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Engage your frontline workers and focus on wellbeing

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 for frontline workers

Nurture a sense of belonging among your frontline teams by empowering them to engage with your entire organization.

Surveys like Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Pulse Report show that many frontline workers:

  • Wish more was being done to support their mental health
  • Say leadership doesn't prioritize building culture
  • Believe that work stress will either stay the same or worsen in the coming year

You can help your frontline teams overcome these challenges and feel supported in your organization by using Viva Connections, Viva Engage, Praise, and SharePoint.

Connect frontline workers to your broader organization with Viva Connections

Keep everyone engaged and informed with Viva Connections. Use the Viva Connections app in Teams to:

  • Connect frontline workers and create opportunities to engage, communicate, and collaborate.
  • Make it easy for frontline workers to access important news and announcements.
  • Empower frontline workers around a common mission and goal.
  • Create a sense of belonging and provide tools that help foster wellbeing.

You can customize Viva Connections to give your frontline easy access to resources, tools, relevant news, and popular destinations so they can access everything they need on the go.

Increase engagement with communications

The Viva Connections experience is composed of three main components: the feed, dashboard, and resources.

  • Feed: The feed aggregates content from multiple sources to display a personalized news and information stream. Learn more.
  • Dashboard: The dashboard is your employee’s digital toolset that brings together the tools and resources they need. Prioritize cards that help your frontline accomplish daily tasks like clocking in and out of shifts or viewing assigned tasks. Learn more.
  • Resources: Resources surfaces links to popular SharePoint sites and other content. Link to popular SharePoint sites like HR benefits and training resources. Learn more.

As you prioritize and align scenarios to support, consider how and where certain tools and resources should be located.

Learn more about the differences between the Viva Connections desktop and mobile experience.

Empower your workers to share feedback

Creating channels for your frontline workers to share feedback helps your teams feel engaged and like their voices matter. Additionally, getting feedback from your teams can provide insights into how your organization can improve processes.

Promote health and wellbeing

Frontline workers need extra support when it comes to managing health and wellbeing. Not only are their jobs fast paced, but they can also be physically and emotionally demanding.

  • On the dashboard: Surface daily health checks, wellness reminders, and other third-party solutions that keep people feeling connected and productive.
  • In the feed: Use SharePoint news posts and video news links to spotlight wellness and health resources. You can use audience targeting to make sure that posts reach the most relevant people.
  • In resources: Link to wellness and health resources to your workers can access them at any time.

Create a supportive digital ecosystem

Empowering frontline workers with the right technology makes their jobs easier and helps your organization quickly adapt to ever-changing work conditions. Use Viva Connections to create a digital ecosystem and a curated employee experience.

  • On the dashboard: Use adaptive card templates, the Card designer, and third-party integrations to create custom cards and quick views that help workers access information and complete every day tasks such as:
    • Finding or securing parking spaces
    • Accessing pay and benefits information
    • Requesting new uniforms and supplies
  • In the feed: SharePoint news posts and video news links allow you to digitize organizational announcements. News posts are highlighted throughout the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem, can be translated into different languages, and can be easily found when employees are searching for content.
  • In resources: Link to tools that your teams use to manage work, such as Teams apps.

Get started planning, building, and launching Viva Connections

Review Viva Connections capabilities, technical requirements, and customization options. Then, work with stakeholders (such as representatives from HR, operations, and process owners) who can accurately represent the needs of your frontline workforce. Take inventory of the highest priority needs and align them to Viva Connections capabilities to build a custom experience in Teams.

Learn how to plan, build, and launch Viva Connections in your organization.

Create communities with Viva Engage

Viva Engage is an internal social network that gives members of your organization opportunities to connect with each other. You can create communities where members of your organization can ask and answer questions, share knowledge, and find belonging at work. Having a variety of communities that span both frontline and non-frontline teams helps your on-the-ground workforce connect to each other and the broader organization.

Communities can be based on:

  • Location
  • Roles, such as cashiers or nurses
  • Interests, such as outdoor activities or pop culture
  • Identity groups
  • And more

Boost morale with Praise

The Praise app in Teams lets managers and employees congratulate each other and share appreciation by sending badges in Teams chats and channels. Praise helps employees feel recognized for achievements such as meeting goals and going above and beyond to help customers.

Learn how to manage Praise for your organization.

Support engagement

One of the biggest struggles for frontline workers is feeling included in the broader organization.

If your organization already uses Teams, you might have recorded some of your meetings so that team members can catch up on meetings that they missed. Recording meetings can also benefit your frontline teams by making them feel included in the organization. Some ways you can use recorded meetings to help frontline teams include:

  • Give them earlier access to announcements such as product releases and new policies.
  • Help them understand your organization's broader business goals.
  • Familiarize them with the leadership team that drives decisions that affect them.

Learn how to record Teams meetings and store them in SharePoint.

After a meeting is recorded and saved in SharePoint, your corporate communications team can add a card in Viva Connections to make it easily accessible for your frontline teams.