Microsoft Viva Insights and Measuring Employee Productivity

DesignDATA

Five-minute read

Employee experience is one of the most transparent indicators of business success and satisfaction. At its core, this describes the sum of all interactions an employee has with an employer, including everything from major milestones and personal relationships to technology use and ergonomics.

Despite being an essential piece of the corporate puzzle, employee experience and well-being have traditionally been swept under the rug. This is problematic since staff well-being directly affects engagement, retention, performance, and business development. At every organization’s core should be the question: how are employees experiencing the workplace?

Luckily, the pandemic has thrust employee experience and well-being into the spotlight as organizations try to determine a way to outperform the competition, attract and retain top talent, and scale with increased satisfaction. Business leaders began calling for a solution to better measure this experience, and (as usual) Microsoft came to the rescue with their new platform: Microsoft Viva Insights.

What Is Microsoft Viva Insights?

Microsoft Viva Insights is part of Microsoft Viva, a platform that brings together all aspects of the employee experience, from communications and knowledge to learning, resources, and insights. It integrates seamlessly into the Microsoft apps you use every day, like Teams and Outlook – as well as other Microsoft 365 apps and services – to accommodate your teams’ preferred workflow. As a bonus, Microsoft Viva Insights can also access data from your existing ecosystem of collaboration tools and services, such as Zoom, Slack, Workday, and SAP SuccessFactors.

Why It Matters

Microsoft Viva helps people achieve stability, collaborate intelligently, and find focus wherever and whenever they need it because let’s face it – employee experience is at the center of our collective success. Companies that prioritize this are more profitable and innovative than those who understate its importance.

This goes hand-in-hand with blurring the boundary between work and life. Without a healthy work-life balance, employees lose engagement, report higher stress levels, suffer from elevated anxiety, and experience alarming burnout rates. Once this happens, it’s only a matter of time until these employees leave their jobs.

Fortunately, Microsoft Viva Insights gives individuals, managers, and leaders personalized and actionable insights that help everyone in their organization flourish.

Features to Expect

Currently, Microsoft Viva Insights is being introduced to Microsoft 365 users via Exchange Online. This preview features an initial set of personal insights and well-being experiences designed to safeguard employee privacy with unique insights visible only to the individual. By default, manager and leader insights are protected with de-identification, aggregation, or differential privacy measures. Although currently in the preview stages, Microsoft plans to incorporate Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics under the Microsoft Viva brand.

Personal Insights

Microsoft Viva Insights enables employees to connect and maintain strong relationships with their central network contacts by prioritizing regular one-on-one meetings and keeping up with requests distributed across all platforms from one location. It has also introduced a “protect time experience” that makes it easy for users to schedule focus time so that they can experience at least a few minutes of uninterrupted work every day.

Features like these are extremely valuable to maintaining work-life balance. As communications become increasingly virtual, making it difficult to ‘step away’ from the office, Microsoft Viva Insights ensures employees remain productive during their work hours so they can effectively enjoy their time off.

Well-being Experiences

To enable people to stay organized, engaged, and mindful, Viva Insights brings well-being experiences directly to employees, including features such as:

Virtual commute: helps employees mindfully wrap up their workday
Check-ins: helps employees pause and reflect on their day
Integration with Headspace: adds meditation and mindfulness experiences
Actionable insights: adds course recommendations from LinkedIn Learning to support continuous training and promote career growth
Daily briefing email: helps employees look forward to and prepare for the week ahead

Benefits for Leaders and Managers

A significant part of employee engagement and overall positive experiences is the connection between managers and employees. It’s vital for managers to be aware of what is going on with their employees’ work and well-being.an overall positive experience is the connection between managers and their employees. It’s vital for managers to not only be aware of what is going on with their employees’ work, but also their wellbeing.

Microsoft Viva Insights includes a set of experiences that enable managers and leaders to boost productivity across their organization by empowering their people to be their best. It also grants managers visibility into employee work patterns that can lead to burnout and stress caused by meeting overload, a lack of focus time, or time worked outside employees’ chosen work hours. By monitoring these patterns, managers can nurture the well-being of their team members by identifying relevant challenges and supporting employees’ varied work and flexibility needs.

Later this year, Microsoft plans to launch action plans to join employees and managers and give productivity a major boost. This feature will provide team members with recommendations and best practices to help them prioritize their well-being while managers assess progress against team goals over time in tandem. As a result, managers will be able to address critical questions and take actions to strengthen team resilience and boost employee engagement to ensure that their organization is ready for anything the future brings.

