Research Drop: What Organizations Ask in Employee Surveys (Plus Three Untapped Opportunities for 2025)
Research Drop in Brief: Across 729 customers, the top 20 taxonomy items included on employee surveys remained relatively stable between 2022-23 and 2023-24. eSat, our single-item engagement metric (How happy are you working at <COMPANY_NAME>?), was the most frequently utilized item across customers. All six of the People Success elements are represented among the top utilized survey items, illustrating that organizations are capturing a holistic view of the employee experience. Heading into 2025, we identified three underutilized survey items with direct links to business and employee outcomes that can offer a potential edge in the year ahead: Role Clarity, Career Paths, and Speak My Mind. #Flexibility #DEI #SkillsEconomy #AI – we are constantly presented with new trends and topics to focus on in the employee experience space that are aligned with societal influences, technology advancements, or economic changes. But are these trends reflected in the most frequently used employee survey items? How much variance do we see in the top utilized items year-over-year? To better understand these questions, we turned to our customers to learn what items they have been prioritizing on their surveys over the past two years. The answer? Of the top 20 most utilized items between 2022-23 and 2023-24, 95% of them are the same. In essence, there seems to be a core set of employee experiences and outcomes that customers across industries are consistently measuring, forming a foundational sense of employee sentiment to track and evaluate year-over-year (YoY). Beyond the top 20 most utilized items, we start to see some changes in item utilization, with items varying up to 5 percentage points in more or less customer utilization YoY. These shifts show the flexibility within employee surveys for organizations to seek feedback on experiences that may be unique to their context or to trends that are particularly relevant to their industry or size. In the top 20 most utilized items, one item broke into the top 20 in 2023-24, up 5 spots from the 25 th most utilized in 2022-23. This was our Wellbeing item (<COMPANY_NAME> takes a genuine interest in the employees' well-being). Employee wellbeing is a multi-faceted experience and continues to gain traction as a top priority for organizations and employees, and we see this reflected in the increase of customer utilization in the past year. More organizations are recognizing the tangible benefits of employee wellbeing at work 1 , and the U.S. Surgeon General released a framework for workplace mental health & wellbeing, underscoring systemic support for holistic employee health 2 . With the uptick in Wellbeing utilization, we see an example of societal changes reflected in topics of focus for our customers. Employee engagement remains the north star, but retention intentions remain relatively unexplored We recommend that your employee surveys include at least one outcome item – something to capture whether the overall employee experience promoted thriving. The current analysis showed that the most frequently utilized survey item year-over-year is eSat, our employee engagement item (How happy are you working at <COMPANY_NAME?), with 90% of customers including this item on their surveys. This aligns with our People Science recommendations, as eSat captures the end result we hope employees feel at work and has been validated as the strongest general predictor of talent and business outcomes of all 11 of our outcome items 3 . Our research shows that, on average, each additional point of engagement (via eSat) reported by employees correlated with a +$46,511 difference in market cap per employee 4 . Therefore, we are encouraged by the consistent utilization of this item by our customers as it can help them continue to measure and understand their organization’s engagement levels. Beyond engagement, our research has also shown that understanding the intended behaviors of your employees can provide a pivotal insight into whether they currently feel committed enough to the organization, their team, or their role to plan to stay onboard for the foreseeable future. Our Intent to Stay item (I plan to be working at <COMPANY_NAME> two years from now) captures this employee intention and we previously found that employees who rate this item unfavorably (Strongly Disagree or Disagree) are 10x as likely to leave their organization within 90 days as those who rate it favorably (Strongly Agree or Agree) 5 . However, we discovered that only 24% of our customers included this item in their surveys in the past year. With an ever-present competition for talent, especially within the context of AI workplace transformation 6 , it can be vital for organizations to get a pulse on the current long-term intentions of their employees. Keep an eye out for our January Research Drop where we will dive deeper into measuring and predicting employee retention! The top 10 most utilized driver items include all six People Success elements On the Viva People Science team, we ground our work in our foundational research on what makes employees happy and successful at work. We found six People Success elements that organizations can use to build their own thriving People Success culture: Wellbeing, Connection, Clarity, Empowerment, Growth, and Purpose (learn more here). Our research shows that these elements are imperative to a holistic and successful employee experience and when we took an even closer look, this time at the top ten driver items included on customer surveys last year (i.e., excluding outcome items such as eSat), we see that these items covered all six of the People Success elements. From this we can see the distribution of driver items across the People Success elements and that over half of customers integrated these top ten items into their surveys last year (even with over 200 Glint taxonomy items included in customer surveys in the same time frame). While every organization is different and has varying priorities that they need to include in their employee surveys, this broad-based distribution of People Success elements illustrates how Glint customers are not solely focused on one aspect of the employee experience, but instead taking a holistic approach to EX. Beyond the basics: Three metrics to gain an edge in 2025 For the most part, the foundational survey topics remain consistent year-over-year. But it can be helpful to plug-and-play new items into your employee surveys to continue to evolve your understanding of your employee base and their experience at your organization. To get you started thinking about topics to measure in the new year, we looked at our business outcome and engagement analysis to discover potential high-impact opportunities. Based on this, three items emerged as high value opportunities for survey inclusion: Role Clarity: I clearly understand what is expected of me in my role. Aligned with the People Success element of Clarity. Career Path: <MY_MANAGER> has meaningful discussions with me about my career development. Aligned with the People Success element of Growth. Speak My Mind: I feel free to speak my mind without fear of negative consequences. Aligned with the People Success element of Empowerment. The current utilization rate for these items ranges from 23-27%, indicating some customer use but room for growth. We may already be seeing an uptick in interest for these items heading into 2025, as Role Clarity and Career Path had the highest YoY increase in usage across customers (up 5 and 3 percentage points, respectively) across all driver items. In addition to predicting critical business and employee outcomes, research demonstrates the importance of these topics: Role clarity is a critical predictor of job performance, efficiency, intrinsic motivation, and innovative work behaviors 7 . Effective career conversations