Employee engagement surveys and people analytics platform
Glint (now part of LinkedIn) delivers powerful engagement insights backed by exceptional benchmarking data. Its AI-driven action recommendations help managers actually act on survey results.
Engage and Perform modules. Annual billing required.
Microsoft Viva Glint (formerly LinkedIn Glint) is an enterprise employee engagement and feedback platform built on the original Glint people science methodology and now integrated into Microsoft’s Viva employee experience suite. Glint was founded in 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area, acquired by LinkedIn in 2018 for approximately $400 million, and subsequently folded into Microsoft Viva as LinkedIn became part of Microsoft’s enterprise software ecosystem. The platform provides employee listening through pulse surveys, lifecycle surveys, and 360 feedback, with analytics designed to surface actionable insights for managers and HR leaders rather than just aggregate scores for executive reporting.
Pricing: Part of Microsoft Viva suite | Custom enterprise pricing | Included in some Microsoft 365 enterprise plans | Demo available
Viva Glint addresses a specific challenge in enterprise employee listening: translating engagement survey data into action at the manager level rather than keeping it as executive-only HR analytics. Traditional engagement survey programmes collect organisation-wide data and present aggregate results to HR and leadership. The critical insight gap is at the manager level: frontline and middle managers are the primary drivers of team engagement, but they rarely have direct access to the data that tells them what’s working and what isn’t on their teams.
Glint was built with a manager-first design philosophy: survey results are surfaced to managers with context, benchmarks, and specific recommended actions, not just to HR administrators. Managers receive their team’s results with comparisons to their organisation’s average and external benchmarks, suggested conversation guides for discussing results with their teams, and action planning tools to commit to specific improvements. This manager empowerment model — treating engagement data as a management tool rather than an HR audit — was Glint’s founding differentiation and remains central to the Viva Glint product.
The Microsoft Viva integration adds capabilities that standalone Glint lacked: connections to Microsoft 365 data for passive listening (communication and collaboration patterns from Teams, Outlook, and Viva Insights), integration with LinkedIn Learning for targeted skill development based on engagement gaps, and a unified employee experience platform that connects feedback, learning, knowledge sharing, and connections in a single M365 surface. For organisations deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, Viva Glint is more compelling than it was as a standalone LinkedIn product.
The limited review volume across public platforms is typical of enterprise platforms sold through Microsoft enterprise agreements rather than SMB self-serve purchasing. The reviews that exist are strongly positive, particularly around ease of use and real-time analytics. The primary concern expressed in reviews is the confidentiality-but-not-anonymity approach, which requires clear communication to employees about how their data is handled.
Viva Glint’s survey capabilities cover the full employee listening spectrum. Pulse surveys run on configured cadences (weekly, monthly, quarterly) with short, focused question sets that measure engagement and key drivers without survey fatigue. Lifecycle surveys trigger automatically at defined employee milestones: new hire (day 1, 30 days, 90 days), manager change, promotion, role transition, and exit. The lifecycle survey automation means listening happens at the moments that most affect the employee experience without requiring HR to manually initiate each survey. Survey questions are built on Glint’s validated item library; custom questions can be added for organisation-specific topics.
The manager-facing experience is Viva Glint’s most distinctive design choice. When a survey cycle closes, managers receive a notification in Teams and can access their team’s results immediately. The manager dashboard shows engagement scores, top strengths, and areas for improvement for their team, with comparisons to their organisation’s average and external benchmarks. The ACT framework guides managers through Acknowledging results with their team, Collaborating to identify what to focus on, and Taking Action on specific improvements. Conversation starters, team discussion guides, and action plan templates are provided within the dashboard to reduce manager anxiety about what to do with the data.
HR administrators and leaders access organisation-wide engagement analytics with heatmaps that show engagement patterns across teams, departments, locations, and demographic groups. Statistical significance filters prevent drawing conclusions from small sample sizes. Trend analysis shows how engagement has changed across survey cycles. Driver analysis identifies which engagement factors (management quality, growth opportunities, recognition, belonging) have the strongest correlation with overall engagement and retention risk in the specific organisation. The driver analysis is more sophisticated than simple score reporting — it guides HR leaders toward the interventions most likely to improve engagement outcomes in their specific context.
