Supercharging our internal communications at Microsoft with Viva Engage

With more than 200,000 employees located in offices around the world, an organization the size and complexity of Microsoft will always face challenges in creating a tight-knit culture of trust and community.

We’re taking this challenge head-on today, working to build trust between leaders and employees using all the communications strategies at our disposal. One of the most effective tools we employ to meet this goal is Microsoft Viva Engage, a powerful platform that facilitates two-way communication on the front end and provides rich analytics and insights on the back end.

Viva Engage is integrated with Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, which allows us to better connect with our employees in the flow of their work.

Another key internal communications channel is Ask Me Anything (AMA) events, which give our senior leaders the opportunity to have an authentic dialogue with employees. These events take full advantage of the combined power of Viva Engage and Teams to produce outstanding results.

“When we look at our most effective channels for informing and connecting with Microsoft employees, Viva Engage and AMAs are among the top,” says John Cirone, senior director of global employee and executive communications. “Those channels didn’t really exist three years ago, so that’s a sign of how our internal comms practices continue to evolve as we lean more into a social-first, two-way dialogue approach to our communications.”

As the company embraces its role as an AI-first Frontier Firm, we are connecting with our employees more deeply than ever before, keeping them tightly engaged with our mission and overall goals.

“Trust has proven to be this magical, key ingredient in driving change and strengthening engagement between employees and leaders. Viva Engage and Ask Me Anything events are extremely valuable in helping us foster trust, encourage authenticity, and listen to our employees at scale.”

John Cirone, senior director of global employee and executive communications

Building trust to change our culture

When Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO in 2014, he shifted our company culture from being siloed and internally competitive to more open, agile, and collaborative. This has led to a lot of change over the last decade, a shift that has been compounded by the AI revolution.

That’s why Cirone and other senior leaders have identified building trust and facilitating two-way communication at Microsoft as linchpin goals of our internal comms strategy.

“Trust has proven to be this magical, key ingredient in driving change and strengthening engagement between employees and leaders,” Cirone says. “This dynamic has only increased in recent years, as studies show that trust is declining across the board in society and within companies worldwide. Viva Engage and Ask Me Anything events are extremely valuable in helping us foster trust, encourage authenticity, and listen to our employees at scale.”

That’s why we’ve diversified our internal comms strategy, going from an approach centered on one-way communication channels (like email) to one that incorporates two-way tools like Viva Engage, a platform that allows employees to express themselves, connect with others, and build community across the company. It also enables our leaders to communicate at the scale of the enterprise with incredible reach.

Nadella himself uses Viva Engage to communicate regularly with the entire organization, posting about twice a month and covering everything from major company news and strategic shifts to more fun, practical content. A recent post by Nadella with ideas for prompts to use in Microsoft 365 Copilot generated more than 2,200 employee reactions. (Viva Engage also allows communicators to easily access detailed analytics, which make it simple to track messaging impact.)

Similarly, holding regular AMAs and Town Hall events with Microsoft leadership in recent years has been a big part of building trust and keeping the company informed and engaged.

“An AMA event is all about trying to address the questions that are most on our employees’ minds,” Cirone says. “It’s a chance for our leaders to demonstrate listening and responding at scale, by tackling key topics in a timely manner. I see it as part of our overall company belief in the importance of listening and commitment to two-way dialogue.”

“One of the most important shifts in our strategy for Viva Engage is the deep integration of the community experience into Teams. It’s not just a technical integration—it’s a fundamental change in how leaders and employees connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build trust in the flow of work.”

Jason Mayans, vice president of product management and analytics, Viva Engage

Reaching employees in the flow of work

Another powerful aspect of Viva Engage is that it works seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams, allowing communicators and admins to reach employees where they spend most of their time working.  

“One of the most important shifts in our strategy for Viva Engage is the deep integration of the community experience into Teams,” says Jason Mayans, vice president of product management and analytics for the Viva Engage product group. “It’s not just a technical integration—it’s a fundamental change in how leaders and employees connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build trust in the flow of work.”

Evolving communication with Viva Engage

This is a huge step, because so many of our employees use Teams as their main communications hub. Viva Engage community content and conversations can now be brought directly into their daily work experience, side by side with their other chats and channels.

For communicators, this means they can create one announcement and send it out across Outlook, Teams, and Viva Engage (or whichever subset of channels they prefer). Then, they can use the AI-powered analytics provided by the software to monitor engagement at different levels.

“In the analytics tool you can see the types of engagements that your people are having, and through what interface—Viva Engage for the web, Teams, and Outlook,” Mayans says. “You can see how they’re interacting. You can monitor sentiment and theming to give you deeper insight into what people are talking about. You can see a summary view, or you can drill down to see analytics on individual conversations. It’s incredibly powerful.”

