Engage your communities and
leadership with Viva Engage
Martina Grom
Azure & Microsoft 365 MVP, Microsoft RD, CEO atwork
@magrom | martina.grom@atwork.at | www.atwork-it.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinagrom/
Martina Grom
MVP | Regional Director | CEO atwork-it.com
• Passionate about cloud technology
• Interested in try first / fail first projects
• Speaker | Blogger | Author | Mentor
• Host of cloudusergroup
• Governance | Security | Compliance | Enterprise Social
• Travel and Science Fiction
• Viva Strategist
Microsoft Viva
The integrated employee experience platform that empowers people and teams to be their best
Viva Connections | All apps in one place
All employees
Role-based experiences
Connection
Keep everyone informed,
included, and inspired
Viva Engage
Viva Amplify
Insight
Improve productivity and
wellbeing with actionable insights
Viva Insights
Viva Pulse
Purpose
Align people’s work to team
and organization goals
Viva Goals
Growth
Help employee learn,
grow, and succeed
Viva Topics
Viva Learning
Viva Sales
Microsoft 365
Platform and admin services
Briefing email, people, answers,
admin experience, common navigation
Privacy and security
Granular feature access controls, inherited
permissions for 3P, differential privacy for insights
Integrations to HCM, CRM, LMS, wellness, and more
Workday, Qualtrics, SAP SuccessFactors,
LinkedIn, Headspace, and more
“As part of Microsoft Viva,
Viva Engage connects people across the
organization so everyone feels included and
invested ”
Overview
• Viva Engage / Yammer is the perfect way to connect people cross-organization
• It brings trust in organizations and communications
• It removes barriers and hierarchies
• It is the perfect entry point for organizations looking into Employee Experience.
• It is part of your existing Microsoft 365 licensing.
• It opens opportunities for communications and can be your organizational news
channel.
• It makes people human and is a huge opportunity for leadership connections.
• This session will help you understand how to avoid common pitfalls and how to
take full advantage of Viva Engage.
• Viva Engage will bring new capabilities to connect people, find
and share knowledge, express yourself, and find belonging at
work.
• Stories and Storylines
• Newsfeed
• Questions and answers
• Moderation / Announcements
• Leadership Connection / Leadership Corner
Quick Recap – What is Viva Engage?
10/04/2023
Why
“We already use
Teams!”
Why Yammer is still the
Universe to me
#MWCP18
Use cases
Usecases
• Send messages to everyone
• Use it for basic communities (Interest groups,
Team members)
• Use external networks to get engaged with
people / organizations outside your network
(in education: parents, supporters. In
Healthcare: volunteers, etc.)
• bring together inclusive, diverse communities
to help improve employee engagement
• Use Yammer as knowledge management tool
for Onboarding
• Use it as emergency communication tool
• Praise for the good things! [Ignore the bad]
Frustration is high in 100% digital environments
• Use Live events for Management
• Communities for Mentorship, knowledge
sharing
• Break down Teams barriers and drive innovation
with org-wide communities
• Integrate and Use Viva Connections and Topics
to share knowledge
• Engage your leadership and let THEM tell THEIR
stories
Customer Stories
• Challenge
• CEO wants to drive digitalization within his Organization
• He questions the internal communication strategy
• Wants to drive engagement in Viva Engage above 90%
• Solution
• Analyze current Yammer implementation
• Drive Storytelling for CEO and other Leadership members
• Include blue collars with a news dashboard
• Give up DL in favor for communities
• Result
• Usage grew to 75% (from 50%) and continued to grow
• Employees use Yammer as their news dashboard
• Company culture changed to a more inclusive one
Manufacturing
• Challenge
• Employees used social media tools for communication to solve business requirements
• Data loss risk of internal information
• Transfer of communities to an internal tool
• Solution
• Work with IT to resolve restrictive app deployments and present them the value of an Employee app
• Look for champions in the existing SM networks to get support for community movement
• Make Viva engage as simply to use for Frontline workers
• Result
• The small org developed into a center of excellence due to their leadership as early adopters
• Frontline workers use Viva engage for everything business communications but also for communities of interest.
• They start to adopt storylines which is the perfect toll for sharing hidden places (which can be used for stories within internal and
external communication)
Transportation
• Challenge
• Internal research needs a tool where they can search for Ring1 feedback
• Communication and feedback is collected on a broad level
• Research Teams are restricted in communication scenarios
• Solution
• Research teams use Viva Engage to engage with users in the organization to
collect broader feedback and find volunteers for projects
• Result
• Research Teams use communities in a controlled way
• Get valuable Feedback about usability and other scenarios
Healthcare
• Challenge
• Organization wants to open communication for communities of interest
• Strong regulatory requirements need to be fulfilled
• Solution
• Use Viva engage for cross-org communiteis of interest
• Connect countries and their communities to share best practices
• Use information governance to make sure sensitive content is protected
• Use functionalities from purview portal (f.i. communication compliance)
• Result
• A more diverse communication among the organization
• Compliance requirements fullfilled
FSI (Financial Services)
• Communities build on trust, every question needs an answer
• Get your champions trained on communication skills
• Post by example
• Use Viva Engage as your Universe
• Leaders are out of touch with teams – Viva Engage gives them an opportunity to re-engage
• Talent is everywhere in a hybrid work world
Tips & Lessons Learned
10/04/2023
Learnings
Community
Managers
Risk for moving
communities
How to handle toxic
communications
Non-work
related content
• You are already licensed for Viva Engage through your M365 licensing
• No additional license is required
• Is your Yammer Network in native mode already?
• Microsoft will migrate you (starting Dec. 22)
• You can start anytime
• Deploy Viva Engage app in the Teams Admin Center
• Viva Engage can be easily included in your Teams App
• Add an entry point to Viva Engage with an adaptive card to Viva connections
• Reduce the number of clicks by creating a simple AC to open Viva Engage within the Viva connections dashboard
• Viva Connections starts Viva Engage
• Find executives who look for new ways to communicate
• Let them use Stories and storylines
• You can’t manage what you can’t measure
• Use a tool to measure engagement
Readiness Considerations
• Status of Yammer Network?
• Do you need to clean up?
• Create interesting content / examples?
• Is it in Native Mode?
• Governance in place?
• Security / Compliance requirements?
• Leadership Engagement
• Engage Leadership to share stories and use the storyline – make them feel connected
• Inform them about the new leadership corner (available 2023) Communities' engagement
• Identify your champions
• Create engagement by answering questions, ask questions, connecting people
• Build trust in supporting communities of interest
Readiness Checklist
“every human (voice, opinion) counts”
“praise the good and ignore the bad”
Questions?
