Want to fully utilise your tech? Think comms.

The arrival of Microsoft Viva has opened up another channel for employee communication. Are you using your platforms to full advantage? 

This is the Age of Tech Wizardry. Digital tools facilitate every aspect of our lives, with every new entrant into the AI space offering greater functionality. Microsoft’s Viva is the latest debutante to arrive at the virtual ball. It’s an employee experience platform that sits within Teams as a hub for employees to connect, communicate and collaborate. 

What Microsoft Viva offers 

The success of Teams is pointing the way for Viva. The software is available in 181 countries and 44 languages. By October last year, the number of active daily users had hit the 115 million mark. 

If your team already uses the platform, Microsoft Viva offers features with the potential to enhance colleague interactions, support learning and simplify tasks. It’s another way to personalise content and bring your company closer together. 

Online collaboration boosts productivity

Tech benefits us. These platforms are vital channels for colleague communication within the new hybrid workplace. Yammer is currently used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies worldwide, while in May last year over five million people were using Workplace by Facebook. 

Highlighting the value of digital comms, a McKinsey Global study found that productivity rose by as much as 25% when employees used online social tools to collaborate. 

But...

While tech facilitates, it doesn’t create. Platforms like Viva, Yammer and Workplace give you a vehicle through which colleagues can connect. But it’s vital to remember that while these platforms help to deliver your communication strategy, that strategy should not be driven by the platform. 

In other words: don’t limit your thinking to fit the tech. Think big. Then make the tech serve your thinking. As Keith Williams, of KMW3 says, ‘Lots of organisations currently going through digital transformations are focusing too much on the ‘digital’ and not enough on the ‘transformation’. 

In and of itself, no platform can create the relationships and shared culture – the human connections – that drive employee engagement, support talent attraction and retention and enhance productivity. 

For that, you need a strong and inspiring employee communication strategy that generates consistently engaging and meaningful content. It’s what you say, and how you say it, that defines and shapes your workplace culture. 

From wizardry to magic

It’s the quality of the content that brings any online community space to life, enabling you to make full use of your tech capabilities and to excel in the hybrid workplace.

A strong employee comms strategy:

• Communicates the values and purpose of your brand to all colleagues, creating an inclusive community with a clear, shared, and meaningful identity.
• Emphasises the role of every individual in driving your shared success.
• Drives digital transformation.
• Has been found to give shareholders 47% higher returns.

Used across digital channels, your employee comms can:

• Invite open, two-way communication.
• Showcase internal achievements and share best practice.
• Enable agility and innovation by accessing a huge pool of problem solvers.
• Enhance a culture of openness and transparency.
• Share updates, news and messaging across your entire organisation, whether local or global.
• Provide engagement data that can be used to refine and improve ongoing campaigns.
• Promote informal colleague learning.
• Keep colleagues connected and entertained.

At Caburn Hope, we’re specialists in communication that supports people to connect, engage and thrive. Want to make the most of the channels that tech opens? Talk to us, today.