with your managers can impact employee retention, as companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for 5.4 years, almost 2x longer than companies that struggle with internal mobility 8 . The Speak My Mind item gets at a component of Psychological Safety, which has a positive impact on turnover, stress, and productivity (Watch our recent webinar on Building Psychological Safety). Heading into 2025, these three survey items could deepen your understanding of your employees’ experience, especially as the workforce continues to undergo an AI transformation and many employees’ job tasks and career paths are being reimagined. Employees may feel uncertain about their changing role expectations and development opportunities, and anxious about sharing their feelings surrounding the changes. Providing your employees with the opportunity to share their perspective can be a differentiator in maintaining a thriving workforce amidst ongoing changes. Consider whether including one or more of these items on your surveys in 2025 would help you be better informed on your employees’ experience! The bottom line: find the balance between consistency and flexibility What we learned from this month’s research drop was that the topics that are top-of-mind for our customers have been consistent, focusing on a wide range of items spanning the six People Success elements. While this stability is helpful in being able to track employee sentiments over time, there is an opportunity to explore additional topics that may be surfacing for your employees. Try not to get caught up in flashy trends and instead focus on experiences that your employees may not have had the opportunity to provide feedback on in the past that could be critical for your organization’s strategy. But don’t forget – the most important aspect of employee surveying is acting on the feedback you receive. Want to learn more about action taking? Check out our September Research Drop on Empowering Managers to Take Action on Survey Results. Stay tuned for our January Research Drop to keep up with what the Viva People Science team is learning! The analysis for this month’s research drop examined LinkedIn Glint customer item utilization between two annual time frames, September 2022 to August 2023 (n = 729 customers) and September 2023 to August 2024 (n = 728 customers). Only items in the Glint taxonomy were included in this analysis, therefore custom items were not analyzed. 1 Forbes. (July 30, 2024). The business case for mental health: Investing in employee well-being. 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Workplace Mental Health & Wellbeing. 3 This research draws from employee survey responses from 1,000+ customers, collected from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022. The eSat item was utilized in various tests (e.g., multiple regression) to validate its impact on talent outcomes (e.g., attrition, performance) and business outcomes (e.g., stock return, market cap per employee). 4 Microsoft WorkLab. (April 20, 2023). The new performance equation in the age of AI. 5 Cross-customer attrition analysis (n = 33 customers) from June 2023 examining the proportional difference of all employees who have voluntarily left their companies whose item scores were unfavorable compared to those whose scores were favorable. 6 Mercer. (December 11, 2024). Future of work: 2024 global talent trends. 7 Kundu, S. C., Kumar, S., & Lata, K. (2020). Effects of perceived role clarity on innovative work behavior: a multiple mediation model. RAUSP Management Journal, 55(4), 457-472. 8 LinkedIn. (2022). Workplace Learning Report: The Transformation of L&D
An update on Copilot in Viva Glint
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva Glint became publicly available for Viva Glint customers in November 2024. This AI feature was developed as Human Resources (HR) users and leaders of large organizations historically spend a lot of valuable time interpreting Glint survey results and comments. Copilot in Viva Glint enables leaders to understand and act on employee feedback by quickly summarizing large quantities of comments. Five months into this feature being used by our customers - how are we doing? What are our customers' experiences? What can we learn from our customer experiences as we continue to move forward and enhance Copilot in Viva Glint? To collect feedback from our first set of users, we used the following assessment criteria: Is Copilot in Viva Glint simple to understand? Is Copilot a seamless, frictionless experience that doesn’t require additional effort? Does Copilot provide insights that you trust? Does Copilot help drive action? Overall, we’re thrilled to receive ongoing customer feedback and appreciation for this new feature. This quote from one of our largest enterprise customers says so much, “We could not perform thorough comment analysis before, but [Copilot] has allowed us to study groups we couldn’t before.” In the past, this customer had to manually read thousands upon thousands of comments. Now, they are able to summarize 8,000 comments on a theme of their choice - in just a matter of seconds! We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned: Who’s using it: As expected, HR and senior leaders are diving in first. Engagement: 86% of our enabled tenants had active usage within the last five months. We can see that once Copilot is enabled, it’s getting frequent use. User satisfaction: We’re thrilled to report users are very satisfied with Copilot in Viva Glint! The Copilot chatbox experience provides comment summarization and helpful question prompts to drill down on specific themes within the summary leading to helpful data and insights. First-time users are awed by the speed and comprehensiveness of the summaries. Fueled by early customer feedback, we have made some positive changes since our initial launch, including expanding the comment summarization limit to 8,000 comments. Retention: We see increased month-to-month retention among active Copilot in Viva Glint users. It provides insights that our customers find authentic and useful, and they’re going back to see more. As we continue to build out Copilot in Viva Glint, this is what we are working toward: Copilot to be localized: We want users to be able to ask questions in their preferred language and for Copilot to respond back to them in their preferred language. Copilot to summarize all survey results: We know that if Copilot summaries can include survey scores, in addition to comment summarization, use cases for it can increase indefinitely. Each organization would have the ability to filter their data summaries to meet their unique needs. Copilot for all managers: We want Copilot to ebb downstream to empower managers of medium to small teams. With results summarization, we can reduce the response threshold for Copilot summary from 10 to 5, giving managers of smaller teams the ability able to dive right in. Copilot to encourage action taking: We need to ensure that our feedback insights are useful and then can guide managers to use feedback to improve the employee experience and business outcomes. The Microsoft People Science team and our product teams are committed to this outcome. Copilot in Viva Glint to be ‘on’ as the default setting: With Copilot turned on as the default setting, users can be encouraged – or at least curious – to give it a try. We know once they begin to use it, they will love what Copilot can do. We’re energized to be part of the AI generation. I look forward to our next Copilot in Viva Glint check-in! Hao Liu is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft. Hao leads the Copilot in Viva Glint product, an innovative tool designed to transform enterprise employee listening programs through generative AI. Hao is a seasoned product leader experienced in driving high-performing cross-functional teams to launch enterprise SaaS products for Fortune 500 companies.
