Microsoft Announces Work Trend Index Special Report and New Features for Microsoft Viva

• New features in Microsoft Viva enhance employee engagement and help individuals drive productivity

• Work Trend Index Special Report highlights positive impact of employee engagement on organizations’ bottom line

Microsoft today announced new features for Microsoft Viva alongside the launch of the latest Work Trend Index Special Report focused on employee engagement.

Ahmad El Dandachi, Enterprise Commercial Lead for Microsoft in the UAE

The newly announced Copilot feature, which was introduced in Microsoft 365 to help individuals drive efficiency and productivity, will now extend to Microsoft Viva to help business leaders in the region build more engaged, collaborative workforces. In Viva Goals, Copilot can provide recommended goals from a planning or strategy document, while Copilot in Viva Engage can help leaders draft employee communications. In Viva Topics, Copilot will help users can get up to speed faster on a specific topic by generating a summary and offering answers based on multiple documents related to the topic.

Microsoft is also bringing Glint into Viva to provide a survey tool for organizations to measure and improve engagement by seeking and acting on employee feedback. The new Viva Glint will help leaders summarize thousands of employee survey comments and provide leaders a fresh way to explore feedback by asking questions in natural language. Microsoft will also integrate Viva Glint and Viva Insights to provide leaders the ability to correlate aggregated employee engagement data with behavioural data, enabling them to uncover new insights about what may be driving engagement up or down within their teams.

“In today's ever-evolving workplace, it's essential to have tools that enable business leaders to better understand and engage their workforce,” said Ahmad El Dandachi, Enterprise Commercial Lead for Microsoft in the UAE. “With the introduction of Copilot and Glint in Microsoft Viva, professionals will be able to unlock new capabilities, providing more clarity on priorities, enriching connections, and uncovering insights. We are thrilled to continue to innovate and provide solutions that help businesses thrive in today's rapidly changing environment.”

In keeping with its mission of empowering organizations across the region do more with less, Microsoft has also released the Work Trend Index Special Report, which demonstrates why employee engagement matters to the bottom line and how next-generation AI can help. The report analysed surveys of more than three million employees at over 200 companies across industries and looked at the combined stock price movement of these companies throughout 2022, revealing several key findings.

The report showed that organizations that focused on employee engagement perform twice as well financially as compared to those that deprioritize it. The report also demonstrated that clear communication and goal-setting are key to unlocking employee engagement. Further insights revealed that at the least engaged organizations surveyed, nearly one in four employees are not sure what they should focus on. On the other hand, employees at highly engaged organizations are 46 percent more likely to see their organizations as strong communicators, 37 percent more likely to express confidence in leadership, and 16 percent more likely to be clear on what to focus on than employees at the least engaged organizations.

Lastly, the report showed that leaders need a feedback flywheel, which is a continuous loop of data that is gathered, analysed, and acted upon to sustain engagement. Employees at highly engaged organizations are 40 percent more likely to have confidence that their feedback will lead to action, and they are 56 percent more likely to say that their organizations continually improve processes.