People in Microsoft Viva – Putting people at the center of the employee experience.

The evolution to hybrid work

Today’s workforce is hybrid. It’s been a huge cultural shift in the global workforce. First, the abrupt pivot to remote work, and then the progression to hybrid work – this has been a positive evolution of the workplace in many ways. Greater work life balance and flexibility, reduced or no commute times, normalizing pet cameos, just to name a few. But some drawbacks to hybrid work have become apparent as well. Since the lines between work and home have blurred, your workday can often feel never-ending and burnout is a real concern. Social capital has been lost over the past few years and this connection will need to be rebuilt, whether colleagues work in the office or remotely.

After we launched Microsoft Viva last year to usher in the evolution to hybrid work, we’ve found that Viva has helped customers reduce onboarding time by 50%, improved worker productivity through a 75% reduction in search time, reduced employee attrition by 20%, and more, resulting in 3x ROI1.

By centering the employee experience on people and teams to help build connections, reduce organizational silos, and improve collaboration, we built People in Microsoft Viva.

Introducing People in Microsoft Viva

People in Microsoft Viva is a new platform capability in Viva that puts people at the center of the employee experience, so you can discover connections and experts across your organization. Available as an app and integrated into Microsoft 365 profiles, People in Viva is powered by AI, unlocking information across interests, knowledge, and goals to improve collaboration and team building.

People in Viva helps you discover, manage, and curate your network to create meaningful workplace connections. With hybrid work as the new normal, we’re redefining workplace dynamics and team bonds. People in Viva can help build a culture of inclusion, manage organizational change with transparency – in one place, across distributed people and teams.

You’ll also be able to unlock insights across people and teams. Connect with the people in your organization who matter to your work – based on interests, team goals, shared relationships, trending content and interactions, and more. Bridging gaps in a hybrid workplace can foster improved collaboration, breaking down organizational silos and improving decision-making.

And lastly, People in Viva enables equitable knowledge sharing so employees can flourish and grow. It embeds expertise and interests that, through the power of intelligence, help discover connections between multiple data signals, to then contextualize this information and improve your productivity and efficiency.

Key features of People in Viva

We’re excited to share with you the key features of People in Viva that strengthen your workplace connections and help you work more efficiently.

Figure 1 Viva Topics integration in People in Viva

Viva integrations: People in Viva provides a new way to visualize your Viva experience by centering on people and teams. With Viva integrations, you can discover employees based on interests, goals, topics, and more. Through People in Viva, you get an aggregated view of Viva signals available to you, and contextualize this information for a holistic view. For example, you are assigned to a new project called Moonshot, and need to get up to speed on cross-functional team members to work with (such as legal counsel and financial analyst).

Figure 2 Hybrid work preferences in People in Viva

Hybrid work preferences: People in Viva hybrid work preferences is a capability that creates a culture of inclusion and diversified opportunities to build social capital. See how and where people are working so you can create more inclusive connections and respect colleague’s boundaries when scheduling meetings. For example, you need to schedule a meeting with your Moonshot colleagues. By filtering for “In the Office” teammates, you realize your colleagues will be in-office on a particular day, and thus you can include a physical conference room along with your Teams meeting invite.

Figure 3 Team profile in People in Viva

Team profile: In People in Viva, you’re able to get a holistic view of teams, understand the team charter and focus areas, trending content and interactions, see team goals, as well as other recommended contacts. Especially in matrixed organizations, having this holistic understanding of a team can help you work more efficiently. For example, after identifying an engineering contact for Moonshot, I can view their team profile, which gives me a better view of their charter and their team goals to kickstart my go-to-market plan before meeting with members of the team.

People in Viva empowers your employees to discover real-time connections, expertise, and knowledge. Leveraging the Viva experiences you use every day, while aggregating and contextualizing information, People in Viva helps break down organizational silos so you can build your network and work more efficiently.

In case you missed it, watch the Empowering Your Workforce in Economic Uncertainty event and hear from Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, and Jared Spataro, Microsoft's CVP of Modern Work, for urgent insights every leader needs to know in a rapidly changing economic environment. To learn more about other Microsoft Viva innovations announced today, read the Microsoft 365 blog by Seth Patton, check out the Microsoft Viva website, and explore the Viva Innovation Brochure.

Are you excited to check out People in Viva? Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or how it might help you.