One of the key pillars of what constitutes a more meaningful employee experience is Growth. What growth means is that employees get what they need to maximize their strengths, learn new skills, broaden their experience, and progress toward their goals. Accelerating skills and making learning and personal growth a natural part of work has been specially brought in focus by the last year.

The pandemic made it clear that organizations need to develop a culture of learning to keep up with the pace of change and to retain great talent. As per a LinkedIn Learning 2019 Workplace Learning Report, 94 percent of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.

A PwC CEO Survey: Talent Trends, 2019 further points out that 79% of CEOs worldwide are concerned that a lack of essential skills in their workforce is a barrier to future growth. 

All this clearly drives home the importance of investing in learning and skilling for both employers and employees. But implementing it is easier said than done. Interestingly, a report by Deloitte points out that employees only have 1% of their workweek to focus on learning new skills. Poor engagement rates, digital fatigue, lack of connect between skilling and employee aspirations and career paths, further add to the problem.

Chetan Yadav, Chief People Officer, Tally Solutions shared with us, “One pain area or an area where offline still has an advantage is, where one could earlier have longer sessions/workshops with people together in a room and completely switch off from other distractions. Right now the screen fatigue after a couple of hours, digital interruptions (network/message/email) and sometimes the surroundings at home, are all real. We have attempted to work around some like screen fatigue by breaking the sessions and accepted others like surroundings at home.”

All this points to the fact that learning needs to be more engaging and seamlessly integrated into the places people already spend their time at work. Across the board, employees report low engagement with learning and have limited time for upskilling yet learning opportunities are linked to workplace happiness, wellbeing, and organizational success. This has again put the spotlight on how organizations need an EXP (Employee Experience Platform) that empowers people to grow and businesses to thrive by bringing learning into the flow of work, making it more engaging, easily accessible, and ultimately a natural part of both every employee’s daily work and company culture.

Helping everyone in the organization learn in the work of flow: Introducing Microsoft Viva Learning

This is exactly what the Viva Learning feature of Microsoft Viva aims to address-eliminate the separation between work and learning for millions of people across the globe. Microsoft Viva Learning creates a central hub for learning in Microsoft Teams where people can discover, share, assign, and learn from content libraries across their organization to empower teams and individuals to make learning a natural part of their day.

Viva Learning makes learning content available in one place – including LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party content providers, Learning Management Systems, and a company's own content.

So how does Viva Learning help make learning a natural part of both every employee’s daily work and company culture?

For starters, with Viva Learning, employees can easily discover and share everything from training courses to microlearning content. Viva Learning creates a central hub for learning in Teams, with AI that recommends the right content at the right time. So employees can easily search for and share learning content in Microsoft Teams with chats with groups or individuals. They can see course details and options, like a course or save it for later.

It aggregates content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, your organization’s own custom content, and trainings from leading content providers like Skillsoft, Coursera, Pluralsight, and edX. Viva Learning also works with leading learning-management systems. Viva has also announced partnerships with Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba, and SAP SuccessFactors. 

For managers, Viva Learning provides them the tools they need to assign learning and to track the completion of courses to help foster a learning culture.  Managers can easily assign learning content, see the status of the assignments they have made, and track reported completion status. From traditional learning courses to microlearning content, you can access a wide variety of modalities to match your culture and needs.

Summing up, here are three ways in which Viva Learning helps in building an ecosystem where learning powers people and business success as a natural part of the company culture and each person’s daily habit-

• Make learning a natural part of your day: Easily discover, share, and engage with learning integrated into Microsoft Teams.
• Make all your learning content available in one place: From microlearning to formal learning, simplify the learning experience by enabling the delivery of world-class content.
• Drive results that matter: Empower leaders and employees to curate, assign, and track learning aligned with business outcomes and individual goals.

Ultimately, people need to feel in charge of their learning and growth and have the right tools at their disposal for their success. Similarly, businesses need to empower their people with a learning experience that is aligned with business outcomes and also leads to a more meaningful employee experience. This is where Microsoft Viva Learning aims to help by bringing learning into the natural flow of work as well as the organizational culture.

For further information on how Microsoft Viva can empower your employees, click here.