Microsoft has announced it will add Copilot AI to its Viva suite, allowing firms to use the power of generative AI to measure employee satisfaction and stay communicative.
Leaders will be able to view employee engagement data across their organization from a single dashboard using natural language prompts, as well as identify what will motivate and resonate with employees.
Copilot will group survey results with measurements of employee sentiment and what topics are popular throughout the workforce at any given time.
For example, an employer can select the suggested prompt ‘Summarize comments from my least engaged team’ for a detailed description of this team’s grievances.
Along with organization-wide results, Copilot is capable of answering questions relating to regional teams too - in a video example, the employer rephrased their query to get engagement data for a team based in North America.
Microsoft has also announced that as part of this unified dashboard, Glint, the employee engagement measurement platform, will become part of the Viva Suite in July 2023.
Viva Glint will be available with Copilot, which will provide summaries and analysis for employee feedback.
Using generative AI capabilities, Copilot can also draft posts in the workplace community app Viva Engage, either from draft prompts, trending topics, or using an internal document as a basis for the post.
In a video example, Microsoft showed off Copilot creating a quarterly goals post, changing the tone to be “more inspirational” upon user request, and generating images to improve the reach of the post.
Once a post has been sent, Copilot will compile engagement metrics such as view and like counts for easy observation by leadership teams.
The AI will also summarise comments and provide an analysis of how the post was received within a company’s workforce.
The system is capable of complex analysis drawing on Viva Glint data, network data from Viva Insights, and the Microsoft Graph to combine metadata from across an organization.
In an example, Copilot was able to neatly summarize whether teams in a specific firm were more engaged as a result of having regular in-office days, with engagement ranked on an objective scale across the workforce.
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Copilot is also capable of suggesting learning plans for employees through integration with Viva Learning and can curate these on a per-role basis for intelligent training or upskilling.
On a smaller scale, employees can use Copilot in Viva Topics to get quick information on key topics for their role, while Copilot in Answers can assist employees in selecting good citations for written tasks.
Launched in 2021, Microsoft Viva is 365 and Teams’ integrated employee experience platform. It encompasses internal communication channels, company-wide training, and policy hubs, as well as aligning productivity and strategic goals.
Viva is the latest Microsoft offering to receive the firm’s growing number of ‘Copilot’ AI assistants.
Last month, the company announced Microsoft 365 Copilot to bring generative AI to its popular productivity suite, as well as the powerful Microsoft Security Copilot which will allow security teams to intelligently improve their posture.
The increased offering in AI products has come about as a result of Microsoft’s $10 billion OpenAI investment, with the tech giant now in a position to integrate the AI firm’s powerful GPT-4 model across its software suite.
How important is employee engagement?
Alongside the announcement, Microsoft published a new report on more than three million employees across 200 companies worldwide in conjunction with combined stock price movements among these firms.
It found a positive correlation between employee engagement and strong financials, with each point of engagement reported by companies correlating with $46,511 in extra market cap per worker.
Overall, firms that focused on engagement in their workforces demonstrated financials double that of competitors who chose not to prioritize engagement.
Employees were also shown to value clear communication, with those at organizations where leaders were engaged and communicative being 37% more likely to report confidence in their higher-ups.
The researchers called for organizations to create a “feedback flywheel”, in which employee feedback and behavioral data are continually combined for analysis, and prompt regular action at a leadership level.
In addition to the stronger financial performances observed in companies that followed this philosophy more closely, companies stood to benefit from improved employee retention.
The report’s data showed that employees who felt their firm was poor in communication were twice as likely to quit compared to those who were happy with their company’s level of discussion and engagement.
