U.S. Bank invests in employee experience with Viva Connections in Microsoft Teams

At U.S. Bank, one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, it’s crucial that the company’s nearly 70,000 employees have trusted, advanced solutions to connect and communicate with one another. Today, collaboration software at the company has become synonymous with Microsoft Teams. “We’ve reached 96 percent active Teams usage across the company,” says Jason Johnson, Senior Vice President of Employee Collaboration and Productivity at U.S. Bank. “It’s our primary collaboration tool.” 

With the rapid and successful adoption of Teams in mind, Johnson and his colleagues sought to revamp the employee technology experience home site. They chose Microsoft Viva Connections in Teams as a one-stop shop for employees to learn more about the technology they use every day, including information on new products, best practices, and technology training. “We had 50,000 visits to Viva Connections in one month after adding it to the Teams platform, and those numbers are continuing to climb,” says Johnson. Not only has the reimagined employee experience platform helped boost visibility, but engagement has also improved. “Our people are staying on the site longer, reading more stories, and coming back more times throughout the month,” he adds. “Viva Connections has been really powerful.”

Reimagining an employee experience site with Viva Connections

For Sarah Haase, Principal Product Manager for Collaboration at U.S. Bank, helping employees make the most of the technology at their disposal is a priority. “We’re highly focused on communicating well, prioritizing training, and being open to feedback about how we can make technology easier for everyone,” she says. “That’s why we chose Viva Connections as our employee technology experience home within Teams.”

Before Viva Connections, U.S. Bank employees who were looking for information on technologies had to peruse individual product help sites or websites with news related to employee collaboration tools. “We approached Viva Connections with the idea to redesign and relaunch the employee technology experience home site in Teams,” Haase explains. The goal was for something more interactive, intuitive, and easy to navigate. “Before Viva Connections in Teams, we had about 30 different help sites, but now, we’ve consolidated them in one place and eliminated the need to bookmark individual sites,” says Haase, referring to how the Viva Connections site is easily navigable within Teams. “We’ve had a lot of great engagement in the months since we launched, and our users now have a simple, direct path to find the information they need,” she adds.

Additionally, those who visit the employee experience site in Viva Connections receive alerts about upcoming training sessions via promotional banners. “We do a lot of training events, and we use Viva Connections to show our people what’s coming up, how to sign up, and where to go to watch recordings of virtual conferences,” says Haase. The organization runs classes almost every day, and Viva Connections has become an important hub for training information. “By including Viva Connections in Teams, we’ve taken an omnichannel approach to training,” says Zephanie Hardy, Senior Vice President of Employee Technology Experience at U.S. Bank. “We’re on a journey to shape a culture of continual, tailored learning. Today, 33 percent of our employees attend optional training sessions.”

Bringing important news to the forefront to improve reach

In addition to training resources and product information, U.S. Bank’s employee technology experience home site features weekly articles, and Viva Connections is helping them reach more people. “When employees open the app, the first thing they see is a news carousel with the top five tech stories that are important to them,” says Haase. For the nearly 170 articles that get published every year, the employee technology experience team has tracked more than 41,000 views so far, a big boost in engagement when compared to previous employee technology help sites. “The number of people going to the home site, the average time they spend there, and the frequency with which they visit have all gone through the roof since launching Viva Connections,” says Haase. “That’s how we know it’s really catching on.”

Supporting new ways of working by putting information at employees’ fingertips

Helping employees easily find the technology information they need, or bringing them information they didn’t know they needed, is one way that U.S. Bank uses Viva Connections to support employees in the realm of hybrid work. “By far, the largest segment of our workforce is hybrid,” says Hardy. “It’s a new working model for us, and to address it, we’re doing a lot of work around consolidation and simplification to reduce distractions.”

The new home experience in Viva Connections is a perfect example—an ultra-simple digital space that helps people save time. Even something as small as bookmarking a product site and then navigating away from Teams can add up to significant amounts of lost time or interfere with workflows. “One of our main focuses is on reducing the number of interruptions that employees face in their workday,” says Hardy. “Viva Connections helps us do that.”

After successfully implementing Viva Connections in Teams, U.S. Bank recently launched a mobile version of the employee experience site. “We’re looking forward to reaching even more of our workforce—wherever they are—with employee technology news and information,” says Johnson. Like the site in Teams, the mobile version uses Viva Connections to bring together news, relevant Yammer posts, and links to training materials all in one place. “Viva Connections has provided us with a wonderful new vehicle for sharing information with employees,” Haase concludes. “We took what was successful about our previous employee technology home site and reimagined it for the hybrid workforce with Viva Connections. The engagement we’ve seen has been outstanding, and we’re excited to help even more U.S. Bank employees discover more about technology via the home site.”

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