Technically HR: Microsoft launches AI-powered skills tool in Viva

Microsoft announced on Tuesday new capabilities for its employee experience platform Viva. The new service, Skills in Viva, harnesses the power of AI to help companies address the skills gap and plan for tomorrow’s workforce.

Sunita Khatri, Microsoft’s senior director of product marketing for Viva, said AI is going to “fundamentally change the talent landscape,” and with it how companies handle the skills gap.

“[Skills in Viva] helps organizations understand these workforce skills gaps, and it delivers much more personalized, skills-based experiences and will power all sorts of new experiences directly in the Viva platform, as well as throughout Microsoft 365 experiences,” Khatri told HR Brew at the HR Tech conference in Las Vegas after the announcement.

Microsoft is betting on a transition from a job-based to a skills-based talent management model, where talent managers have the full picture of employees’ skills and companies are equipped with insights about the skills it needs for both the present and future, she said.

The AI in Skills in Viva works with existing tools—Microsoft Graph and LinkedIn Skills Graph—to help companies understand skills their employees may already have and to address workforce needs and even match them with learning experiences to grow and upskill them.

“When the two graphs [Microsoft and LinkedIn Skills] are able to…intelligently infer potentially what are your current skills and…what skills you should be learning, the employee then goes in and validates and confirms that,” she said. “That becomes the engine that starts to power new experiences directly in Viva.”

Zoom out. Navigating skills and planning a learning curriculum for individual contributors to grow professionally while meeting the current and future needs of the business can be a tough task.

“This has always been a big struggle for employees because employees have…historically wanted to learn and develop and grow their careers, but often have struggled to find the right type of skilling and reskilling in the flow of work,” Khatri said.

With AI tools like Skills in Viva, L&D roles may be among the most impacted and transformed by HR tech, according to a Mercer report. These suites can help direct employees to individualized learning paths to grow their career and help employers meet the moment.