Viva Glint’s integration with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem creates capabilities unavailable in standalone engagement platforms. Survey invitations and completion notifications appear in Teams alongside work messages. Results are accessible from within Teams without switching to a separate application. Viva Insights integration allows passive listening data (collaboration patterns, meeting load, after-hours work) to be contextualised alongside survey data — an HR leader can correlate high workload indicators from Viva Insights with lower engagement scores from Viva Glint to identify teams at burnout risk. LinkedIn Learning integration connects engagement gaps to specific learning recommendations; if a team scores low on growth opportunities, managers can see relevant LinkedIn Learning courses to recommend.
Viva Glint includes 360-degree feedback capabilities for managers and individual contributors. 360 surveys collect structured feedback from peers, direct reports, and managers, with analytics that show how self-perceptions compare to others’ perceptions across competency dimensions. The 360 capability is integrated with the broader engagement data model, allowing HR to see correlations between 360 feedback themes and team engagement outcomes. This is less deep than standalone 360 platforms like Qualtrics 360XM but sufficient for organisations wanting integrated feedback management in a single platform.
The design principle that managers — not just HR — should receive and act on engagement data remains Viva Glint’s most important differentiator. The manager experience is built for managers who are not HR professionals: clear, jargon-free language; specific recommended actions rather than data dumps; team discussion guides that make it easy to have transparent conversations about results without manager discomfort. Research consistently shows that manager effectiveness is the strongest driver of team engagement, and Viva Glint is the engagement platform most deliberately designed around empowering managers to improve it.
The combination of survey-based listening (Viva Glint) and passive signal-based listening (Viva Insights collaboration analytics) creates a more complete picture of the employee experience than either provides alone. An employee might report high engagement in a survey while exhibiting high after-hours work and declining meeting participation — early signals of burnout that survey data alone wouldn’t surface. This multi-signal approach to employee listening is unique to the Microsoft Viva suite and represents a genuine capability advantage over standalone engagement platforms for organisations willing to use it.
Viva Glint is consistently rated as easy to use by both employees completing surveys and managers reviewing results. Survey completion is frictionless — short surveys with simple rating scales and optional open-text comments. The manager dashboard is designed for accessibility; managers who are uncomfortable with data can navigate their team results through the guided ACT framework without confronting raw analytics. HR administrators manage survey programs through a configuration-heavy admin interface that is powerful but requires more time to master. The M365 integration means employees and managers encounter the platform in familiar environments (Teams, Outlook) rather than a separate HR tool.
Viva Glint implementations for enterprise organisations typically take 6–12 weeks from contract to first survey launch. The process includes HR Information System integration for organisational hierarchy data, survey program configuration, manager communication preparation, and employee communication. M365 integration setup requires IT involvement for Teams app installation and Viva Insights connectivity. Microsoft partners and Viva implementation specialists support the implementation. The most complex implementations involve large, multi-national organisations with complex organisational hierarchies and multiple survey programs running simultaneously.
As a Microsoft enterprise product, Viva Glint support operates through Microsoft’s enterprise support model: dedicated Customer Success Managers for enterprise accounts, Microsoft support tickets, and the Microsoft partner network. Former standalone Glint customers noted changes in support model after the Microsoft acquisition. Microsoft’s enterprise support infrastructure is substantial, but the human relationship quality of support (particularly the people science consulting that was available through the standalone Glint model) has changed as the product scaled within a large enterprise software company.
Viva Glint pricing is part of Microsoft Viva’s suite pricing and requires a custom enterprise quote. The platform is available through:
Pricing is not publicly disclosed. Enterprise contracts are typically annual, per-seat, and negotiated through Microsoft enterprise sales or Microsoft partner channels. For organisations already on Microsoft 365 E5, the incremental cost of adding Viva Glint may be lower than a standalone engagement platform like Culture Amp or Qualtrics.
