The world of work has changed dramatically in only a few months, and it’s clear that these changes will persist well past the pandemic. Since distributed work became the norm, employees have struggled to stay connected to their teams, manage burnout, and prioritize their own wellbeing. 

According to our recent research, 37% of employees today feel less connected to their teammates, 31% feel less connected to their managers, and burnout has reached a new high with no signs of decreasing. And, it’s no wonder. For most organizations, the processes designed to keep employees connected, aligned, and engaged were not designed for this new reality. 

To help employees succeed in this new world of work, we must start by deeply understanding how they’re adapting to these changes and taking action before our people become disengaged and trigger much larger business problems. In order to do so, we must reimagine the way we think about the employee experience.

Connecting employee feedback and collaboration data

While engagement surveys have been the primary way for organizations to measure how employees feel about their experience, what’s been missing, to date, is the ability to connect those insights to the collaboration patterns that shape employee perceptions. But what if you could actually see how employee perceptions and collaboration patterns intersect and use those insights to help leaders take effective action? 

With advances in technology and a move to greater digital collaboration, it’s now much easier to understand work patterns. Microsoft Viva Insights, part of Microsoft’s new Employee Experience Platform, Microsoft Viva, specifically gives leaders line of sight into factors such as after-hours work, meeting effectiveness, and network size that can impact productivity and wellbeing—while protecting individual privacy every step of the way.

Together, Microsoft + Glint unlock powerful employee experience insights

Today, we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Microsoft Viva that will allow organizations to combine de-identified and aggregated employee feedback from Glint—“how people feel”—with de-identified and aggregated collaboration data from Microsoft Viva Insights—”how people work,” unlocking new insights that help your leaders deeply understand key aspects of the employee experience and, most importantly, identify concrete and objective ways to improve it.

A new dashboard—now in public preview—maps aggregated, de-identified collaboration insights to sentiment data, enabling users to more accurately identify where teams may be struggling, proactively adjust work norms, and measure the impact of change over time. These capabilities are available to joint Glint and Microsoft Workplace Analytics customers.

Additionally, we are bringing Microsoft Viva Insights directly into Glint. This new capability—currently in pilot—allows joint customers to analyze engagement data, including comment data, based on Viva Insights metrics, such as weekly collaboration hours, workweek span, and weekly 1:1 time with managers. Glint Smart Alerts also uses this data to help organizations identify populations suffering from low engagement or burnout so leaders can take action to increase wellbeing before employees decide to leave.

As always, maintaining employee trust and protecting user privacy is a top priority at Glint. Leaders and managers using Viva Insights in Glint—currently in pilot—can see only aggregated, de-identified results based on the confidentiality thresholds built into Glint. The Glint dashboard will never display Viva Insights information about an individual’s work patterns. Additionally, Viva Insights and Glint use personal privacy safeguards such as de-identification and aggregation to protect individual privacy.

Powerful new insights for pilot customers

By combining employee feedback and collaboration data, our pilot customers have already found actionable insights that help their people increase wellbeing and do their best work. 

“Varian has relied on Glint for years to understand the ongoing needs and sentiments of our global employee base,” said Terilyn Monroe, Chief People Officer at Varian. “Combining Glint data with Microsoft Viva Insights has allowed us to take that understanding a step further, shedding light on why our people feel the way they do and illuminating a path to changing the underlying norms and behaviors that directly impact them. There’s nothing more critical in times of change than our employees’ wellbeing—Glint and Viva Insights provides us the quickest, clearest opportunity to make sure we’re supporting our people to the best of our ability.”

As Glint empowers our customers with new insights, we are also relentlessly experimenting ourselves. As customer zero, the people analytics team at LinkedIn, Glint’s parent company, also found powerful insights to improve employee wellbeing using these new capabilities. “Microsoft Viva Insights plus Glint is the coolest thing we’ve had in a long time. When I talk to people about the insights we’re getting, the reaction is jaw-dropping. From our top leadership all the way down, the overlay of these two data sets gives us insights into the actions that we can take from a People Analytics perspective. More important than ever, we can focus on what we can do to improve employee wellbeing… you can’t get that with either one alone. Together, it’s real actionability,” said David White, VP of People Analytics at LinkedIn.

Learn more

In the coming year, Glint and Microsoft Viva will continue to partner together to help your people be happier and more successful at work. Together, we can provide leaders, managers, and employees with even more powerful insights and personalized actions directly in the flow of work. 

Learn more about how Glint and Microsoft Viva Insights can unlock powerful employee experience insights and action for your organization. For existing Glint and Viva Insights customers, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more about participation in our pilots.