What are Viva Insights' features?
For several decades now, the world of work has been marked by many profound upheavals. Against this backdrop of constant change, companies are looking for ways to optimize their employees' productivity, while ensuring their well-being. In 2020, according to an Ifop study, 81% of French employees believe that well-being is a priority issue for companies.
To this end, Microsoft has launched Viva Insights, a platform designed to help companies understand and improve the way their employees work.
Viva Insights enables the collection and analysis of previously anonymized data from a variety of sources. Each calculation made by Viva Insights is based on data obtained by collecting and examining the metadata of e-mails, meetings, calls and instant messages, such as their start and end times and subject lines. In other words, Viva Insights automates what would otherwise be a laborious task; these automatic calculations offer transparency into workplace collaboration habits.
In this article, we'll explore the features and benefits of Viva Insights. How can this tool help employees manage their time better? How does it promote collaboration? And how can you implement it in your own company?
What is Viva Insights?
Viva Insights is a workplace data analysis tool designed to measure the daily actions of Microsoft 365 users. It integrates with Microsoft Teams, to offer insights into how employees use their time, communicate and collaborate with each other.
📢 Find out more about Microsoft Teams
Viva Insights also provides analyses of employee health and well-being, as well as recommendations for improving productivity and job satisfaction.
Confidentiality remains the key: Viva Insights does not analyze the content of e-mails, meetings or attachments. It is not a surveillance tool, but a monitoring and analysis tool, providing reliable indicators for optimizing employees' work.
⚙️ To find out more, read our article on employee commitment, the secret of productivity.
How Viva Insights works
Viva Insights collects anonymized data (communication habits, workload, peak productivity times, etc.) from Teams, Outlook and LinkedIn. Once this data has been collected, the platform analyzes it to provide actionable insights. Customized dashboards are then generated to help users understand their work habits.
All this is done while preserving the confidentiality and security of personal information.
In fact, Viva Insights provides a better understanding of the following aspects in particular:
- Employee involvement and productivity;
- Ways of communicating within the company ;
- Levels of interaction between colleagues and external third parties.
This improved understanding should help companies to make informed decisions, particularly when it comes to work organization.
In short, Viva Insights uses concrete data to provide relevant information that can be used to implement better work organization.
The various tools and functions on offer
Viva Insights offers the following features:
- Data collection: the information collected may come from a variety of sources, and may relate to e-mail exchanges, business interactions, meetings, and so on. It provides an overview of employees' daily activities.
Viva Insights uses :
- Mail item information: metadata, including e-mail timestamp, sender, recipients and "read" signal, actions of other users who receive your e-mail, for example, if they have opened your e-mail.
- Calendar item information: Type (meeting or appointment), status (busy, free, out of office, temporary), category, subject, duration, participants
- Information from Teams: Viva Insights counts audio calls, video calls and conversations that users make in Teams as collaborative activities.
- SharePoint OneDrive data: Viva Insights displays the number of OneDrive and SharePoint documents on which work has been carried out.
- Data analysis: Viva Insights uses advanced algorithms to extract patterns and trends.
- Dashboards: The tool generates customized dashboards for employees and managers. These tables present the data collected in a clear way, for better understanding and decision-making.
- Recommendations: Viva Insights offers personalized recommendations (based on collected data) to help users optimize their productivity and well-being. For example: the platform can suggest taking breaks, organizing meetings, planning moments of concentration...
👀 To go further, discover how to provide a good digital experience for employees: the guide
The benefits of Viva Insights for businesses
Companies are always looking for new ways to optimize their employees' productivity, while preserving their work/life balance. Viva Insights provides them with the following benefits:
- Improve employee productivity and efficiency by collecting and analyzing relevant data;
- Strengthening commitment and job satisfaction;
- Better management of employee workloads;
- Better measurement of the impact of organizational change;
- Using data to make strategic decisions.
📢 To find out more, read our article on corporate culture .
Viva Insights concerns
The use of Viva Insights raises legitimate concerns, particularly with regard to employee privacy.
Data collected by Viva Insights is 100% anonymized and aggregated to preserve privacy. The company retains full control over the data, and is able to define privacy policies tailored to its needs.
Compliance with data protection regulations, such as the RGPD regulation, is also ensured to guarantee the security of the information collected.
How to ensure responsible use of the tool?
Above all, it's important to inform and involve employees. They need to know how Viva Insights will be used, and how their data will be collected and used. Transparency and employee consent must remain the watchwords.
🚀 To find out more, read our article on change management in business
In addition, the company must undertake to use the data collected ethically. The information collected by the tool must not be used to monitor or punish employees. The aim remains to focus on improving productivity and collaboration, and creating an environment of trust.
Finally, the company must be able to guarantee that the data collected by Viva Insights is anonymized and processed in compliance with data protection regulations.
How to implement Viva Insights in your company?
Setting up Viva Insights requires careful planning.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Establish clear objectives : what goals is your company pursuing? In what specific areas do you want to improve? Is it employee well-being, team collaboration? Define measurable objectives and develop a strategy accordingly.
- Communicate and train employees: effective communication is essential to the successful adoption of Viva Insights. As such, consider informing employees of the benefits of the platform, how their data will be used, and the confidentiality measures in place to ensure their privacy.
💡 To find out more, read our ultimate guide to drawing up an internal communications plan .
- Gradual deployment: We recommend implementing Viva Insights gradually. Start with a specific department or team to assess its impact and gather feedback. This approach helps identify any adjustments that need to be made before a wider roll-out.
- Monitor results: To maximize the benefits of Viva Insights, it's important to regularly monitor and evaluate the results achieved. Use the dashboards and reports provided by the tool to measure the impact on employee productivity, collaboration and well-being.
Things to remember
Viva Insights makes it possible to use company data to gain in-depth insight, while improving work organization and work-life balance.
Employee well-being, workload, interactions, professional exchanges... Numerous indicators can be measured and analyzed.
However, it is important to emphasize that Viva Insights should be used as a tool to improve productivity, and not as a means of surveillance or control. In this respect, user data and privacy must be protected by the company.