Regardless of the complexity of your business needs, designDATA is ready to support you by integrating Microsoft Viva Insights to measure and boost your employee productivity. Are you ready to transform your organization?

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Why Cybersecurity Insurance Is More Valuable Than Ever

DesignDATA

Four-minute read

Since the pandemic, cybercriminals have become increasingly active. Not only has there been an upsurge in the number of ransomware attacks, but there has also been an increase in multi-million-dollar payouts to cybercriminal groups, who have become increasingly professional in their mode of operating.

Recent high-profile cyberattacks, like the SolarWinds Orion Security Breach and the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack, highlight how cyberattacks can have far-reaching consequences. For example, insurance carriers pay an extraordinary amount of money for claims to fulfill extortion demands.

These events have resulted in cybersecurity insurance carriers putting more stringent cybersecurity requirements on their clients and a steady rise in cybersecurity insurance premiums. According to Jonathan Roy, designDATA’s Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance, and Derek Symer, Director of Nonprofits at AHT, enterprises can expect to pay as much as 80% more for their cybersecurity insurance. Underwriters are also rapidly revising their business models and exploring new options due to the upsurge in ransomware attacks and their resultant costs in covering those claims.

The value, then, in cybersecurity insurance is clear: it allows your organization to transfer some of the financial cybersecurity risks to an insurance carrier. These risks stem from both internal and external sources — from an employee unintentionally opening an email attachment containing ransomware to a malicious insider deliberately providing access to an organization’s network. Attackers often infiltrate systems months before making their move, and organizations may not even realize their financial assets or data have been compromised until it is too late.

The risks posed by ransomware attacks can lead to significant financial losses. These include the costs to unencrypt data, lost revenue due to business downtime, irreparable damage to an organization’s reputation, consulting fees to restore or improve systems and numerous other unplanned expenses.

To learn more about the current state of cyber insurance and what the future may hold, register for our online Cyber Insurance Webinar where a panelist of experts will dive deep into what cyber insurance is, how to shop for it and what to expect when filing claims.

Considering Cybersecurity Insurance Coverage

There is no escaping it. No matter the size of your organization, if you rely on IT systems, maintain digital records, use computers, or accept emails and have a publicly-accessible website, you are vulnerable to a cybersecurity attack and need cybersecurity insurance.

As a starting point, organizations need to have comprehensive cybersecurity policies and procedures to avoid becoming victims of cybercriminals. A full Incident Response Plan is also essential for dealing with a security incident.

However, to transfer the residual risks and effectively respond to and recover from a cybersecurity breach, comprehensive insurance coverage is vital. This should cover an organization’s liability from cybersecurity incidents, including a data breach where personal or sensitive information is compromised, and where an organization experiences business interruption, harm to its reputation, or network damage.

What Should Organizations Look for in Their Cybersecurity Insurance Policies?

Essential Coverage

When reviewing the policies offered to you by carriers, at a minimum, the essential coverage should include ransomware and data breach extortion, digital asset restoration, and funds transfer fraud. Limits should be based on your organization’s expected loss for each category during such a cyberattack (check with your IT and Financial departments). Retentions (or deductibles) should be based on how much you are willing to pay out of pocket, with lower deductibles resulting in higher insurance premiums.

Additional Coverage

Additional options include coverage for crisis management and public relations, reputational harm and service fraud.

Also worth considering is coverage that extends to a security incident or outage with third parties, such as your web or database hosting company. Without such coverage, a major breach at a third party you used could leave you shouldering your own business interruption and reputation repair costs.

Attestations

Another important consideration regarding your cybersecurity insurance policy is the attestations – the assurance you give the insurance carrier that you are meeting certain cybersecurity hygiene provisions.

When it comes to attestations, ensure you include the head of your cybersecurity or IT department to help answer any relevant questions. These should be answered truthfully. While an underwriter may not second guess you during the application process, should you file a claim, they will vigorously investigate if you’ve been faithful to your attestations. If you weren’t doing what you said you were, you could risk having your claim denied.

If you can’t reasonably comply with what your insurance provider is expecting, consider other carriers. Every insurance provider approaches the matter of cybersecurity differently, and it is best to find a carrier that best suits your needs and fits within your business model and budget.

How Can designDATA Help With Your Cybersecurity Needs?

designDATA’s experts will take the time to review your current cyber coverage from a technology perspective to ensure it is appropriate for the risks your enterprise faces. We can also help you build a comprehensive Incident Response Plan to ensure you are fully prepared for the possibility of a cyberattack.

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