Work Happy sits at the heart of everything we do here at Silicon Reef. This is the vision that we work with our customers to achieve, and exists where our three focal points of Employee Engagement, Collaboration & Productivity, and Wellbeing come together. Deliver against these core themes for your employees by giving them the tools and structure to fulfil their personal and collective needs, implemented with sensitivity and focus on the individual, the team, and the community as a whole, and you will enable them to Work Happy.
Silicon Reef developed the concept of Work Happy back in 2019 and, since its inception, it has been underpinned by the extensive Microsoft 365 ecosystem of tools and platforms. Now, with the advent of Microsoft Viva and Microsoft’s Modern Collaboration Architecture (MOCA) model, the stars have aligned, and we are now able to articulate our unique vision with complete end-to-end support from Microsoft 365 (augmented by our own unique offering and expert services of course!).
It is all about your people
Similar to Microsoft’s MOCA approach, which adopts a #humanfirst approach, Silicon Reef’s human-centric Work Happy concept sits at the core of our offering. Our client solutions always start with the individual and their needs and looks at how they sit – working within the wider context of their business – at the centre of the digital culture.
With people at the core of how, when, and why we work, we need to be thoughtful about the enabling tools and processes we create. Get this right and we can create the balance between Employee Engagement, Collaboration & Productivity, and Wellbeing. This is particularly true in the new hybrid way of working, where we rely – more than ever – on technology and digital tools to connect and create a work life balance.
Take the newest addition to the Microsoft world, Viva, which aligns neatly to the Work Happy themes. Viva Connections and Topics sit comfortably with Yammer, Stream and Teams to support Collaboration and Productivity; Viva Learning underpins both Productivity and Employee Engagement with its access to training and knowledge; and Viva Insights, with its personal and management level view into behaviours and stress points, grounding Wellbeing in real data and expert recommendations.
MOCA takes this mapping even further looking at adoption on three levels: for individuals, for teams, and for the community. Again, how we drive adoption of the tools is key. Training is vital, as is addressing wider issues such as defining our digital cultural norms, and how we think about and manage digital wellbeing. For Silicon Reef customers, the concept of Work Happy – supported by Microsoft 365, Viva, and our own tools such as Ripple – is further enhanced by our service delivery and support offering, including Adoption and Change, and Identity and Security Management. These are the services that help answer the key questions for any business moving towards a Work Happy model. How is our digital workplace strategy encouraging individuals to focus and act on unproductive habits? How are we facilitating high quality connections within teams? How are we leveraging the tools that encourage learning and growth, to show we care and demonstrate trust in our employees?
Addressing questions like these elevates Work Happy beyond the digital tools, recognising that they are the foundations of how people connect, create, and make change happen.
And what impact can this have in your business? For the individual, when you are meeting their needs in a way that empowers them to do their best work – by enabling them to connect across boundaries, understand their own challenges and how to meet them, and have valuable interactions with leadership – you are building a positive resource within the individual themselves. This resource is their own feelings of hope, optimism, and resilience and it fuels both Productivity and Wellbeing. When you extend that support into how they can work within the team, your company processes and behaviours can reinforce the optimism and give employees a sense of psychological safety, belonging, and camaraderie. This is where teams are most creative.
In the context of your wider organisation, giving employees time to learn and grow, to connect to the company mission and values, and to understand their place in the whole unlocks commitment and dedication, resulting in employees that go above and beyond to do their best for you and your customers. Ultimately, Work Happy and MOCA agree, implementing a modern workplace platform with a clear focus on the individual, with a #humanfirst approach, and asking the big questions that define your end-to-end digital culture gives you far greater returns than the tools alone can deliver.