News to Know – Volume 2, Edition 9, November 2025
To help you get the most out of Viva Glint & Pulse, this newsletter brings you the latest insights, updates, and enhancements designed to elevate your platform usage and employee listening programs. Be sure to check out the new "Customer Success Stories" section showcasing an inspiring example from DocuSign. New on your Viva Glint platform Admin Self Service: Data Retention Update. Last month we shared the new feature enabling admin to retain identifiable data for deleted users. We initially planned to restart Entra Delete Signals in Viva Glint on November 1st. However, since we are still working on enhancements to give Admins more control over user data management, especially regarding Entra Delete Signals, we will continue to pause Entra Delete Signal in Viva Glint until the end of June 2026. The signals will resume on July 1, 2026. This extension will give us time to implement all necessary user data controls for Admins, such as email address/employee ID retention, viewing a list of deleted users, and restoring users, when possible, before reactivating the Entra Delete Signals. Additional information can be found in the Message Center as well as here and here. UI Enhancements: Visual Indicator Added for Required Questions. In the past, when survey takers tried to skip a survey question that required a response they would see an error message. To make things clearer, we've added the text * Required under questions that are mandatory. This will help survey takers spot questions that must be answered right away to avoid confusion and disruption. UI Enhancements: Updated Placeholder Text for Comments. The default comment placeholder text for rating questions in Viva Glint surveys has been updated from Add a comment (optional) to What can be improved in this area and what’s working well? to further encourage survey participants to provide thoughtful, actionable, and higher-quality feedback. This change is intended to drive more frequent and meaningful responses. Please note that this update applies only to the default placeholder text for rating questions; the placeholder text remains customizable, and any existing customized placeholder text will remain unchanged. Reporting: Workplace Patterns Report. Now generally available in Viva Glint, this report highlights the relationships between employee survey scores and workplace activity and collaboration patterns without custom analysis. Enabled for administrators and extendable to other roles, this feature allows users to quickly identify and share actionable insights, enabling faster, data-driven decisions and boosting engagement across your organization. Learn more here. Reporting: Regional Benchmarks. Building on the refreshed Global, Top 10%, Top 25%, and Industry benchmark suites in Viva Glint earlier this year, we have updated the Country & Region benchmark suites for 2025. These new benchmarks offer organizations more precise and up-to-date comparative insights into employee feedback across different regions, supporting better decision-making and more targeted action plans. Make sure to opt into benchmarks in the platform to access the benchmarks and related resources. Copilot Enhancements: Multilingual Support. Viva Glint Copilot Localization lets users interact with Copilot in their chosen language, supporting prompts and responses in more than 70 languages. Copilot replies in the language set on the user's dashboard by default, but if a prompt is submitted in another language or contains mixed languages, Copilot will detect this and respond in the same language. This applies to both the Copilot sidecar and comments panel, making it easier for HR and managers in global organizations to use Copilot seamlessly. Advanced language detection and translation help Copilot deliver accurate and useful responses, regardless of language or dashboard settings. Learn more here and here. Kindly note that this enhancement will be rolled out gradually throughout November and is expected to be fully rolled out by the end of the month. For the latest updates, please refer to the M365 roadmap item until it becomes available to all customers. Copilot Updates: Known Issues, Improvements, Model Upgrade. We’re committed to improving your experience with Copilot in Viva Glint. Here are three key updates: Topic Count in Comment Summarization - The number of topics in comment summaries may not have matched user instructions previously. This issue has been fixed and should now work correctly. Sample Comment Count Display Issue - The displayed count of sampled comments may be inaccurate, though the underlying data and summarization are correct. This display-only issue has been fixed and should now work correctly. Applying Manager Hierarchy Filter - When asking Copilot to summarize comments by manager hierarchy, the filter may not apply correctly. As a workaround, apply the manager hierarchy filter to the report first, then request the summary. We’re working on a permanent fix. Model Upgrade Spotlights - In July, we upgraded Copilot to newer GPT models. As a result, you may notice that Copilot’s responses to the same prompt could differ from those generated prior to July. This change reflects our ongoing commitment to leveraging the most advanced AI models available. We continuously evaluate the latest large language models for performance and accuracy and will keep you informed whenever significant model upgrades occur. Your feedback is invaluable as we strive to enhance Copilot’s capabilities. Visit the new blog post here to learn about another exciting Copilot enhancement coming soon! Current and Upcoming Private Previews Sign Up for Copilot Highlights | Preview. Be among the first to experience Copilot Highlights, a new dashboard feature in Viva Glint that delivers instant, actionable summaries of survey results—spotlighting team strengths, opportunities, and engagement trends at a glance. This preview is designed to help managers and leaders quickly understand team status, identify critical focus areas, and celebrate successes. Reach out to us here to sign up. Integrating with Organization data | Preview. Viva Glint is introducing integration with Organizational Data in Microsoft 365—bringing enterprise-grade security and seamless data ingestion across Viva and Microsoft suite applications. This new capability makes it easier than ever to connect your people data, streamline workflows, and unlock powerful insights for HR and IT teams. Be part of this evolution: join the preview, share your feedback, and help shape the future of data management at Microsoft. Express your interest here. See our public roadmap for more feature updates. Events and Learning Opportunities November 23rd Customer Advisory Session: AI & People Transformation – Understanding HR’s Role to Drive AI Adoption For current VCCP members only, register here to join this month’s session which will feature Viva Glint People Scientists discussing the role HR plays in enabling and driving successful AI transformation while providing attendees a chance to guide the development of a new Viva Glint-led resource for our customers. During this session, you will learn how AI transformation is inexplicably tied to people transformation and how to drive people success in your organization through the lens of AI adoption. Drawing upon the latest in AI research and current trends across customers, our People Science team is uniquely positioning itself to help our customers drive AI adoption by addressing key barriers to success and helping HR unlock their potential to support AI transformation. If