Microsoft Viva Engage: The Complete Guide for UK Organisations

Microsoft Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) is Microsoft's enterprise social networking platform — a tool for building the communities, connections, and two-way dialogue that make employees feel genuinely part of the organisation they work for. It is included in Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 licences and integrates directly with Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Connections.

Why Employee Connection Matters

The business case for Viva Engage rests on engagement data organisations cannot afford to ignore. Gallup research shows that only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. Glint data shows that highly engaged employees are 12 times less likely to leave their organisation. And organisations with highly engaged employees report 23% greater profitability. Viva Engage is designed to shift those numbers by creating the communities, conversations, and leadership connections that drive genuine engagement — at scale, across the whole organisation.

ThinkShare's clients who have successfully deployed Viva Engage report measurable outcomes across four areas: a 21% increase in employee retention rates; a 20% higher satisfaction rate among employees within their workplace; a 40% increase in knowledge sharing across the organisation; and employees engaged through Viva Engage being 87% less likely to leave.

Key Features of Viva Engage

Viva Engage is built around communities — spaces where employees with shared interests, functions, or locations can connect, share knowledge, and support each other. Communities can be structured around departments (so Finance colleagues can share updates and resources), locations (so Edinburgh-based staff can discuss local events or travel disruption), interests (a Pawsome community for pet owners), or specific functions (a Managers community where leaders support each other with practical challenges).

Beyond communities, Viva Engage delivers features that drive specific engagement outcomes. Viva Answers surfaces all questions from across communities and uses AI to prevent duplication — ensuring the organisation builds a single searchable knowledge base rather than repeating the same conversations across different spaces. Storyline Announcements allow leaders to share important updates organisation-wide, creating a broadcast channel alongside the two-way community model. Crowdsource Ideas enables employees to generate innovative ideas through community interactions, transforming Viva Engage into a genuine innovation platform.

For organisations on the Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback licence, Leadership Corner provides direct communication between senior leaders and employees, fostering the transparency and psychological safety that high-engagement cultures are built on. Additional governance features allow administrators to set content usage policies, monitor and block specific keywords, enable user reporting of inappropriate content, and control file uploads and external network access.

ThinkShare's Viva Engage Rollouts

ThinkShare has delivered Viva Engage implementations for organisations including Elemis, TriVista, Foresters, and Edwin James. Our implementation covers a planning session to define community structure, governance framework, and adoption plan; initial community creation and seeding to demonstrate value from day one; a train-the-trainer session to equip community managers and champions with the skills to sustain engagement independently; and an ongoing governance framework to keep the platform professionally managed over time.

A ThinkShare Viva Engage implementation covers strategy, governance, community setup, and training. The Viva Engage licence is included in Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans at no additional cost, making this one of the most cost-effective employee engagement investments available to organisations already on Microsoft 365. To find out more, contact ThinkShare at hello@thinkshare.co.uk or book a meeting at thinkshare.co.uk/contact.