With the holidays fast approaching, it’s time to review your final tasks and set yourself up for a real “out of office.” Viva Insights offers some great features to help you take a proactive approach to planning your time off.
Over the past year we’ve all experienced first-hand why it is difficult to disconnect from work.
- Blurred lines between home and work life with remote working
- Easier access to work-related content (e.g. Teams & Outlook on personal devices)
- People are working more and are at risk of getting burnt out (Work Trend Index)
Here are my top 5 recommendations on how to get organised and leave work notification-free for the holidays with Viva Insights.
1. Notify Team & Collaborators
Communication is key to ensure time away from the office is undisturbed. Advanced notification of your time off to your team helps plan your time and tie up any loose ends before signing off. Viva Insights can draft and compose an email to send to an automatically generated list of people you collaborate with most in your network.
2. Resolve Meetings
Cancel any meetings you’ve organised or previously accepted during your time off, so the organiser is aware that you won’t be able to attend the meeting. This helps to prevent any unnecessary meetings that would’ve otherwise gone ahead, allowing people more time back to focus.
3. Focus Time
It’s important to allow yourself time to focus on deep-work tasks that need to be completed before your time off. Using Focus Time to designate a portion of your day will give you uninterrupted time to finalise deep work and any follow-up requests to complete before your time off.
Top Tip
Using the Pomodoro timer ‘focus’ in the Clock app can add structure to this with scheduled breaks, a technique proven to help concentration and prevent distractions.
4. Virtual Commute
Not just for leading up to time off, but to help you promote healthy habits of disconnecting at the end of each workday, Virtual Commute can help to prevent becoming burnt out. Using recommendations for tasks to follow up with or add to your To-Do list before the end of the day, this feature relieves you from replaying your list of actions in your mind away from work. Why not take it one step further and get a Headspace session in afterwards?
5. Mobile Notifications – “Quiet Time”
Configuring your working week in the settings for Viva insights can make a difference in preventing unwanted notifications outside of your working hours. Notifications on your mobile device will be muted outside of your working hours to help keep you undisturbed from work-related content and alerts. This is most beneficial to those who cannot stand to see those notification numbers adding up on your app icon.
An Internal Communicator’s Guide to Microsoft Viva
For a more in-depth look at Viva Engage, Viva Connections, Viva Amplify and Viva Goals, including key features and real life use-cases, download our guide to Microsoft Viva especially for internal communicators.
