5 ways Microsoft Viva helps businesses save time and money | Microsoft 365 Blog (2024)

Hybrid work has become the new norm. Organizations today must balance business outcomes with employee wellbeing, which is particularly difficult now that more people are regularly working inside and outside the office, and budgets are tightening. The consequences of this shift are many: organizations are struggling to set the right team goals, maintain culture, as well as recruit and retain the best people.

Microsoft Viva, the first employee experience platform (EXP) built for the hybrid era, can help organizations address these challenges. Viva uniquely taps the power of AI and Microsoft Graph, engages people naturally within the flow of their work, and is built on the secure, extensible platform of Microsoft 365. A single, integrated EXP is even more essential now that there are economic uncertainties. Viva can help organizations do more with less by ensuring their people and projects are aligned to the most important business priorities and that they are empowered and supported to achieve them.In fact, 96 percent of employees who use objectives and key results (OKRs) understand how their work ties into broader goals, feel aligned, and have a sense of purpose within their organization.¹

Enhance the employee experience to boost business outcomes

When people are happy and inspired, they create their best work. They think and perform better, collaborate more, and deliver results that help the organization grow and flourish. Research shows that when companies invest in their people and focus on improving the employee experience and engagement, they can directly improve retention and profitability. In fact, highly engaged employees are 12 times less likely to leave their company than those who are not engaged,² and organizations with highly engaged employees have 23 percent greater profitability.³

A new Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Viva study by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Microsoft, shows additional benefits. It found that a composite organization based on interviewed customers using Microsoft Viva realized a three-year 327 percent return on investment (ROI) with payback in less than six months. The study details five ways Viva can help organizations save time and money while improving business outcomes:

1. Improved productivity from content and expert discovery: Viva enabled a 75 percent reduction in search time for the composite organization. Forty-three percent of leaders say relationship building, which can impact efficient content discovery, is the greatest challenge in remote and hybrid work.⁴ Through virtual communities and resource groups, Viva helps employees reestablish connections with mentors, coaches, and subject matter experts. It also facilitates content discovery in the flow of work so that employees spend less time searching for what they need to be their best.
2. Improved employee retention: Using Viva, the composite organization experienced a 10 percent reduction in employee attrition in year one, increasing to 20 percent by year three. There are lots of factors that influence employee satisfaction. Taking suggestions for improvement (and acting on them) is one of them, but only 43 percent of employees say their company solicits feedback at least once a year.⁵ Viva gives leaders the tools to create a continuous feedback loop that highlights opportunities to drive change and build a healthier workplace. It also provides employees better access to knowledge resources, expert colleagues, and OKRs, all of which boost their sense of belonging and accomplishment.
3. Time savings for operations teams: Operations team members from the composite organization who used Viva recouped 20 percent of their weekly time spent helping employees source relevant content. Viva streamlines many of the time-consuming but necessary activities that people from departments like HR, learning and development, corporate communications, and IT handle every day. By helping employees manage their own goals, learning courses, and content discovery, operations can refocus the time saved on more strategic priorities.
4. Faster onboarding process: Viva enabled a 50 percent reduction in full onboarding time for the study’s composite organization. Onboarding and productivity are directly related: the longer it takes to onboard, the longer it also takes to realize full productivity from new hires and internal transfers. Viva centralizes the tools employees need to reach time-to-value and connect with the right people for development and visibility into team priorities.
5. Improved business outcomes: Every Viva app adds to employee competency, engagement, and motivation, which in turn leads to better productivity development, greater innovation, and increased revenues from faster time-to-market. These benefits are even more pronounced when using Viva to align individual actions to business outcomes: employees who report having clarity about their work priorities are four-and-a-half times as likely to say they’re happy at their current company—and people who are satisfied at work are also more productive at work.⁵

Hear from Microsoft Viva customers

In addition to the quantifiable benefits listed, Viva customers interviewed for this study experienced improved employee satisfaction and wellbeing, easier security and compliance, enhanced analytics and insights, and interoperability with other Microsoft solutions. “Implementing Viva was the fastest and easiest project ever. This is the highest-value implementation for our money we’ve seen thus far,” says the Chief Operating Officer of an electronics company. While the product owner of a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company shared, “Viva is a front door to everything. We’ve realized improvements to employees’ personal wellbeing, their ability to deliver, and company outcomes overall.”

Viva now has more than 20 million monthly active users and more than 1,000 paid customers—including Cricket Australia, RealFoundations, Music Tribe, Orkla, and U.S. Bank who are using Microsoft Viva to improve their employee experience. “With Viva Insights, we’ve found that more employees take focus time seriously. We started with 30 percent of employees practicing focus hours—and we’ve already seen that grow to 40 percent,” says Saumil Gandhi, Senior IT Director, PayPal. “Ten percent is a significant bump.” Similarly, employees at Music Tribe are now spending an average of 10 hours per month on learning—up from 0 hours—thanks to Microsoft Viva Learning. “We have an obligation to help upskill our employees,” says Lorna Stubbs, Chief Human Resources Officer, Music Tribe. “We needed to invest in career planning, succession planning, and learning if we were going to help our employees grow along with us.”

Visit our customer stories site to read more examples of the impact Viva is having on employees across industries.

Learn more

Download the Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Viva study now to learn more about the measurable impact Microsoft Viva can deliver for your employees and organization. Contact your Microsoft account team to inquire about Microsoft Viva.

¹The 2021 Goal Management Report, Ally.io. June 2021.

²What is Employee Engagement?, Glint.2022.

³How to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace, Gallup.2022.

⁴Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work, Microsoft. March 16, 2022.

⁵Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong? Microsoft. September 22, 2022.