you are not yet a member of the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) but would like to participate in the upcoming session mentioned above, as well as gain access to numerous other engaging and valuable Viva Glint and Pulse customer activities, please see the sign-up information below. New Thought Leadership Research Drop: Amplifying Clarity and Impact of AI Agents by Aligning on Desired Outcomes. As AI agents turn AI technology from a personal productivity tool into a team value generator, it’s time to expand our thinking from not just the activities we want them to accomplish, but also the outcomes we want to achieve. The October Research Drop explores differences in AI agent adoption, multi-agent clarity, and team collaboration between employees on teams focusing on solely activities versus activities and outcomes. Read it here. Unlocking Actionable Insights with the Workplace Patterns Report. The new Workplace Patterns Report in Viva Glint brings together employee engagement, meeting habits, and peer connection data, empowering organizations to link how people work with how they feel. This playbook guides users through holistic listening, combining survey sentiment and workplace metrics to surface actionable patterns. Check out the blog post and download the playbook. Research Drop: Empowering Managers for an AI-First Future. As organizations shift toward an AI-first future, managers are emerging as pivotal for translating strategy into team-level impact. Yet only 56% feel supported integrating AI agents into their work. The November Research Drop explores how empowering managers with targeted training, resources, and a focus on psychological safety amplifies realized value, critical thinking, and trust in agentic AI. This month’s findings reveal that when managers lead by example and foster a culture of experimentation, teams are not only more ready to adopt AI but also achieve greater, lasting impact. Read it here. Customer Success Stories Docusign Accelerates Speed of Insights by 92% with AI-Powered Analysis In any global company, timely and accurate data is essential for shaping go-to-market strategy, and Docusign is no exception. When launching a strategic employee survey for one of our largest departments responsible for go-to-market strategy, the goal was clear: quickly synthesize feedback to help leaders with product selling approaches and enablement, then guide key action planning and strategic decision-making. The Challenge: Data Volume vs. Time The survey had a high response rate with over 3,000 detailed and thoughtful comments from employees. These comments had rich insights but would have been incredibly time-intensive to process manually. Traditional analysis would have taken weeks, delaying decisions that needed to happen quickly. The volume of the data, combined with limited bandwidth from our small but mighty People Analytics team, made a faster, scalable approach essential. The AI Solution: Speed and Precision To meet the demand for quick, actionable insights, we implemented an approach that used both Viva Glint Copilot and Gemini to help analyze employee comments. Copilot was used primarily for the initial analysis across the thousands of comments, helping us create themes across all comments, themes from each specific survey question, and ideas for actions - all of which would have taken our team weeks, but was now accomplished in mere hours. This allowed us to pivot from manual data crunching to strategic analysis almost instantly. The Results: 92% Time Savings and Increased Speed to Strategic Impact Implementing AI into our survey analysis process shattered our previous timelines. An effort that would typically consume around 60 hours of manual work (including comment analysis, theme identification, summarization, comparisons, and action taking suggestions) was condensed to just 5 hours, representing a nearly 92% reduction in spent time. Most critically, key findings were delivered to leadership within 24 hours of the survey closing. This speed allowed leadership to immediately move into action planning and strategic decision-making. In summary, using AI enabled us to quickly and accurately surface key issues important to employees, provide impactful, detailed insights that were incredibly helpful to leadership, and helped facilitate action planning and strategic decision-making. The Future of Surveys is AI-Powered The success of using AI for this strategic survey reinforced our belief that AI, specifically Viva Glint Copilot, is a powerful and transformative tool for all People teams. Inspired by the strategic survey success, our People Analytics team launched Copilot to our People team partners, developing internal training to ensure that Copilot is being used in a way that maximizes its impact. Our partners are now using Viva Glint Copilot to help gain insights from the feedback (comments) shared by employees in our largest company Engagement Pulse Surveys. Further Viva Glint Copilot use cases are planned for the future. Connect with us Join the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) is Microsoft’s premier customer engagement initiative designed to connect Viva product teams directly with customers like you. By enrolling, you’ll gain access to a wide range of Viva product engagements, including dedicated sessions for Viva Glint & Pulse. As a participant, you’ll have the opportunity to: Explore Viva and Glint product visions through exclusive previews and roadmap discussions. Shape product development by providing direct feedback on features, designs, and measurement models. Engage with Microsoft product teams in virtual sessions that run throughout the year, including monthly meetings and iterative design reviews. Network with other customers across industries and regions, sharing best practices and learning from peers. By joining you will also be part of a strategic advisory group focused on Viva Glint-specific HR, AI and People Science topics. If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form so we can guide you through the enrollment process and help you get started. We look forward to partnering with you to build better products—together.January 2025 Viva Glint Customer Town Hall: Recap & Recording
On January 22, 2025, we held our first Viva Glint customer town hall with the goal of informing and inspiring attendees by sharing new and upcoming Viva Glint features, Viva People Science thought leadership, and programming. We started off by sharing what’s “in” and “out” for 2025. HR and IT collaborating on solving business challenges, taking advantage of all the features that Glint has to offer, and applying research from the Viva People Science team are all “in” for this coming year! Liz Pierce, Head of Product for Viva Glint and Viva Pulse, shared product updates including the importance of commercial and technical migrations to Viva Glint for those still on the LinkedIn Glint platform. She also highlighted our commitment to customer data security and privacy. Liz spoke about five key features new to Viva Glint, including self-service employee ID updates, the ability to edit questions in live surveys, the Glint and Insights integration, Copilot in Viva Glint for comment summarization, and the availability of Glint survey results in the Copilot Dashboard. We wrapped up the product section by outlining three key areas for future product investments: frictionless deployment and management, manager empowerment, and Copilot and AI transformation. We were proud to share a customer story featuring ICF, a global consulting firm. Nicole Mroczek, Senior Project Manager at Microsoft, interviewed Kate Zhdan and Colleen Scout from ICF. They shared their experience of collaborating between HR and IT to implement Viva and Copilot. They discussed their continuous listening strategy, the impact of their Viva launch on the business, and their excitement for future Viva and Copilot features. Caribay Garcia, head of Viva People Science Product Consulting and Thought Leadership, shared recent findings and upcoming research from the Viva People Science team. She discussed the importance of manager effectiveness, insights for organizations to consider in AI transformation, and provided recommendations for 2025 by highlighting their new monthly Research Drop series. We wrapped up the town hall by sharing upcoming events and programming, including the Ask the Experts series, Learning Circles program, and additions to our popular manager sessions on psychological safety. Rewatch the session here, and we welcome comments and feedback below.News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 2, February 2026
