Microsoft has announced Microsoft Viva Goals, a new module for business goal setting and management, now available in private preview.

Powered by the acquisition of Ally.io, a leading objectives and key results (OKR) company, Viva Goals brings purpose and alignment to Viva customers—alongside culture and communications, wellbeing and engagement, growth and development, as well as knowledge and expertise.

The workplace has evolved significantly over the last two years as hybrid work becomes a reality and employees’ expectations shift toward their employee experience. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, 77 percent of employees said it’s important for their employer to provide a sense of purpose and meaning at work. Not only do employees want to feel more connected, more aligned to their company’s purpose and mission, they want to grow, make an impact, and make a difference. A clear, consistent business goal-setting process is the missing link between employee experience and business outcomes.

Introducing Viva Goals

Viva Goals aligns teams to the organization’s strategic priorities and unites them around the mission and purpose. It helps provide clarity on employees’ work and how that work makes an impact on the business’s most important priorities. With that alignment in place, teams then can focus on doing the work, making sound decisions, and driving the desired results for the business.

In addition, Viva Goals brings business goals into the flow of everyday work, making it easier to stay up to date with connected data and automated reminders as well as to share OKRs and their progress across the organization with customized dashboards and quick links. It integrates with Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, —and has more integrations to come with Microsoft Viva, Power BI, and other Microsoft 365 apps and services. With Viva Goals, OKRs no longer exist in a silo separate from the employee experience and where people work.

Viva Goals will be included with the current Microsoft Viva suite subscription when it becomes generally available later this year.

Business goals connecting employee experience and business outcomes

With clarity around organization-wide and team-wide goals, employees are empowered to think, collaborate, and act at the team and individual level, informed and aligned to the priorities and what others are working on. Thus, everyday work is moving the business forward in a more agile way. This connection and visibility to the bigger picture enables flexibility and purpose-driven work as employees can determine the best way to reach those goals.

It also encourages a culture of innovation and growth: according to an Ally.io survey, 73 percent of people who use a goal-setting framework like OKRs feel empowered to take risks at work (compared to 53 percent who do not)—and calculated risk leads to innovation.
OKRs for everyone

With Viva Goals, Microsoft seeks to empower teams to use OKRs at all levels. OKRs can help get everyone pulling in the same direction, but not when used only as top-down directives. OKRs can be incorporated as part of one-on-one meetings with managers, progress updates to stakeholders, or regular planning process to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what should change.