Viva Insights | What Is It and What Are the Benefits?

* Viva Topics will be retired on Feb 22, 2025, and has ceased new feature developments as of February 22, 2024, due to Microsoft’s focus on Copilot. *

Every single day that you show up to work, whether virtually or in the office, you’re releasing data. And for better or for worse, technology usually captures this data. Your work patterns, habits, and tendencies are valuable insights that can be analyzed to improve the way you work. However, data is meaningless unless you have the correct software to make sense of it. This is where Microsoft Viva Insights comes into play. Viva Insights is a module of Microsoft Viva, the employee experience platform designed to empower employees remotely. Viva Insights has been created to improve productivity and wellbeing with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations all within Microsoft Teams. 

What is Viva Insights?

As we mentioned, Viva Insights is part of the Microsoft Viva Suite, along with Viva Learnings, Viva Topics, and Viva Connections.

Let’s dive a little deeper into Microsoft Viva Insights, shall we? Viva Insights gathers statistics and data while you work, makes sense of this information, and then provides recommendations to help team members use their time more effectively. It also seeks to improve their productivity and well-being.  

It builds off MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics to assist you in discovering new experiences. There are three main elements and benefits of Viva Insights:  

1. Improve employee well-being 
2. Understand employee engagement 
3. Analyze engagement data 

Viva Insights benefits 

Improve employee wellbeing 

Viva Insights provides you with recommendations to reduce the barriers that come with remote work. It ensures that your employees can successfully balance well-being and productivity. On the dashboard, employees can log how they are feeling throughout any given day or week. This information can be valuable for managers to protect their employees’ well-being and ensure that they are not facing burnout. It also has a variety of additional features. Employees can set up a virtual commute within Insights to help them peacefully wrap up their day. There are also automated check-ins for employees to pause and reflect on their day, and Insights integrates with the application Headspace which employees can use for meditation and mindfulness experiences. When your employees are happy, productivity comes naturally – and this is just one of the benefits of Viva Insights.  

Understand employee engagement 

Employees with a strong sense of belonging are more likely to produce high-quality work. In Viva Insights one way you can understand employee engagement is to view how many one-on-ones an employee has with their manager; this is a simple way to make employees feel engaged. Viva Insights also has a “My Organization” page that displays collaboration data and provides tips on boosting engagement. When working remotely, keeping employees engaged can be a challenge and being able to understand employee engagement is a great benefit for any organization.  

Analyze engagement data 

Viva Insights provides you with options to look at your employee engagement data and make sense of it. For example, you can see how much time your employees are spending in meetings, or what hours of the day they are most normally working. Viva Insights will also gather information from calendar and OneDrive items in the analysis process. By gaining these insights, you will be able to make the changes necessary to your business to improve your productivity.  

When working remotely, being able to take advantage of these three benefits is a huge advantage that can directly affect your business.  

 

Viva Insights features 

Viva Insights has three main types of insights available, Personal Insights, Manager and Leader Insights, and Advanced Insights. 

Personal insights 

Personal Insights are insights that are private to you and only you can see. Personal Insights may arise through an email in Outlook, in Microsoft Teams, or your personal MyAnalytics dashboard. They provide information on how you currently work and recommendations on how you could improve. Some common recommendations are to set aside time in the day for regular breaks, focused work, and learning to help boost productivity.  

Manager and leader insights 

Manager and Leader Insights provide more intel on the productivity of a team; therefore, these insights are valuable for individuals in a management position. They primarily focus on providing visibility in employee work patterns. Overworking can lead to burnout and stress- both of which are not ideal for productivity and well-being. Having Manager and Leader Insights helps to avoid this. Some work patterns that these insights identify are regular after-hour work, meeting overload, and minimal focus time.  

Advanced insights  

Advanced Insights are a great option when looking to answer critical questions about your organizational resiliency and work culture. These insights present opportunities where a change in process could improve business outcomes. Some common outcomes of these insights are to enhance organizational agility, boost employee engagement, improve agility, and foster innovation. 

Data privacy   

Viva Insights collects and analyzes your data while ensuring that the data is kept private and is protected in doing so. It is GDRP compliant and includes mailbox security by storing insights in your Exchange Online Mailbox. Any insights that you receive are private to you. Learn more about how Microsoft protects employee privacy and supports compliance here.  

Additional options on the app 

Viva Insights is easily accessible as it can be surfaced through Microsoft Teams. There are a variety of options on this application that it can be utilized for: 

• Stay connected – Stay on top of your collaboration with colleagues through features such as AI-based task suggestions and meeting assistance. 
• Protect time – Find more time to eliminate distractions, stop multi-tasking, and focus on your core priorities. 
• Send praise – Send acclaim to your employees and coworkers, either in a private chat or in a Teams channel conversation. 
• Reflect – Take a moment to check in with yourself, to reflect on how you’re feeling. 
• Headspace – Experience a guided meditation from Headspace. 
• Take a break – During your workday, take an occasional one-minute “breathing break.” 
• Start a virtual commute – Mindfully close out your workday.
• Use Microsoft To-Do – Take action on a task in your to-do list. 

Where to access Viva Insights?

The easiest way to access Viva Insights is through Microsoft Teams. After it is installed, you can discover and pin it to your Teams app bar. To install the app click the app icon on the left toolbar of Microsoft Teams, search ‘Microsoft Viva Insight’, and select ‘add’.  

If Viva Insights has already been installed and you’re looking to simply discover and pin it, select the more options button on the left-hand toolbar of Microsoft Teams. In the search bar, search for ‘Microsoft Viva Insights’, once the icon appears, right-click it and select ‘pin’. 

 

Please note that before you can use the Viva Insights app, you must have access to Microsoft Teams and an Exchange Online account.

Plans  

There are two options if you are looking to obtain Viva Insights. A regular Microsoft 365 license will provide you with some of the benefits that Viva Insights has to offer, or you may opt for a full Microsoft Viva Insights license which provides all the insights and benefits. This image showcases what features are included in both plans: 

Microsoft Viva Insights is billed as a per user per month model, and requires Microsoft 365 or Office 365 E1/A1/G1/E3/A3/G3/E5/A5/G5, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, or Exchange Online Plan 1 or Plan 2 license to be eligible for Microsoft Viva Insights.  

In addition to this plan, there is the option to purchase the Microsoft Viva Insights Capacity add-on to expand your organization’s use of analytics.

Installing Viva Insights into your workplace allows you to take advantage of the data you release yield insights from it. Boosting productivity and well-being in a remote environment does not have to be challenging when you have tailored recommendations provided to you. Viva Insights can provide you with the information to start your business transformation, download our free eBook now to get started.