Each month, we share practical updates and insights to help you strengthen your employee listening strategy with Viva Glint & Pulse and support you on your AI transformation journey. In this edition, you’ll find the latest product enhancements, thought leadership, and customer learnings—designed to help you stay informed, plan ahead, and continue driving meaningful engagement and change across your organization. New on your Viva Glint platform Survey Communications: Teams Notification Localization. Viva Glint Teams bot notifications are now delivered in each user’s preferred language, improving accessibility, engagement, and the experience for global, non‑English‑speaking audiences. This update aligns Teams bot notifications with existing Viva Glint email and platform localization capabilities. Learn about Viva Glint supported languages here. User Data Management: Audit Activity Log Enhancements. We are improving our audit activity logs to provide richer visibility into automated data imports, making it easier for admins to reconcile data across systems, quickly understand what happened during an import, diagnose issues more efficiently, and act with greater confidence. Starting this month, in addition to failed uploads, admins can now access advisory files for partial ingestions, where only some records from an import were processed successfully. Later this year, for supported automated imports (including SFTP and Organizational Data in Microsoft 365), audit logs will include downloadable details that summarize which records were added, updated, skipped, or moved to inactive status. Learn more about audit activity logs here. Reporting: Custom PPT Template Support. The Export to PowerPoint feature now applies the custom PowerPoint template selected in General settings to the exported PowerPoint file for all reports that support the new export i.e. Team summary report, Executive summary report. How to test Open the Team Summary or Executive Summary report. Select Export & Share > Export report to PPT. Confirm the exported editable PowerPoint includes the custom template from Admin settings appended to the content slides. Prerequisite Upload a custom PowerPoint template in Viva Glint Admin settings before testing, Instructions for doing so can be found here. Reporting: Navigation improvements. Viva Glint Reporting users can now retrace their navigation flow—drilling down and drilling up in reports—without losing context. Key changes Replaces the “Go Back” action to the Reporting home page with an alternative clickable experience. Enables users to return to the last Reporting page they were in, supporting improved back navigation within Reporting. Reporting: Enabling Benchmarks. Enabling external benchmarks gives you and your leaders valuable context—showing how your results compare to global and industry peers and complementing the insights you gain from internal comparisons. With a single opt‑in step, Viva Glint unlocks a rich set of benchmark suites (Global, Industry, Country/Region, High‑Performing, and more). Your data remains fully anonymized and aggregated, ensuring privacy and compliance. Customers who opt in consistently report that benchmarks strengthen storytelling, deepen insight quality, and accelerate action planning. We recommend turning on this feature so your teams can get the full value of Viva Glint reporting. Without enabling this feature, customers will not be able to see any external benchmark comparisons and will only have access to internal comparators. By enabling it, organizations agree to allow their survey data to be included in the anonymized benchmark pool, which is required for benchmark visibility. Coming soon to Viva Glint User Access: Upcoming Role Enhancements. In our March release, we’ll be making some changes to roles and permissions in Viva Glint to increase security and flexibility for enterprise organizations. Survey Designer Role The Survey Designer Role in Viva Glint will empower organizations to assign users only the access they need to create and deploy Glint surveys, without granting broader administrative permissions. This targeted role is especially valuable for initiatives like AI transformation, hybrid work, and other change management employee listening programs. New Permissions in Viva Glint o We are introducing permissions for Advanced Configuration, Question Library, Service Configuration (settings), Nudges, and Viva Integrations, offering more granular control over platform access and management. All existing Company Admins will be granted Advanced Configuration access by default. o Company Admin is now renamed to Viva Glint Service Admin. o Assignment of new service admins will now be restricted exclusively to the Microsoft Admin Centre (MAC), ensuring tighter governance and streamlined administration. Copilot Reporting: Copilot will default to ON and move to VFAM as the single control. Starting in March 2026, Copilot in Viva Glint will default to ON for all customers, and the existing Glint admin toggles for Copilot access will be removed. From that point forward, Copilot access will be managed exclusively through Viva Feature Access Management (VFAM), providing a single, streamlined control consistent with other Microsoft Copilot experiences. This change reduces admin workload and ensures a more consistent governance experience. Please review your VFAM settings to prepare for this update. Should you have any questions about managing Copilot access through VFAM, please use this form to reach out to us. If you are part of EECC (formerly VCCP), find the registration link to join the upcoming session where we will cover this feature in detail in the ‘Upcoming events and learning opportunities’ section. Copilot Reporting: Dynamic Topics with Copilot. In March, we will kick off the Dynamic Topics private preview with a small group of customers. By leveraging Copilot, this functionality is designed to enhance the relevance and context of comment themes by extending beyond the current static set of topics and identifying customer-specific topics that can be tracked over time. These custom topics will remain confined to your platform and will not be accessible to Microsoft or other customers. While the initial private preview cohort is full, we may expand preview access as the program progresses so please stay tuned. General availability for Dynamic Topics is targeted for later this spring. Sign Up for Copilot Highlights | Preview. The private preview of Copilot Highlights—a dashboard feature that instantly summarizes survey results, highlighting