San Francisco, Feb 4 (IANS): Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a new employee experience platform called Viva designed to help people learn, grow and thrive, with new experiences that integrate with the productivity and collaboration capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.

The announcement comes as economic and social trends are driving huge changes in workforce engagement.

Amid the shift to an increasingly distributed and digital work environment, demand has grown for solutions that support corporate culture, knowledge discovery, on-the-job learning and employee well being.

"We have participated in the largest at-scale remote work experiment the world has seen, and it has had a dramatic impact on the employee experience," Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, said in a statement.

"Every organisation will require a unified employee experience from onboarding and collaboration to continuous learning and growth. Viva brings together everything an employee needs to be successful, from day one, in a single, integrated experience directly in Teams."

Analysts size the nascent Employee Experience Platforms (EXP) category at $300 billion in annual spend.

It spans what is today a fragmented market of services, infrastructure and hundreds of tools, many that go undiscovered and underutilised by employees at the companies that have invested in them.

"As the world of work changes, the next horizon of innovation will come from a focus on creativity, engagement and well being so organisations can build cultures of resilience and ingenuity," said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365.

"Our vision is to deliver a platform for the employee experience that helps organizations create a thriving culture with engaged employees and inspiring leaders."

Microsoft Viva builds on the power of Teams and Microsoft 365 to unify the employee experience across four key areas -- engagement, well being, learning and knowledge -- in an integrated experience.