Engaging employees through major campaigns

This year marked Microsoft’s 50^th anniversary, and our internal communications team wanted to honor the occasion by building both awareness and engagement across the company. So, they developed a “50 Change-Making Moments” countdown campaign to highlight major company milestones over the years.

Viva Engage was an integral part of this effort, providing a central platform for storytelling across the company, allowing both leaders and employees to share their reflections.

The results spoke for themselves.

“Over the course of several months, the campaign ended up reaching almost the entire company and had an 89% net positivity rating,” Cirone says. “The leaders’ posts sparked employees to share their own memories, which generated super-strong engagement and a great lead-up to the all-company anniversary celebration.”

Another major campaign we do every year at Microsoft centers around our Employee Giving Program, which began more than four decades ago and has been a long, sustained success story. Over the history of the program, Microsoft and its employees have contributed more than $3.4 billion to support charitable causes.

“We leveraged Viva Engage to help promote the Giving Campaign across the company, which produced a ton of enthusiasm. Leaders and employees could post about their favorite nonprofit causes, and we were able to highlight some great stories about how the campaign is making a difference in the world.”

Amy Morris, director of global employee and executive communications and employer brand

As part of this campaign, Microsoft matches every dollar our employees give to eligible nonprofits. When employees volunteer their time for an approved cause, the company also donates $25 per volunteer hour to the nonprofit.

Since giving is such a significant part of our company culture, we’ve used Viva Engage extensively for the past two years to help employees rally around the annual campaign.

“We leveraged Viva Engage to help promote the Giving Campaign across the company, which produced a ton of enthusiasm,” says Amy Morris, director of global employee and executive communications and employer brand. “Leaders and employees could post about their favorite nonprofit causes, and we were able to highlight some great stories about how the campaign is making a difference in the world.”

Balancing dialogue with respect and accountability

The growth of two-way internal employee communications in Viva Engage has built trust and increased engagement, but it’s also driven the need for more robust communications governance. We’ve had to implement comprehensive safeguards that ensure digital safety, respect, and accountability on Viva Engage.

Our employees have strong opinions on topics ranging from cafeteria menus to the latest political news. Our goal is to ensure that sensitive conversations stay in places where those who wish to participate can opt into them, rather than spilling out into the company at large.

“You have to balance the risks and rewards of creating this open, transparent space for employees to communicate,” Morris says. “We’ve learned quite a bit in the last couple years, and we’ve developed systems for monitoring employee sentiment on different hot-button issues and moderating content on Viva Engage.”

Making sure the right governance protocols are in place allows us to listen to our employees while protecting their colleagues and the company as a whole.

“We want a corporate communication space that is vibrant, yet remains respectful and safe. The goal is balance. That’s why we’ve partnered across IT and other teams at Microsoft to establish the right protocols and tools that help us maintain digital safety companywide.” 

Ife Kolawole, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

Ife Kolawole is a senior product manager for Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. One aspect of his work centers around driving the development and improvement of content moderation tools for Viva Engage, which are a crucial part of creating a safe and supportive environment at Microsoft.

“We want a corporate communication space that is vibrant, yet remains respectful and safe,” Kolawole says. “The goal is balance. That’s why we’ve partnered across IT and other teams at Microsoft to establish the right protocols and tools that help us maintain digital safety companywide.” 

With nearly 5,000 different Viva Engage communities across the company, moderators need help identifying sensitive posts in a timely way. Kolawole, who also serves as a moderator for the platform, appreciates the power of AI in helping him do that work proactively at scale.

“Viva Engage features an AI-powered moderation tool that intelligently detects sensitive themes and keywords before a potentially problematic post can gain traction,” he says. “It helps us preserve respectful, productive dialogue at scale and fosters a trusted collaboration and communication space.”

Communicating for meaningful change

Internal communications is a huge part of what we do at Microsoft—and it’s not something masterminded by just a few people at our corporate headquarters. That’s why Cirone and Morris lead Global Employee & Executive Communications (GEEC), a community of more than 1,000 communications professionals scattered throughout our global operations.

The GEEC organization works collaboratively to align messaging, elevate executive voices, and build trust across the company. Its members are constantly deploying new tools—like Viva Engage and Microsoft 365 Copilot—and strategies that increase engagement and strengthen Microsoft’s company culture through communications.

“Our goal is never to just adopt a new IT tool—our goal is to change the company,” Cirone says. “We don’t do internal comms for the heck of it. We do it to create dialogue, to listen, to inform, and to drive cultural change for the entire organization, so that our employees can to do their best work.”