New year, new rituals with Microsoft Viva Insights

[Guest SakshiB]

While the fresh slate of a new year may be a perfect time to take up something new, you can use Microsoft Viva Insights all year long to build work rituals. Viva Insights helps guide individuals and teams towards better work habits that improve productivity and wellbeing.

 

 

 

For the TLDR crowd,

highlighting the ways Viva Insights can help you or deep dive below to see how you can cultivate new positive rhythms in your workday.

 

 

 

Book focus time

 

Do you have a big project this year likely to demand large chunks of your time and focus? Maybe this is the year you build a new skillset and want to focus on learning and development. No matter what tops your list of priorities this year, it can be challenging to do deep work if you only have small amounts of time throughout your week to focus.

 

 

 

Viva Insights can help you  protect time for deep focused work days and weeks in advance before your calendar fills up with meetings. The focus plan in Viva Insights helps you block regular time for your top-priority work by scheduling up to four hours every day to focus. The plan also lets you configure your focus-plan settings to match your needs:

 

• You can select how much focus time you would like to schedule every day.
  
• You can silence or allow chat notifications from Microsoft Teams during focus time.
  
• You can create, configure, or end your focus plan at any time.
  

 

With a focus plan set up, you are off to a great start bringing in new rituals that support you through the workweek!

 

 

 

Send praise

 

All of us appreciate a heartfelt “thank you.” Taking a moment to acknowledge a work peer can be a quick, easy way to build morale and support strong working relationships.

 

 

 

Sending praise is easy using Microsoft Viva Insights. And just like booking ongoing focus time, Viva Insights can help you praise your colleagues regularly. Praise messages are shown as notifications in Microsoft Teams. You can have a praise message delivered in a private chat, or for wider recognition, in a Teams channel conversation. You can also set reminders to send praise regularly to your coworkers and view your praise history.

 

 

 

To get started with sending praise, simply go to the Viva Insights Home page, select the Send praise button on the Send praise to your colleagues card. And just like that another new ritual is established!

 

 

 

Create and respect boundaries

 

Start a virtual commute

 

Wherever you work, bring closure to your workday with Viva Insights’ virtual commute. Virtual commute helps you to close out tasks or set reminders for follow up, provide a preview for the next day, reflect, or help you unwind with a guided meditation. You can use the virtual commute feature in the Viva Insights app from either the Up-next card on the Viva Insights home page or within Protect time. With the virtual commute experience in Viva Insights, you can intentionally switch gears to life outside work!

 

 

 

Schedule send suggestions

 

With schedule send suggestions in Viva Insights, you can help minimize email disruptions to your colleagues outside their working hours or when they are away from work. Schedule send suggestions also help you maintain the flexibility to work when you want without putting the burden of your schedule on others. Suggestions appear when you are composing an email after hours in Microsoft Outlook to propose send times that align with your colleagues' working hours.

 

 

 

Whether you have a late-night spark of inspiration or have a flexible schedule that enables you to work different hours as compared to your colleagues, using schedule send suggestions is a useful tool to respect co-workers' schedules and ensure emails enter recipients' inbox based on their working hours.

 

 

 

Establish quiet time

 

To help create better boundaries between personal life and work life, Viva Insights offers quiet time settings. You can configure quiet time to silence mobile notifications from Outlook and Teams outside of your normal working hours.

 

 

 

Individuals can adjust their quiet time settings any time from Viva Insights or from Teams and Outlook mobile. Along with the virtual commute experience, quiet time creates a healthy ritual around mindfully disconnecting after-hours, helping to reduce potential burnout.

 

 

 

With new controls coming in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, IT administrators can create org-level policies to mute after-hours notifications. This will provide organizations with a way to encourage their employees to disconnect and recharge during their personal time, as well as support compliance with regulations limiting use of work applications outside of working hours.

 

 

 

Rituals tend to stick when you have a partner to practice with and to keep you motivated! Find a co-worker to join you in one or more new rituals you are considering adding to your work routine. Share your experiences on the Viva Insights Community.

 

 

 

Explore more ways to build better work habits with Microsoft Viva Insights.

 

 

 

Have a fantastic start to 2023!

 

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