Microsoft Viva enhancements handle worker disconnect in hybrid work environments
In its newest Work Trend Index Pulse Report, Microsoft warns hybrid work may turn into unsustainable until leaders begin to create an worker expertise that meets worker expectations.
Microsoft
For the vast majority of office-based employees, working exterior the workplace has been the brand new regular for shut to 2 and a half years. Hybrid work, nevertheless, has created a rising disconnect between staff and leaders, based on new analysis from Microsoft’s newest Work Trend Index Pulse Report, printed along side the most recent product upgrades to its worker expertise platform, Viva.
The report, “Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong?,” relies on information from 20,000 individuals in 11 international locations, along with trillions of Microsoft 365 productiveness alerts and findings from LinkedIn and Glint People Science.
Organizations have reached a vital turning level within the evolution of hybrid work, with Microsoft’s findings clearly demonstrating {that a} new strategy is required from firms, stated Sunita Khatri, a senior director of product advertising at Microsoft.
“Now more than ever, leaders need to balance employee interest with what it takes for the business to be successful moving forward,” Khatri stated. “This means aligning people’s tasks with work that matters or has an impact and creating an employee experience that meets employee expectations.”
These tensions are significantly acute in relation to problems with productiveness. Dubbed “productivity paranoia” by Microsoft, analysis reveals that 85% of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it difficult to believe their staff are being productive, whereas 87% of staff surveyed for the report stated they’re productive at work.
Managers miss visible cues of productiveness
Many leaders and managers are lacking the previous visible cues of what it means to be productive as a result of they’ll’t bodily “see” who is tough at work, based on Microsoft,. The report discovered that 49% of hybrid-work managers stated they battle to belief that their staff are doing their greatest work, compared to 36% of in-person managers.
Furthermore, 54% of hybrid-work managers reported having much less visibility into the work their staff do, whereas solely 38% of in-person managers reported having the identical downside. As a end result, staff are actually feeling the stress to “prove” they’re working, inflicting so-called “digital overwhelm” to soar.
Consequently, until leaders cease worrying about whether or not their staff are working, amd as a substitute give attention to serving to them prioritize the work that’s most essential, Microsoft hypothesizes that hybrid work will turn into unsustainable. This situation is additional illustrated by the very fact 81% of staff surveyed stated it was essential that their managers helped them prioritize their workload, however solely 31% stated their managers had ever given clear steerage throughout one-on-ones.
The report additionally highlighted the necessity for organizations to have a greater understanding of what motivates their staff to return into the workplace. Seventy-three % of staff and 78% of enterprise determination makers surveyed stated they want a greater cause to enter the workplace than firm expectations, with 84% saying they might be motivated to go in if they might socialize with coworkers, and 85% citing the power rebuild group bonds.
To retain staff, the Microsoft analysis highlights the significance of re-skilling and up-skilling your staff. Of these surveyed, 55% of staff stated one of the best ways to develop their abilities is to vary firms. However, 68% stated they might keep longer at their firm if it was simpler to vary jobs internally, a determine that rose to 76% in the event that they knew they might be provided studying and improvement help.
To try to handle the challenges outlined by the report, Microsoft have launched a slew of recent additions to its Viva platform.
Microsoft Viva addresses hybrid-work challenges
Khatri stated that alongside making an attempt to bridge the worker/supervisor disconnect, all of the updates to the Viva platform are targeted on unifying the worker expertise. These embrace two new apps, Viva Pulse and Viva Amplify.
Viva Pulse is designed to allow managers and group leaders to hunt common and confidential suggestions on their group’s expertise, utilizing good templates and research-backed questions to assist managers pinpoint what’s working nicely, the place to focus, and what actions may very well be undertaken to deal with group wants.
“This [product] is really focused on empowering managers to regularly seek feedback from their teams and then be able to take action on those confidential responses,” Khatri stated.
In comparability, Viva Amplify is supposed to enhance communication between leaders and staff. The app centralizes communications campaigns, presents writing steerage to enhance message resonance, allows publishing throughout a number of channels and distribution teams in Microsoft 365, and offers metrics for enchancment.
In addition to the app launches, Microsoft can be introducing a slew of recent capabilities to Viva, together with Answers in Viva, Leadership Corner in Viva Engage, and People in Viva.
Answers in Viva makes use of AI to match worker inquiries to solutions and specialists throughout the group to assist put collective data to work for all staff, whereas Leadership Corner offers an area the place staff can work together straight with management, share concepts and views, take part in group initiatives, and extra.
People in Viva can be an AI-driven functionality that creates profile playing cards with particulars on an worker’s pursuits, data and group targets to assist colleagues simply uncover connections, specialists and insights throughout the group.
Viva integrations improve ease of use
Viva Goals, which was launched over the summer season, could have upgraded capabilities too, together with a deeper integration with Microsoft Teams to test in on OKRs (aims and key outcomes), new integrations with Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project, and an Azure DevOps extension.
The integrations improve ease of use, stated J. P. Gownder, vp and principal analyst at Forrester.
“The incontrovertible fact that lots of the employee-facing experiences can be utilized proper inside Teams is useful at lowering among the complexity of the quite a few options,” Gownder stated.
In addition, enhanced integrations between Viva Learning and LinkedIn Learning will make it easer for customers to entry content material from LinkedIn Learning Hub, all of which might be synched straight in Viva. A brand new residence expertise in Viva Connections will convey all of the Viva apps collectively in a single place, and updates to the Viva briefing electronic mail will present extra personalised productiveness suggestions to assist staff atone for work, conferences and studying.