My Thoughts on Viva Goals Retirement

Last week, Microsoft announced that Viva Goals will be retired on December 31, 2025. No new features will be added, and only maintenance will continue for existing customers.

A bird on a stick by Balint Mendlik on Unsplash

This decision significantly affects companies using Viva Goals. Setting it up and training employees on the OKR model likely required a lot of effort and time.

Keep reading to learn more about the impact on businesses and the Viva suite.

What is Viva Goals?

Viva Goals is part of the Microsoft Viva suite. It helps align employees with company goals to improve business results.

It uses the OKR framework, making it easy to set objectives and key results. These objectives can be created at the company, department, or product level.

Viva Goals also tracks progress for each objective, showing how close or far the company is from achieving its goals.

What is the Impact of Viva Goals Retirement?

Implementing a tool like Viva Goals requires significant effort. This includes costs, time spent learning to manage it, and training employees to use it effectively.

Let’s consider a company with 1,000 employees:

• The Viva Suite license costs $12 per user/month, totaling $144,000 per year.

• IT staff (5 people) spent 1 week learning how to administer Viva Goals.

• Business staff (10 people) spent 2 weeks learning the OKR framework, configuring objectives, and tracking key results.

• Employees (1,000 people) spent an average of 8 hours learning to use Viva Goals.

• The company likely created a group of Viva Goals champions (5 people) who spent 20 hours per month helping colleagues and creating materials.

Now, with Viva Goals retiring, the company may save $144,000 per year but will face similar costs and time investment when adopting a new tool. The IT team, business staff, employees, and champions will need to spend thousands of hours learning and adjusting to the new system—over 10,000 hours altogether.

While this may seem like bad news, there’s a silver lining. The OKR framework is already part of the company culture. Employees know how to apply it in their work, opening opportunities to explore new ways to drive business results.

What is the Impact on the Microsoft Viva Suite?

Viva Goals is a key solution in the Microsoft Viva suite. It focuses on helping companies drive and measure business results.

Along with Viva Insights, Viva Goals has been one of the most impactful tools in the workplace. Its integration with Microsoft Teams made it a strong choice for companies aligned with the Teams ecosystem.

However, the retirement of Viva Goals follows that of Viva Topics, another valuable tool. Viva Topics aimed to enhance document management but was quickly overshadowed by the rise of generative AI, leading to its removal from the market.

The remaining Viva products have struggled to achieve a significant impact. While they are good tools, they lack a strong fit with current market needs.

This creates a growing perception that the Microsoft Viva suite may not be worth the investment for improving the employee experience.

Could Microsoft Be Working on Another Product?

I believe so. Microsoft has put significant effort into creating great products like Viva Goals. It offered an effective way to manage company goals, fully integrated into Microsoft Teams, keeping all employees aligned with the company’s purpose.

With the experience gained and lessons learned, it’s likely Microsoft is working on something new. They understand what companies need and could be refining a solution before releasing it.

Imagine Microsoft launching a product that addresses challenges few other tools can solve. I’m confident we’ll see something new and even more impactful announced in the coming year.

What do you think about the retirement of Viva Goals? Has your company used it, or were you considering implementing it? How do you see the future of employee experience tools in the workplace?

I’d love to hear your experiences and opinions. Share your thoughts in the comments or let me know how your company is adapting to these changes. Don’t forget to share this post with others who might be impacted by Viva Goals’ retirement!

References

• Viva Goals retirement: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/goals/goals-retirement

• Introduction to Microsoft Viva Goals: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/goals/intro-to-ms-viva-goals

• Microsoft Viva: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/

• Microsoft Viva plans and pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/pricing

• A bird on a stick by Balint Mendlik on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-bird-on-a-stick-4-ORHffEh3I