An organization relies on groups of people that are not only teams but also groups based on functional areas and projects. Building a community is getting more and more important for modern organizations.

A community is usually defined as a group of people with common interests. What could be the foundation of such an interest?

• The need for employees to network within their team and with people from other teams and departments.
• Continuing communication beyond a class you attended, an event you participated in, a department you worked in, or an organization you were part of.
• Exchange of knowledge – gaining insights from experts and discussing hot topics with colleagues, including those from related fields.
• New employees acquiring informal knowledge about an organization, department, and their role.
• Employee communication based on shared interests: a community of mothers with multiple children or travel lovers, a community of photographers, etc.
• Quick change implementation in an organization also requires creating a community that supports and facilitates adaptation to change.

An organization itself can be considered as a community as well. In that case, we need to share corporate news, not through a one-sided communication channel as usually happens on portals and websites, but by having an opportunity to discuss the news and react to it.

It is also necessary for heads and CEOs of organizations to have a place to communicate with their employees directly, answer their questions, and collect pressing concerns to review them at a town hall meeting.

Corporate social media with a high-security level, compliance with legal requirements, and other regulating acts is a solution for providing communities within an organization with essential tools that meet the mentioned needs.

On corporate social media, it is usually possible to follow a person or a topic, search for an answer to a question, and exchange files.

In the architecture of Microsoft 365, Yammer (Viva Exchange) is dedicated to solving the problems of communities.

A diagram from the Modern Collaboration Architecture (MOCA) website is used in this article.
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