team strengths, opportunities, and engagement trends—is now live, with customer access being enabled in phases. This feature helps managers and leaders quickly assess team status, pinpoint focus areas, and celebrate achievements. Customers can continue to express interest in joining by signing up here. Sign Up for Continuous Employee Engagement with Workplace Metrics | Preview. Improve actionability for focus areas like “Work-life balance” and “Collaboration” by bringing in workplace metrics from Viva Insights. This feature will help Senior Leaders in your organization look at supplementary data points to understand survey responses and have a more data-driven discussion with their organizations on what can be improved in these areas. Between survey cycles, this continuous data will also help you keep your teams on track. Private Preview is targeted for March 2026, but earlier builds are available starting in January, with the opportunity to give feedback. You must enable data flow from Insights to Glint on your tenant to use this feature. Express your interest here. Sign Up for Employee Feedback Agent | Preview. Enhance your Employee Listen program with The Employee Feedback Agent a dynamic, AI-powered conversation, where employees can share what matters most through natural, chat-like interactions, whether prompted or always-on, enabling real-time feedback and deeper insights into the drivers behind their experiences. By combining Copilot intelligence and People Science principles, the agent streamlines feedback collection and reduces administrative overhead for HR and leaders. Unlike traditional Copilot tools that simply summarize information, the Employee Feedback Agent collects experiential data through probing questions and back and forth conversations with employees. Future capabilities will expand impact with an actionable insights reporting experience, accelerating the “feedback-to-action” cycle. Be among the first to experience a new era of continuous engagement and actionable feedback with the Employee Feedback Agent. To express your interest in joining please complete the following: Private Preview: Glint Employee Feedback Agent – Fill out form Integrating with Organization Data | Preview. Viva Glint is introducing integration with Organizational Data in Microsoft 365, providing an enterprise‑grade approach to connecting people data across Viva experiences. This preview establishes a consistent, governed data foundation that supports trusted insights today and prepares organizations for future Copilot experiences—aligned with Microsoft 365–level controls and management. Join the preview to explore what’s possible, share feedback, and help shape the future of organization data integration in Viva Glint. Express your interest here. See our public roadmap for more feature updates. Events and learning opportunities Viva Glint & Pulse EECC (formerly VCCP) customer engagement sessions Previous sessions: February 5 th – Copilot Highlights in Viva Glint In this session, we shared an overview of the Copilot Highlights capabilities that are currently in private preview as well as plans for upcoming feature enhancements and facilitated an open discussion to gather feedback with the goal of better understanding the features and improvements that matter most to you as early adopters. If you are a member of EECC and in the Viva Glint Teams channel, you can access the session recording here. Upcoming sessions (please note you must be opted-in to EECC in order to attend upcoming sessions): February 12 th – Copilot Default ON and VFAM Controls Register here In this session, we’ll walk through an upcoming update where Copilot will default to ON in Viva Glint, and Viva Feature Access Management (VFAM) becomes the single, consistent control for managing Copilot access—aligned with the broader Microsoft 365 Copilot experience. As part of this change, the existing Glint service‑level Copilot toggles within the user roles will be removed, simplifying administration. Copilot access in Viva Glint will be governed centrally through VFAM, which is typically managed by your Microsoft 365 Global Admin. February 26 th – Journey to Becoming a Frontier Firm Register here This session is designed for organizations exploring how AI, Copilot, and agentic workflows can accelerate AI transformation across your business. Members of our Copilot Growth team will be discussing the newly developed Frontier Transformation playbook which is designed to help organizations understand critical steps towards becoming a frontier firm using agents to modify how work gets done. We’ll also provide specific use-cases for AI adoption tied to key functions within your organization and leave you with an understanding of where your organization currently stands in becoming frontier-ready. If you are not yet a member of the Employee Experience Customer Connection (EECC-formerly VCCP) but would like to participate in upcoming sessions, as well as gain access to numerous other engaging and valuable Glint and Pulse customer activities, please see the sign-up information in the ‘Connect with us’ section. New Thought Leadership Research Drop: Fighting AI Slop with Meta-Cognition Around AI. Organizations are racing to adopt AI, but 60% of employees skip accuracy checks, leading to "workslop" – rushed, low-quality output that erodes trust. Our latest research shows the difference between employees who get real value from AI and those who don't isn't how often they use it; it's how thoughtfully they use it. And building better habits doesn't require technical training. When leaders openly share how they use AI and teams feel safe discussing what's working, employees become far more intentional. By focusing on the quality of AI use, not just the quantity, leaders can turn adoption into lasting impact. Read it here. Customer Success Stories Our very first Viva Glint Partner Story—featuring HRIZONS—is now officially live! HRIZONS EX partnered with a global skin care company to transform its employee listening program from a traditional high‑engagement survey model into a continuous engine for manager enablement, organizational alignment, and workforce effectiveness. By shifting from survey “deployment” to “action activation,” HRIZONS EX co‑created tailored tools and enablement for managers and HRBPs—including guides, content, and rollout support—to strengthen accountability and ensure employee feedback consistently turned into meaningful action. The program moved from periodic measurement to continuous improvement, embedded self‑sustaining capabilities across survey cycles, and unlocked efficiencies through early use of Microsoft 365 Copilot with Viva Glint. The result: greater clarity, scalability, and manager ownership of employee experience outcomes. You can read the full story here. For more information about partner services, you can check out this blog post and for general partner queries, please reach out to our partner success team (vivaglintpartners@microsoft.com). Connect with us We’re excited to share an important evolution of our VCCP community. The Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) is now the Employee Experience Customer Connection (EECC) program — a name that reflects the expanded scope and value of this community as employee experiences continue to evolve with Viva and Microsoft 365 Copilot. What’s changing Viva Customer Connection Program is now the Employee Experience Customer Connection program Our shared mission: “Employee experiences powered by M365 Copilot and Viva.” Invites & communication will be from Employee Experience Customer Connection What’s staying the same Continued expansion of product team engagement for Employee Experiences powered by Viva and M365Copilot Forums for you to influence product direction & unlock value for your organization Early insight into product roadmap Private preview engagement opportunities Connection with other enterprise customers If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form so we can guide you through the enrollment process and help you get started. We look forward to partnering with you to build better products—together.News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 1, January 2026
