New to Microsoft Viva? Here are the basics:
Microsoft Viva is comprised of four modules that deliver new employee experiences across four vital areas; knowledge, communications, learning, and insights. All of which can be accessed in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. These leverage the foundational technologies of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Graph, and AI and work to deliver a modern employee experience platform.
As hybrid working both at home and in the office becomes the new normal, Viva Insights is an app that provides individuals, team managers, and business leaders the insight they need to develop healthier work habits and a better work environment. It is an “intelligent” experience designed to leverage MyAnalytics, Workplace Analytics, and Exchange Online to deliver data-based insights that recommend actions to help prioritise well being and improve productivity.
In this article, we explore Viva Insights, the app in Microsoft Teams, its key features, the benefits it brings to your employees’ mental well-being, and the benefits of increased productivity you should see as a result. We will also address the way Insights provides important data to employers without compromising the privacy of employees.
Viva Insights in Teams
The app in Teams shows you personalised recommendations that help you do your best work. It generates insights for you that help build better work habits, such as following through on commitments made to collaborators and protecting focus time in the day for uninterrupted, individual work.
It derives these insights by summarising your Microsoft 365 data – data that you already have access to – about emails, meetings, calls, and chats.
The insights for individuals that the app generates are completely personal and private. Personal insights in the app are for your eyes only; neither your manager nor the system administration can get access to or see your insights.
When using the Viva Insights app, you can:
- Stay connected
- Protect time
- Send praise
- Reflect
- Use Headspace
- Take a break
- Start a virtual commute
- Use Microsoft To-Do
Before we dive into the key features, let’s look at what you can expect in terms of Personal Insights and Well Being Experiences.
Personal insights
Personal insights work to help employees maintain strong relationships with important people in their network. Giving users a seamless way to prioritise time for regular one-on-one meetings and keep up with tasks shared across emails, chats, and shared documents from a single place— which is vital as our communications are becoming increasingly more virtual.
In addition, users are encouraged to schedule focus time so that they can work uninterrupted—before the day fills up with meetings.
The insights for individuals that this app presents are completely private, derived by summarizing Microsoft 365 data from emails, meetings, calls, and chats that individuals already have access to.
Personal Wellbeing Experiences
Personal Wellbeing Experiences on Microsoft Viva work to protect your work-life balance. Utilising AI and the latest industry research, Microsoft has come up with several ways to protect your employees’ mental health and give them access to tools that are proven to reduce stress directly in-app. If your Teams App is all over the place, we would recommend optimising it in line with company governance policies and cleaning out any unnecessary Teams before adding any new features. If this is something you are interested book a Teams Consultation with our experts here.
These include free guided meditations and mindfulness sessions from HeadSpace directly in the Teams App. With a Virtual Commute designed to help you destress after a workday and build some separation from your work life to regular life.
Key Features
Let’s take a deeper look at each of those key features:
Stay connected: This feature allows users to form better connections with colleagues and collaborators. Insights can identify who your key collaborators are and allows users to ‘pin’ them for quicker access. This feature can also suggest 1:1 meetings with your managers or colleagues where needed and schedule in meeting reminders. It also reminds you to RSVP to meetings when you haven’t already done so.
Protect time: Viva users can schedule dedicated focus time directly in the app, with do not disturb functions automatically applied to avoid unnecessary distractions.
Send praise: Users can recognise their team’s and colleagues’ hard work by sending praise to them. The praise can either be sent in a private chat or posted in a Teams channel, for wider recognition.
Reflect: Encourages employees to take some time for mindfulness. Users set reminders to self-reflect on how they are feeling, which have been shown to lead to improved productivity and wellbeing. Employees can also access their reflection history to see how their feelings have changed over time. Meaning they can notice trends, and if they want to share these trends with managers.
Use HeadSpace: Viva Insights integrates with Headspace, bringing you mindfulness directly in the Teams app. Offering guided meditations and music to help users focus. Meditations can also be accessed as part of the virtual commute.
Take a break: As part of the Well Being Experience users can take a one-minute ‘breathing break’ – which is an animated experience that encourages them to focus on taking several deep breaths. It can be accessed as often as needed throughout the day.
Microsoft To-Do: To-do cards in the Insights app show employees’ tasks that are due today or have a reminder set for today.
Viva Insights for leaders
Insights don’t just help individual employees with their workloads, they can also help leaders to improve business processes and overall employee experience. Managers get access to Microsoft Analytics Insight’s Workplace Analytics tool (which is available within the paid-for versions of Insights). Helping them to understand whether their employees have enough focus time and if time allocation could be adjusted to improve employee wellbeing.
Privacy within Viva Insights
Privacy is a top concern for many people. As Viva uses personalised data and analytics to produce employee insights, Microsoft has put much thought into data protection surrounding this. They have also released privacy guides for bothering users and admins to describe how data is processed.
Viva insights are part of a wider platform that can drive productivity and boost employee well being and would add real value to both your management team and your employees. If you are keen to implement Microsoft Viva but are unsure where to start you can book a call with one of our Microsoft Certified Consultants, or learn more about Microsoft Viva visit our product page here.