Today (February 4), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled Microsoft Viva, a suite of tools aimed at making telecommuting more seamless

Nadella began his presentation by noting that the Covid-19 craze has completely changed remote work Then, for those who are fed up with the current situation, Nadella had some bad news

Now Nadella wasn't referring to the idea of working in an office, but that the past year has changed the way we work forever Microsoft's Viva is the company's answer to making work better under this socially distributed norm Today's presentation focuses on four Viva modules, rolled out in phases

Keen-eyed users will recognize Viva in Teams, but it's not too hard to dig in, as it will also have its own mobile app

Viva aims to improve the way people collaborate outside of meetings by providing users with more enterprise integrations; in Viva's presentation, the Connections module was presented as a dashboard of everything going on in the company This feels like it could provide a way for people to feel more connected when we are all working away from each other

Examples on the Connections page collect internal news, local weather, data on expenses, tasks, and even Covid checks that need to be done before coming to work Connections is designed for executive and entry-level employees, who have different needs, Connections can also be customized based on an employee's position within the company

Connections will be available for public preview in early 2021, with its own mobile app to be released later this year

When it comes to how telecommuting has muddied the work-life balance, Viva Insight may be the most needed across the board

This section begins with a home page focused on wellness and growth The sample screen provided shows the meditation app "Headspace," but this is just one of many apps that can be integrated into Viva

Whether you hit the "Start Meditating" button or go to the section on how to focus on projects or time with your boss, this section seems to offer ways to become more mindful about the way you work

There is also an interesting section called Virtual Commute This seems to be a simple checklist to help you properly end your day First, complete the day's work, reflect on the day, and then engage in a guided meditation These steps will help you close out the day and separate work from life

Insights also provide important data to help managers maintain morale This comes in the form of graphs that highlight how much the team works after hours, how often employees answer the phone after hours, etc

Insight also tracks collaboration among teams and how many meetings teams are tied up in One screen highlighted the statistic that "40% of managers" on this virtual team "spend the majority of their meeting time in double-booked meetings"

Viva then offers advice on how to lower these numbers Viva treats this data anonymously for the privacy of its employees

This all sounds like it relies on employees using only company devices for work and always working within the Microsoft application ecosystem Given that employees may use personally owned devices, this may not be the complete picture for managers Of course, that's a whole "different story" since using personal devices does not help maintain work-life balance

Viva Insight is currently available in public preview

Training new employees and helping existing employees upgrade their skills is definitely more difficult now that they are often not in close proximity to each other Learning Modules exist for this purpose, providing a sort of living employee guidebook

There, you can host a large amount of learning materials, including internal videos and documents, as well as informational commentary from LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, edX, and other sources You will not be able to watch the Learning videos all the way through You can bookmark the current state and come back to it later

Viva Learning is currently available in private preview

We all use project acronyms internally that new hires may not know This is where Viva's wiki-like "Topics" section comes in handy Hover over an important company term and you will see detailed information about that term Click on it to see a detailed explanation and to connect with others in the company who are familiar with the topic

Think of it as a cross between a wiki and a company directory

Viva Topics is available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 commercial plans

Life as a telecommuter is not perfect So it's good that Microsoft is providing tools to help employers address morale and the ever-changing work-life balance

Viva and Teams are enterprise products, so you can't get this yourself Nevertheless, there seems to be a lot we can learn from what Viva is trying to teach us about work and life

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft's competitors in this area (undoubtedly Google, Atlassian, and Salesforce, which owns Slack) react