A new year brings renewed focus and fresh opportunities to listen, learn, and act. In this month’s newsletter, we’re sharing the latest updates and insights from Viva Glint & Pulse—designed to help you start the year strong and continue building meaningful, actionable employee listening programs. New on your Viva Glint platform Reporting: Enhancements to Executive Summary Report Export. With this release, Managers will be able to export the default sections from the Executive Summary report in Viva Glint directly to editable PowerPoint slides. This enhancement allows for easier and quicker consumption of this report outside Viva Glint, compared to the previous export method which included static screenshots. Action Taking: Focus Area Enhancements. Customer feedback highlighted that the relationship between Focus Areas (previously referred to as goals) and survey administrations was not always clear. This was largely due to Focus Areas not being directly tied to the survey cycles from which they originated. To address this, Focus Areas are now directly connected to survey cycles, and goal periods have been removed (note that no Focus Areas were deleted as part of this update). This improvement simplifies reporting and ensures Focus Areas more accurately represent the insights gathered from your surveys. Learn more about Focus Areas here and here. Product release strategy: a more continuous, reliable Viva Glint release experience. We’re updating how we release Viva Glint so you get value sooner—and with less waiting when dates shift. Instead of concentrating every change on a single monthly “release day,” we’re moving to a more continuous pace. That means smaller, more frequent updates, and progressive feature rollouts. What this means for you Faster access to improvements. Features ship when they’re ready—no waiting for a full month if a target date moves. Higher reliability. Smaller, incremental releases reduce risk and make issues easier to prevent or quickly correct. Clearer expectations. We’ll continue to share GA timing on the public Microsoft 365 Roadmap and call out any changes that require action. Minimal disruption. Most updates occur with low or zero downtime, and we’ll provide advance notice for any impactful changes. Thank you for partnering with us as we adopt a cadence that’s better aligned to speed, quality, and your planning needs. Coming soon to Viva Glint Upcoming Role Enhancements. In our February release, we’ll be making some changes to roles and permissions in Viva Glint. These changes are designed to increase security, while also providing the flexibility for enterprises to assign the appropriate responsibilities to the right users in their organization. New Permissions in Viva Glint By allowing enterprises to assign admin responsibilities in Viva Glint without providing complete Company Admin rights, the below changes enhance data security and offer greater flexibility for tailored workflows and specific needs. Five new permissions are being introduced: Advanced Configuration, Question Library, Service Configuration (settings), and Nudges, offering more granular control over platform access and management. All existing Company Admins will be granted Advanced Configuration access by default. Company Admin is now renamed to Viva Glint Service Admin, standardising the role name throughout the Microsoft ecosystem for clarity and consistency. Assignment of new service admins will now be restricted exclusively to the Microsoft Admin Centre (MAC), ensuring tighter governance and streamlined administration. Survey Designer Role The Survey Designer Role in Viva Glint will empower organizations to assign users only the access they need to create and deploy Glint surveys, without granting broader administrative permissions. This targeted role is especially valuable for initiatives like AI transformation, hybrid work, and other change management employee listening programs, enabling teams to quickly launch feedback cycles while maintaining security and control. By streamlining survey creation and deployment, organizations can more efficiently capture employee insights and drive meaningful change. Copilot will default to ON and move to VFAM as the single control. Starting in March 2026, Copilot in Viva Glint will default to ON for all customers, and the existing Glint admin toggles for Copilot access will be removed. From that point forward, Copilot access will be managed exclusively through Viva Feature Access Management (VFAM), providing a single, streamlined control consistent with other Microsoft Copilot experiences. This change reduces admin workload and ensures a more consistent governance experience. Please review your VFAM settings to prepare for this update. Should you have any questions about managing Copilot access through VFAM, please use this form to reach out to us. Sign Up for Copilot Highlights | Preview. The private preview of Copilot Highlights—a dashboard feature that instantly summarizes survey results, highlighting team strengths, opportunities, and engagement trends—is now live, with customer access being enabled in phases. This feature helps managers and leaders quickly assess team status, pinpoint focus areas, and celebrate achievements. Customers can continue to express interest in joining by signing up here. Sign Up for Continuous Employee Engagement with Workplace Metrics | Preview. Improve actionability for focus areas like “Work-life balance” and “Collaboration” by bringing in workplace metrics from Viva Insights. This feature will help Senior Leaders in your organization look at supplementary data points to understand survey responses and have a more data-driven discussion with their organizations on what can be improved in these areas. Between survey cycles, this continuous data will also help you keep your teams on track. Private Preview is targeted in March 2026, but earlier builds are available starting in January, with the opportunity to give feedback. You must enable data flow from Insights to Glint on your tenant to use this feature. Express your interest here. See our public roadmap for more feature updates. Events and learning opportunities January 15 th VCCP Glint & Pulse Customer Advisory Session: Beyond HR Surveying This month, we hosted a session on how Viva Glint is developing to support ‘Beyond HR’ scenarios and use cases. Our product team shared insights into how the next generation of Viva Glint will have a greater impact across the organization. The session aimed to confirm the direction of Viva Glint, especially regarding ‘Beyond HR’ surveys and the responsibilities of Viva Glint survey admins. If you are a VCCP member and missed the session, you can find the recording in the Teams channel. Stay tuned for your opportunity to take part in upcoming Copilot and AI Transformation sessions coming next month! If you are not yet a member of the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) but would like to participate in upcoming sessions, as well as gain