Boost engagement

Important

This article is for the legacy Workplace Analytics app and does not reflect functionality available on the updated Viva Insights platform. Access current documentation for Viva Insights advanced insights here: advanced insights documentation.

Employees with high job satisfaction and a strong sense of belonging are more likely to produce high-quality work, identify business opportunities, and remain at the organization. Each of the behaviors listed show how your organization compares with others based on industry research and your specific organizational data.

For example, are employees routinely getting one-on-one time with their managers? Research shows that employees who get consistent manager coaching are five times more likely to stay engaged, which leads to increased productivity and greater employee retainment.

Microsoft Viva Insights has a My organization page that shows leader's collaboration data about their team. The outcomes include data about Boost engagement.

Boost engagement.

Calculations

The following are the percentage insights, their underlying metrics, and a little about the calculations used for them.

Boost engagement percentage insight.

Behavior Percentage insight Metrics Calculations
Promote coaching and development Percentage of employees who have less than 15 minutes of 1:1 time with their managers each week Meeting hours with manager 1:1 Percentage of employees with less than 15 minutes of weekly 1:1 time with their managers. To account for various 1:1 meeting frequencies, the total time is calculated for each employee per month and averaged over a week.
Protect employee capacity Percentage of employees who are working after hours for more than one hour each week After-hours collaboration Percentage of employees who spend more than one hour collaborating through emails, calls, instant messages, and meetings outside of working hours. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period.
Drive employee empowerment Percentage of employees who have a majority of their meetings attended by their manager Meeting hours with manager and meeting hours Percentage of employees who spend over 50 percent of their meeting hours with their manager present in the meeting. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period.
Cohesion within teams Percentage of employees who are members of teams with strong cohesion Strong ties Strong cohesion is calculated by the number of strong ties of all team members divided by the maximum possible number of strong ties in the team. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the last six months.*

The following defines the organizational data shown in the visual behavioral insights.

Boost engagement visual insight.

Behavior Visual insight Definition
Promote coaching and development Distribution of monthly 1:1 time with managers Percentage of employees based on their monthly meeting hours with managers 1:1. They are divided into employees who have no 1:1s, between zero and one hour, and more than one hour of 1:1s with their manager in a month. These percentages are calculated monthly and averaged over the entire time period. This graph uses the meeting hours with manager 1:1 metric.
Protect employee capacity Distribution of weekly after-hours collaboration Percentage of employees based on their weekly after-hours collaboration. They are divided into employees who spend less than one hour collaborating after-hours, employees who spend between one to five hours collaborating after-hours, and employees who spend more than five hours collaborating after-hours. These percentages are calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period.
Drive employee empowerment Distribution of manager-employee coaching relationships Uses the average time employees spend with their managers in 1:1s and the percentage of meeting hours with manager in attendance, the different manager-employee coaching relationships are grouped by employee time percentages:
  • Coached - Spend more than 15 minutes in 1:1s (weekly average based on the monthly calculation) and those who spend less than 30 percent of their meeting hours with their managers in attendance.
  • Co-attended - Spend less than 15 minutes in 1:1s (weekly average based on the monthly calculation) and those who spend more than 30 percent of their meeting hours with their managers in attendance.
  • Micromanaged - Spend more than 15 minutes in 1:1s (weekly average based on the monthly calculation) and those who spend more than 30 percent of their meeting hours with their managers in attendance.
  • Under-coached - Spend less than 15 minutes in 1:1s (weekly average based on the monthly calculation) and employees who have less than 30 percent of their meeting hours with their managers in attendance.
Cohesion within teams Team cohesion levels across the company An organizational network graph that shows the number of teams with strong cohesion and those who are not very cohesive based on the average monthly collaboration activity within the team’s network. This uses strong ties.*

Important

*At least 25 percent of your teams must have five or more members. If not, this insight will be unavailable due to incomplete information. To ensure teams are accurately identified, confirm that your Organizational upload includes all employees with the correct ManagerId information.

Best practices

To take action on an outcome, you can select View best practices to see a list of recommendations for an insight, such as for increasing the frequency of coaching:

Best practice for coaching and development

This section describes why each of the following behaviors matter and the top best practices that can help keep employees engaged.

Promote coaching and development

Manager one-on-one (1:1) time can improve engagement and job performance, while lack of manager coaching can cause employee disengagement and attrition. According to the research referenced in What great managers do daily: "A Gallup study found that at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores is driven by who the boss is."

One of the top best practices for promoting coaching and development is to require that managers schedule recurring 1:1 meetings with their direct reports for 30 minutes at least twice a month and hold them accountable for achieving that goal. See Catch up with your team for help with scheduling and managing your 1:1s.

For more best practices and how to develop a 1:1 conversation series, see Best practices for manager coaching.

Protect employee capacity

Long hours and the pressure to always be available can lead to employee burnout. The amount of time employees spend collaborating outside of business hours can be an indicator of burnout risk, even as teams embrace flexibility.

Based on research presented in the Why unplugging from work is more work than we think: "New research and our growing understanding about human behavior tell us two things for certain: that unplugging is more necessary than ever, and that true unplugging is not a single action but a social agreement — a culture shift that employees and companies must create together." Ways to support wellbeing:

For more best practices and how to define and share working hours, see Best practices for wellbeing.

Drive employee empowerment

Cultivating autonomy and development are essential for employee engagement. By empowering employees to make decisions and tackle new challenges, enables managers to be more effective and reclaim time.

How to boost your team’s productivity explains that the "key to improving individual productivity is to eliminate or delegate unimportant tasks and replace them with value-added ones." Ways to empower employees:

For more best practices and how to set team meeting rules and policy, see Best practices for meetings.

Cohesion within teams

Employees who maintain strong connections within their team feel a sense of organizational belonging.

According to the article about High-performing teams need psychological safety: Here’s how to create it, “there’s no team without trust.” “Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off—just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs.”

Ways to support team cohesion:

  • Ask employees to use personal network insights to add people to their "important people" list, which enables suggestions to meet and reminders to respond to emails and complete tasks from them.
  • Host informal gatherings, such as virtual opportunities for your team to bond over non-work activities and form new connections. Create agendas with fun conversation prompts and activities, such as online trivia games.
  • Strengthen connections with a Teams channel for group communications and chats.

For more best practices and how to open your network to your teams, see Best practices for community connectivity.