The News: Microsoft has introduced new capabilities to its employee experience (EX) platform, Microsoft Viva. The first capability, Skills in Viva, uses AI to develop a more comprehensive view of the skills base of a company’s current workforce. Microsoft also launched the general availability of Viva Amplify, the second capability, which is a workforce communications hub. More information on these enhancements can be found in this blog post on the Microsoft website.
Microsoft Viva Launches AI-Driven Skills Service; Viva Amplify Now Available
Analyst Take: Microsoft has been enhancing and adding modules to Microsoft Viva since Viva’s inception in 2021. According to the company, Viva now has more than 35 million monthly active users in organizations across a number of industries.
These recent launches focus on two hot topics in EX, skills and communication. Given large skills gaps that are widening due to volatility in the labor market and the fast pace of technology introductions, skills development is top of mind for many companies. The need for frequent, clear, and transparent communication is even more important now that workforces are often dispersed or hybrid; it is an area where employees often rate their employers poorly.
Skills in Microsoft Viva
Skills in Microsoft Viva offers a comprehensive view of the skills present within an organization. It takes in employee activity signals from across Microsoft 365 applications and services (Microsoft Graph) and combines them with the LinkedIn Skills Graph. This LinkedIn Skills Graph is a living model that maps the worldwide skills landscape―including 39,000 different skills and how those skills are related to each other, to jobs, and to learning content. Once AI is layered over the top, an employee’s skill profile is “intelligently” inferred.
The power of this skills inference will be visible, literally, in a new set of dashboards found within Viva Insights. Managers will have a view of skills metrics that can be sliced and diced by organization, teams, levels, and time period.
In an analyst briefing, Microsoft shared the use case of trying to decide whether it was time to recruit for a certain position. Traditionally, this type of decision might be made within the current department or work group and perhaps a bit blind to the skills inventory outside a small group. Using Skills in Microsoft Viva would allow companies to get better intelligence into whether the required skills sets are already available in-house. The company might be able to see if there any employees might currently be good fits for a role, or if others could potentially be groomed for the role based on their skill profiles.
Viva Learning will also use this new skills inferencing to suggest new learning and development possibilities that are based on skills employees are working on or might be interested in.
Another interesting feature is skills delivery within the flow of work. This allows skills discovery to become part of an employee’s daily activities. As skills are intelligently suggested to employees, they can confirm, add to, and manage them. The skills are then visible in an employee’s Microsoft 365 profile card that can be accessed across Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 apps and services. These nudges are important to keep skills development top of mind, and the company’s view into skillsets current.
Because Skills in Viva allows for interoperability, investments companies may have made in other third-party applications to record skills can still be leveraged. Microsoft’s plan is for Skills in Viva to enter private preview by the end of 2023, included in the Microsoft Viva suite.
Viva Amplify is Now Generally Available
Viva Amplify is a communications hub of sorts, centralizing campaign management, publishing, and analytics. Viva Amplify fits into Viva’s larger communications and community umbrella and helps to streamline the process of communicating with employees, allowing communications campaigns to be created, managed, and scheduled all from one place. Once any given “communication” is distributed, Viva Amplify generates robust analytics and reporting. Companies will be able to compare data by audience and can use sentiment analysis to see what’s landing well, or not, to tweak their messaging moving forward.
Viva Amplify has multichannel capability, allowing employees to be reached via different avenues such as Outlook, Teams, or SharePoint. Data will also help users determine what the most effective channels might be for communications.
Viva Amplify cannot currently be purchased on its own but is available as part of Viva Employee Communications and Communities or Viva Suite.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