access to numerous other engaging and valuable Glint and Pulse customer activities, please see the sign-up information under "Connect with us." Product Guidance Documentation Have technical questions about Viva Glint? Microsoft Learn is the best go-to resource for clear, up-to-date guidance. Recent updates explain new capabilities and address common questions for topics such as: Adding new employee attributes Score calculations 360 report categories Team Conversations user experience Phased reporting access Survey program hyperlink options ...and more! These updates are part of our continuous effort to keep documentation current, practical, and aligned with how Viva Glint is being used today. New Thought Leadership Research Drop: Designing AI Feedback Systems by Industry. Employees want a voice in AI transformation, and our latest research shows that when organizations listen early and often, adoption accelerates. And across industries, one pattern stands out – AI feedback is social. Informal conversations and team meetings remain the most powerful channels for surfacing real‑time signals about what’s working and what’s not. By designing feedback systems that meet employees in the flow of work, leaders can iterate faster and turn everyday interactions into engines of AI readiness and impact. Read it here. Connect with us Join the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) is Microsoft’s premier customer engagement initiative designed to connect Viva product teams directly with customers like you. By enrolling, you’ll gain access to a wide range of Viva product engagements, including dedicated sessions for Viva Glint & Pulse. As a participant, you’ll have the opportunity to: Explore Viva and Glint product visions through exclusive previews and roadmap discussions. Shape product development by providing direct feedback on features, designs, and measurement models. Engage with Microsoft product teams in virtual sessions that run throughout the year, including monthly meetings and iterative design reviews. Network with other customers across industries and regions, sharing best practices and learning from peers. By joining you will also be part of a strategic advisory group focused on Glint-specific HR, AI and People Science topics. If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form so we can guide you through the enrollment process and help you get started. We look forward to partnering with you to build better products—together.Harness the power of Viva Glint and Viva Pulse to drive continuous improvements
Empower your managers and leaders to gather additional information and check in on team progress by using Pulse after an org-wide Glint engagement survey. Using the Glint-identified top strengths and opportunities, the Pulse survey recommends questions that managers and leaders can use to gather a timely understanding of the team’s progress in addressing key focus areas, make mid-point adjustments if needed, and maintain momentum in their efforts to improve engagement and employee experience. This Viva Pulse and Viva Glint integration has 8 new features! Glint follow-up template: A Glint question topic will be added to the question library. When creating a survey, questions are automatically selected based on Glint drivers chosen by the author. Automated Glint email: 6 weeks after an org survey, Glint sends an email with a Pulse call-to-action to remind managers to follow up with their teams to track team progress to date. Pre-populated recipient list: Pulse prefills the survey recipient list based on the direct recipients from the Glint survey program. Glint admin controls: The Glint admin can configure which Glint survey programs the Pulse follow-ups are enabled for, the Glint roles who will receive the email notification, the timing of the Glint email notification, and preview and edit the content in the email notification. Pulse content admin: The Pulse content admin can configure the content in the Glint follow-up template and question topic by editing, removing, or deactivating content. Glint banner entry point: In addition to the Glint email notification for managers to start a Pulse follow-up, managers can access the Glint banner in the team summary and executive summary pages to start a Pulse follow-up. Confidential team conversations: Managers can use in-app support in Pulse to ask their team for more feedback around specific questions for further engagement to make progress on results. Copilot report summarization: A Copilot-powered summary based on the team’s question scores and open-ended responses is displayed at the top of the Pulse report. We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned so far: Internally, Microsoft has enabled Pulse follow-ups for the biannual Glint engagement surveys to empower managers to show their employees what matters to them. We saw a 7x increase in Pulse follow-ups sent in February 2025, compared to January 2025 and a 7.5% clickthrough rate on the email we sent to Microsoft managers. We had 9 customers participating in our Private Preview. Both within Microsoft and through our Private Preview, managers have reported feeling like this capability fills a much-needed gap between survey cycles. Customers previously reported managers were sending their own surveys to collect data between engagement surveys, but now they can collect data with a standardized, HR-sponsored method across their teams. We continue to receive feedback that highlights how this feature makes it easier to share results and obtain continuous and honest feedback between managers and their teams. As we continue to iterate on this integration between Viva Pulse and Viva Glint, we’re working towards: Inline survey creation in Glint: Managers can follow up with their teams with a Pulse survey directly within Glint, without needing to be directed to a separate app. Copilot authoring to personalize Pulse follow-up: Copilot recommends survey questions and titles based on Glint scores, open-ended comments, and Glint top opportunities and strengths. Pulse follow-up telemetry for Glint admins: Glint admins can see Pulse follow-up usage telemetry in the Glint admin dashboard for a funnel view of number of Pulse follow-ups sent and number of users who have higher scores after using Pulse follow-ups. Delegate access to send Pulse follow-up: Delegates will automatically be granted access to send Pulse follow-ups on behalf of their leaders, without manual configuration required. Pulse data can be analyzed in Glint: Pulse data collected in the follow-up survey, with scores, verbatims, and Copilot report summarization will be visible in Glint alongside the Glint survey results. Managers can slice and dice the Pulse data in Glint. Getting started and resources To use Pulse to follow up with your teams after your Glint engagement results, you must have one of the following subscription licenses: Viva Suite Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback For more information on what we've released and documentation for how to set up the integration, please review the following Microsoft Learn documentation: Take actions with Viva Pulse after Viva Glint engagement surveys. We’re excited to help you drive continuous improvements in your organization by leveraging the power of Viva Glint and Viva Pulse. Stay tuned as we continue iterating on this feature! Michelle Hu is a Product Manager 2 at Microsoft. Michelle leads the growth strategy for Viva Glint and Copilot Analytics to support HR Copilot transformation efforts, improve M365 Copilot GTM and deployment, and help organizations measure Copilot ROI.
