Finally, for each employee group (Active on Engage and Not Active on Engage), Engage measures the share of retained employees in the following 28 days. In the Network Analytics dashboard, the metric shows the percentage point difference in retention rates between employees Active on Engage or Not Active on Engage.

Example

The following example shows the retention metric calculation.

Three stages of data collection	Details
Population collection period (84 days) Jan 1 - Mar 25	1,000 employees have active Viva Engage accounts. 800 are classified as Active on Engage and 200 are Not Active on Engage.
Evaluation period (28 days) Mar 26 - Apr 22	In this period, Engage counts how many of these accounts are deleted or receive a final Microsoft 365 action.
Inactivity verification period (28 days) Apr 23 - May 20	To verify an employee’s last action, Engage views their activity for the following 28 days to ensure no more activity occurred.

For all employees counted in the Population Collection Period, 40 Active on Engage employees weren't retained and 20 Not Active on Engage employees weren't retained.

On 5/21, the difference in retention rates for this cohort is:

• 95% retention for Active on Engage employees (760/800 = 95%)

• 90% retention for Not Active on Engage employees (180/200 = 90%)

In the Network Analytics dashboard, the Retention metric would show +5.0 percentage points (95% - 90%).