{"id":21873,"date":"2026-01-22T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=21873"},"modified":"2026-06-17T09:21:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:21:13","slug":"accelerating-our-cultural-transformation-at-microsoft-with-viva-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/accelerating-our-cultural-transformation-at-microsoft-with-viva-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Accelerating our cultural transformation at Microsoft with Viva and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019re learning a lot from integrating AI into our use of Microsoft Viva here at Microsoft, lessons we want to share with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft Viva is a digital employee-experience platform that brings together essential capabilities such as knowledge, learning, and workplace insights in the flow of work to empower people and teams to be their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI, Viva enables our employees\u2014and anyone who uses it\u2014to hone their skills and acquire new ones. It gives our managers data-driven insights that help them make better decisions. And with new Copilot Analytics integration, Viva is enabling leaders to measure and optimize the impact of AI across the organization. Ultimately, Viva helps us\u2014and organizations like yours\u2014build inclusive, thriving cultures where people can achieve their full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our team, Microsoft Digital, in partnership with Microsoft Human Resources (HR) and our leadership, deployed Viva across Microsoft to accelerate our evolving growth-mindset culture and help ensure that our employees thrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting employee engagement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our mission in Microsoft Digital is to power, protect, and transform Microsoft. Part of that responsibility is ensuring that Microsoft employees can thrive in a flexible hybrid work environment. In partnership with HR, our internal business partner and customer, our team obsesses over every dimension of an employee\u2019s experience, from early on when they are a candidate for employment to when they become an alumnus of the company. We steward employees\u2019 digital experience across all aspects of their work, ensuring that they have the devices, applications, services, and infrastructure they need to be productive on the job, regardless of what they do or where they do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing to improve the experience our employees have with Viva requires a steady company-wide effort to build awareness of improvements being made on the platform, including the integration of Copilot and AI, and to drive usage. It\u2019s an effort that\u2019s both technical and cultural, driven by Microsoft HR in partnership with our team and the Viva product group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evolving our culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft HR is an important driver of organizational culture at Microsoft, helping our employees thrive in a growth mindset culture with a focus on being customer-centered, diverse and inclusive, and unified as One Microsoft. Microsoft leadership and the HR team sponsor and advocate for Viva as our internal experience platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HR team\u2019s collective expertise, developed in HR centers of excellence, has been a key influence on Viva\u2019s development and implementation. HR centers of excellence are groups of experts and leaders in areas such as culture, talent management, people analytics, learning, and other people practices. They help drive company-wide HR programs and processes using evidence-based research and external benchmarks. HR teams serve as experts in the employee life cycle, providing insights into core HR functions such as onboarding, wellbeing, recruiting, and career growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the start, our teammates in HR have been Viva advocates, always on the lookout for opportunities to streamline work using Viva for existing HR programs and processes and recommending new HR employee-experience scenarios that shape the future of Viva product design. As our team in Microsoft Digital and HR deployed and drove adoption of Viva internally, we found new inspiration for product features and improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adopting Viva as Customer Zero<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At Microsoft Digital, we are early adopters of our own technology. We believe in our products, and we obsess over making them better for our customers. This all happens within a culture and practice we think of as being Customer Zero for the company.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer Zero is our internal journey to make our products better using our own business experience. Across our company, we respect employee privacy, data-access regulations, and the laws of the countries and regions where we operate while using powerful tools to understand how work gets done. By acting as Customer Zero for Viva, our team in Microsoft Digital provides valuable feedback that enables the product team to develop features and experiences that further benefit our employees and our customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Viva adoption process, our Customer Zero relationship has included the Viva product team\u2014as they have developed new modules and features, we in Microsoft Digital and Microsoft HR have been their first customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Customer Zero approach requires involvement from all three contributors\u2014Microsoft Digital, HR, and our product groups. This involvement creates dependency among the three contributors for successful deployment, adoption, and testing. It also creates a cycle of benefits that positively affects all three contributors and, ultimately, Microsoft\u2019s customers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n