Culture Amp is the leading standalone employee engagement and performance platform and is the most direct competitor to Viva Glint for enterprise organisations. Culture Amp has more review depth (hundreds of verified reviews vs. Viva Glint’s limited volume), a broader market presence outside the Microsoft ecosystem, and stronger qualitative feedback analysis capabilities. Viva Glint wins for organisations where M365 integration, Teams-native delivery, and the passive listening combination with Viva Insights are priorities. Culture Amp wins for organisations wanting the best standalone engagement platform regardless of HR tech ecosystem.
Workday Peakon is the engagement platform built into Workday’s HCM suite. For organisations running Workday for HR, Peakon provides native integration with HRIS data and a similar manager-empowerment philosophy to Glint. The Glint vs. Peakon choice often tracks the Microsoft vs. Workday ecosystem choice: organisations on Workday tend toward Peakon, organisations on M365 tend toward Viva Glint. Both have strong people science methodologies and manager-focused analytics.
Qualtrics EmployeeXM is the most sophisticated engagement and experience management platform available, with advanced text analytics, complex survey design capabilities, and deep integration with broader experience management programmes. Qualtrics wins for organisations wanting research-grade survey methodology and advanced qualitative analysis. Viva Glint wins for organisations in the M365 ecosystem that prioritise manager empowerment and platform integration over maximum analytical depth. Qualtrics is typically more expensive and more complex to implement and operate.
LinkedIn Glint was the original standalone product acquired by LinkedIn in 2018. Microsoft Viva Glint is the rebranded, integrated version that became part of Microsoft’s Viva employee experience suite after Microsoft acquired LinkedIn. The underlying Glint people science methodology and manager-facing analytics are largely preserved, with added Microsoft 365 integrations, Teams delivery, and Viva Insights connectivity. Current customers purchase Viva Glint through Microsoft’s enterprise licensing model rather than the original standalone Glint model.
Viva Glint surveys are confidential but not fully anonymous. Survey responses are linked to individual employees in the platform’s data model to enable demographic segmentation and driver analysis — without individual linkage, population-level analytics would be severely limited. However, individual responses are not surfaced in reports; managers and HR see only aggregated scores for teams meeting a minimum respondent threshold (typically 5 people). Microsoft publishes detailed documentation on the confidentiality model and data handling.
Viva Glint integrates with Teams to deliver survey invitations and completion reminders directly in the Teams interface, making surveys accessible within the flow of work without requiring employees to navigate to a separate HR platform. Managers can access their team engagement dashboard from within Teams. The Viva Glint app for Teams can be installed through the Microsoft admin centre and pinned to employees’ Teams interface.
Microsoft Viva Glint pricing is not publicly disclosed and is negotiated through Microsoft enterprise licensing. It is available as part of the Microsoft Viva Suite, as part of specific Microsoft 365 plans, or as a standalone Viva Glint license through Microsoft enterprise agreements. Contact Microsoft or a Microsoft partner for pricing.
Microsoft Viva Glint is a strong enterprise employee engagement platform for organisations already embedded in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The manager empowerment design philosophy — building engagement data as a tool for frontline managers rather than an HR audit metric — remains one of the most compelling approaches to acting on engagement data in the market. The integration with Teams, Viva Insights, and LinkedIn Learning creates genuine additional value that standalone platforms can’t replicate for M365 organisations.
For organisations not on Microsoft 365, or those wanting the deepest standalone engagement analytics, Culture Amp or Qualtrics EmployeeXM are better fits. For Workday-centric organisations, Workday Peakon provides tighter HCM integration. The confidentiality-not-anonymity model requires transparent communication to employees. But for the right organisation — large enterprise, M365-embedded, focused on manager-driven action — Viva Glint delivers a well-designed, research-backed approach to employee listening that justifies the investment.