If you’re working in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, chances are you’ve been asked why you need Viva Engage when you’re already using Microsoft Teams.

Couldn’t you just have a large team on Microsoft Teams and eliminate the need to switch between the two platforms?

RealFoundations founder Chris Shaida believes he has a rock-solid answer to this question. Chris’ answer is based on years of experience, which is backed by almost a decade of data from SWOOP Analytics identifying RealFoundations, a global professional services firm dedicated to real estate, as a world-leader in the digital workplace.

RealFoundations was ranked No.1 for the Americas region in SWOOP Analytics’ 2023/24 Viva Engage benchmarking analysis, coming close on the heels of top rankings in SWOOP Analytics’ 2023 M365 and Microsoft Teams benchmarking.

Think of Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage as two separate places. Not just different tools, but different places, each with its own rationale.

Chris likens it to two different buildings on a unified campus, each with distinct but highly inter-related purposes, like the library and the student union.

People can read, study, research, write and discuss in both places. Neither is strictly focused on, or conducive to, a single activity. You choose to be in one or the other based on the time, mood, need for specific kinds of stimulus, as well as the expected mix of activities you expect to perform.

Chris emphasises that this is quite different from the tool metaphor. You pick up a tool – a hammer, stapler, ruler - to do a specific thing. Then you put it down. People don't “hang out” in a tool but we do hang out and spend time in a place; and in a place we might pick up and use a variety of tools.

For RealFoundations, Viva Engage is the place to learn or share information about topics of broad interest to individuals, the company and the industry. Microsoft Teams is the place to go to work with a specific group of people toward a specific goal.

“We have found that the consistent use of the place metaphor has helped clarify the rationales for each, much more than the tool metaphor does,” Chris said.
“We are all used to doing some of the same activities in different places. And we are all used to choosing a specific place for the complex mix of activities that we expect we're likely to do in that place.”

Different activities, different moods on Teams v Viva Engage

While Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage are both discussion-based, Chris believes they are tuned to different moods, or activities.

· Viva Engage is the digital water cooler, or break room, where people can interact with a broader and less defined set of colleagues on broader and longer-term topics.

· Microsoft Teams is the digital project room that one goes “into” expecting to do focused work with a specific set of colleagues, with a specific plan, towards a specific goal.

· Viva Engage is more discovery oriented.

· Microsoft Teams is more delivery/outcome oriented.

In Chris’ experience, once the place-based understanding is established it becomes a part of the workplace culture and no one is particularly confused about it.

“Virtually everyone in our enterprise spends material time in both every day,” Chris said.

“People spend a lot more time in Teams but almost everyone seems to find the time they do spend in (Viva) Engage to be, well, engaging. Just like in the olden times - remember when we all went to something called an 'office' everyday - people spent time both in their assigned workgroup area and milling around the water cooler.”

Chris lists three subtle, but important, differences between Viva Engage and Microsoft Teams.

· Storylines - there is nowhere in Teams where people can just post things of interest to them and, as a consequence, where others can follow that person as an individual, rather than as a team member.

· Audience default

- Microsoft Teams sits on the narrow-cast side of the audience line. Chris says for each work event the first thing he does is say; “What team am I working in?” then everything flows from there. He will almost always know the individuals in a given team. After all, they are teammates. He will almost never discover an unknown person in Teams.

- Viva Engage defaults to the broadcast, within the enterprise. Chris says the first thing he does in Viva Engage is to ask himself; “What topic do I want to learn or contribute to?” Discovering someone new is a fairly common occurrence in Viva Engage.

· Channels

- Microsoft Teams has channels and Viva Engage does not.

- A team working on a plan/schedule towards defined goals will have more inherent structure and channels provides for that.

- With the more free-form discovery nature of Viva Engage, a hierarchical structure like Microsoft Teams channels would likely get in the way of discovery. Viva Engage can be a place to learn and knowledge share.

Where does email fit in?

It doesn’t! It may continue to be used for external communication but there is no place for email within an enterprise.

“Five years from now, the only enterprises relying on email as their primary communication and interaction tool will be dying enterprises,” Chris said.
“The workplace will continue to be digitised whatever the leadership of a particular enterprise does or doesn’t do.”

Chris uses the example of mobile phones. Mobile phones changed business communication with almost no guidance from the enterprise. It will be the same for email and the digital workplace in general. The question for leaders is whether to embrace and guide this new way of working, or just let it happen.

“We are poised to get out of the house and to other places where we can work, interact and collaborate,” Chris said.

“But we are most certainly bringing both some new habits – we know how to turn our videos on, we now know that it is possible to interact and collaborate with others even if, post pandemic, they won’t be in the same workplace as us – and different expectations about how our work is structured, measured and managed.

“The only real decision for enterprise leaders is whether to embrace, shape and guide this new and better way of working or just let it happen.”

Chris says the “let it happen” path involves less near-term thinking, energy and effort but it will inexorably lead to departments using different tools and processes and eventually the connected digital ecosystem will slip away through these disconnected silos.

Digital workplace leaders

RealFoundations has proved to be a global leader in the digital workplace in all SWOOP Analytics’ benchmarking. The company has generously shared its best practices with SWOOP in a host of case studies, webinars and interviews with SWOOP Analytics, including:

· Addressing the physical, as well as the digital, reality of hybrid work

· Email is where knowledge goes to die - Harvesting knowledge at RealFoundations

· The secret to writing a great Yammer post

· Breaking the silos between service providers and clients

· Collaborating in the Modern Digital Workplace webinar with RealFoundations and Microsoft

· Real Foundations CEO Chris Shaida reveals his 7 behaviors for success on Microsoft Teams

· How a global organization is using SWOOP to keep employees collaborating

· Tapping into the X Factor to deliver better outcomes for clients

· Think more with Microsoft Teams

· How To Write A Great Post webinar

· What Tool When?