Viva Engage and the Employee Experience

How important is the Employee Experience (EXP) within your organization? While the pandemic accelerated the move to the cloud for many organizations around the world, it also highlighted the importance of employee wellbeing. Workers across every industry have complained about screen fatigue, and the #GreatResignation continues to reverberate — especially within companies that do not make an effort to help their employees find a balance between not only work life and home life, but to be aware of and empathetic to differing work styles and strategies for engagement.

To help companies better understand, track and measure, and respond to employee needs, Microsoft launched their Viva solutions: Viva Connections, Viva Topics, Viva Learning, and Viva Insights, and with the acquisition of Ally.io, Viva Goals. The newest offering within the Viva suite is Viva Engage, a new social app for digital communities, enterprise social networking, and self-expression. Engage builds on Teams and the Yammer Communities app to help employees better connect, express themselves, and share — all from within Microsoft Teams.

In the next #CollabTalk TweetJam taking place on Tuesday, August 23rd at 9am PDT (UTC -7), the community will once again join forces and have a focused discussion on the topic of “Improving the Employee Experience with Viva Engage” to discuss our thoughts on the importance of managing the employee experience, and where Viva Engage can help empower organizations. In this 1-hour Twitter-based panel discussion, we’ll bring together MVPs and Regional Directors, community experts, partners, consultants, and practitioners to share their perspectives on this important topic.

Anyone can join this community discussion using Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag or your favorite Twitter platform. You don’t even need to be an “expert” to participate in the online conversation. Anyone can ask questions, comment on the questions posed, or just “lurk” in the background. These online discussions are open to anyone — you do not have to be on the panel to participate.

As always, this month’s tweetjam is being sponsored by tyGraph and AvePoint. Thanks for your support!

If you have never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow-up questions, share relevant links, re-tweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session include:

1. How does culture impact the hybrid workplace?
2. Why should organizations focus on improving the employee experience?
3. Are enterprise social networks (ESNs) essential to the employee experience? Why, or why not?
4. For organizations not yet using Yammer or another ESN, why should they consider Viva Engage?
5. How does Viva Engage improve adoption and engagement, and the overall employee experience?
6. Does the use of Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage replace the need for a formal intranet?
7. What are 3 things Microsoft can do to improve on the Viva suite?

Of course, there will be side questions, side conversations, and wise-cracking shenanigans. This is open to the public, so please join in the discussion! The dialog is always thought-provoking and fun.

Participating on this panel (so far):

• Seth Patton (@sethpat), GM, Microsoft 365 & Microsoft Viva product marketing at Microsoft
• Zoe Wilson (@SharePoint_Zoe), M365 Apps & Services MVP, europe workplace value realisation lead at Avanade
• Phil Worrell (@worrelpa), ICT engineer and business analyst at Swisscom
• Martina Grom (@magrom), co-founder of atwork.at, Office 365 MVP and Microsoft Regional Director
• Dean Swann (@sdeanswann), M365 Apps & Services MVP, modern workplace value realization – offering lead at Avanade
• Lesley Crook (@Lesley_wolan), Microsoft MVP and cloud consultant at CloudWay
• Adam Ball (@AdamCBall), co-founder of COUCUG, Teams and Skype for Business MVP
• Sara Fennah (@sfennah), M365 Apps & Services MVP and Microsoft 365 consultant with Znrgy Ltd
• Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), Microsoft RD & SharePoint MVP, founder of PixelMill
• John White (@diverdown1964), dual SharePoint and Data Platform MVP, cto at UnlimitedViz and tyGraph
• Hal Hostetler (@TVWizard), Microsoft MVP and senior field engineer and social media coordinator for Roland, Schorr & Tower
• Dan Usher (@binarybrewery), M365 Apps & Services MVP and principal at Booz Allen Hamilton
• Merethe Stave (@MeretheStave), Office Apps & Services MVP, cco and senior cloud architect at CloudWay
• Mike Maadarani (@mikemaadarani), M365 Apps & Services MVP, cloud solution architect at MCM Consulting
• Susan Hanley (@susanhanley), M365 Apps & Services MVP, business analyst and information architect, governance and IA expert, owner of Susan Hanley LLC
• Norm Young (@stormin_30), M365 Apps & Services MVP, director of collaborative analytics at UnlimitedViz
• Matt Varney (@thevarnish), intranet manager at KCTCS
• Tobiasz Koprowski (@KoprowskiT), Data Platform MVP, founder and consultant at Shadowland Consulting
• Noah Sparks (@noahsparks), community igniter and strategy manager
• Sara Wolters (@SaraMorefield), consultant at Focal Point Solutions
• Heidi Jordan (@heidi_jordan14), SharePoint solution specialist at High Plains Technology
• Shari Oswald (@shortcutshari), co-founder and productivity evangelist at PowerUP! Learning
• Daniel Glenn (@danielglenn), Microsoft MVP, senior director of hybrid office & US operations at Creospark
• Sharon Weaver (@sharoneweaver), Microsoft Regional Director, consultant, trainer and ceo of Smarter Consulting
• Toni Pohl (@atwork), founder & cto of atwork, cloud consultant, Microsoft MVP
• Ami Diamond (@ami_diamond), SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365 expert at P.Z. Projects
• Wes Preston (@idubbs), SharePoint MVP, evangelist,  and owner at TrecStone
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Microsoft MVP & RD, #CollabTalk founder, brand alliance director at AvePoint

If you would like to be included on one of these panels, please drop me a line via email, LinkedIn, or Twitter. And thank you again to tyGraph for your support of these CollabTalk tweetjams! And finally, if you are interested in being a sponsor of a future tweetjam, please contact me.

We’ll be back on September 27th with another CollabTalk TweetJam on the topic of “Building an Information Governance Strategy from Scratch” so be sure to follow me (@buckleyplanet) for news and updates.