How an International Human Rights Organisation uses Viva Topics for Knowledge Management.

Utilising Microsoft Viva Topics to Strengthen Workforce Knowledge and Drive Best Practice

The Challenge

Managing knowledge and sharing information across a global organisation can be challenging. When that information has the potential to improve lives it’s a challenge that needs to be resolved immediately. So, when a leading human rights consultancy firm recognised, they could do more, they reached out to ThinkShare for support.

Our client, an international human rights organisation (HRO), relies upon their consultant’s knowledge to provide actionable advice to their clients. They have operations spread across the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and India, all of which are dedicated to helping businesses deliver on their commitments to respecting human rights and contribute to a more equitable world.

When working on projects to eradicate forced labour, improve conditions in factories, and drive sustainability, best practice is always changing.

As their operations grew, managing the knowledge of these best practices through a disparate employee base, with multiple leavers and joiners was becoming increasingly challenging. They recognised that to have a greater impact on human rights across global supply chains, their consultants needed to be working from a single source of truth. So, with that in mind, the work that we were asked to carry out had the following objectives:

• Empower the sharing of knowledge to building human rights capability internally

• Create a knowledge centre for building human rights capability in the wider world

• Help identify and define distinct offering so the HRO can reach new clientele

The Solution

Our client wanted to create a Knowledge Centre that contained several key topics that could be curated and managed by topic champions. Our expect consultants deployed Viva Topics, customising the Topic centre and the topic pages to include vital information, files and links expanding the solution far beyond basic out-of-the-box capabilities.

A directory of Topics was also created in the Topic centre to act as the knowledge centre home page. Giving consultants quick and easy access to the information they require without having to search through email trails or wait for a colleague in another time zone to become available to explain best practice.

As part of the project, the ThinkShare consulting team also created an Intranet site on SharePoint Online. This acts as a base to which the Knowledge centre is linked. Containing all the information the client needed employees to have access too, whilst ensuring easy to manage governance, enterprise level security and minimal downtime.

The Outcome

The Knowledge Centre was deployed without issue, and can be utilised in a number of business scenarios, including:

1. Learn Within Your Flow of Work
When a consultant begins creating documents for a new project, they can search for relevant Topics directly in their flow of work in Office or Office Online. Meaning all consultants have access to the latest best practice information without having to leave a proposal or project brief.

2. Relevant Up Skilling
When a new article is created and shared within internal communication channels, any relevant Topics are automatically highlighted so consultants can quickly see if that update is relevant for them and continue to upskill.

3. Employee Onboarding
Any new starts are shown how to utilise the Knowledge Centre, and with its intuitive custom design they are able get up to speed with the services that the company offers and begin improving the lives of workers worldwide.

4. Streamlined Sales Process
Starting a new project is easier as consultants can quickly identify and define the businesses key service offerings, including references and successful business outcomes for existing clients and previous projects.

5. Searching with Syntax
Synonyms of the services are highlighted, identifying that different terms may be used for the one service across different regions but the knowledge is stored centrally for an approved topic.

6. Always Accessible
Their consultants needed access and the ability to update this information immediately in order to collectively upskill and ensure the organisation can work with more businesses and improve the lives of those that work for them.