Starting later this month, we’re introducing new personal wellbeing experiences including a Headspace integration with Microsoft Viva Insights to empower people to balance the need to stay connected and informed with the need to disconnect and recharge. In the 2021 Work Trend Index - a study of over 31,000 people in 31 countries - over half of the respondents reported feeling overworked and over a third described themselves as outright exhausted. The research uncovered something crucial: employees want flexible remote work options to stay, but the digital overload associated with more remote work is challenging their wellbeing. To help address these challenges, we’re introducing updates to the Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams including a Headspace integration, a new focus mode, and quiet time settings.
Headspace meditations and mindfulness exercises
Weekly meeting time for Teams users has more than doubled since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back-to-back meetings increase stress and make it harder to stay engaged and focused. In just a few minutes a day, meditation and mindfulness with Headspace can help you reduce stress and improve focus. Starting later this month, we’re bringing a curated set of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises from Headspace to the Viva Insights app to help you start your day grounded, relax your mind before a big presentation, or disconnect from work in the evening.
Focus mode with Headspace music and timers
Back-to-back meetings not only increase our stress, but can also cause a rise in after-hours work to finish individual tasks. To help you protect time to work uninterrupted with Teams notifications silenced, Viva Insights offers the ability to schedule daily focus time. Building upon this, later this year, we are introducing a new focus mode in the Viva Insights app. This will feature Focus music from Headspace and implement timers to help you make progress on important tasks in regular intervals, with breaks planned in between.
Quiet time user and admin settings
Remote work has eliminated physical boundaries between work and life, and an increase in after-hours chats has led to a feeling of being always-on. To help create better boundaries and protect your personal time, later this year Viva Insights will offer the ability to configure quiet time to silence mobile notifications from Outlook and Teams outside your working hours as well as provide personalized insights on how well you are disconnecting. You will also be able to set quiet time directly from Teams and Outlook mobile.
Additionally, with new controls coming in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, IT administrators can create org-level policies to mute after-hours notifications. This will provide organizations a way to encourage their employees to disconnect and recharge during their personal time, as well as support compliance with regulations that limit use of work applications outside of working hours.
Learn more
- For more on Microsoft Viva, head over to aka.ms/Viva
- For more on getting started with the Viva Insights app in Teams, visit aka.ms/InsightsDocumentation
- Join our first Microsoft Viva Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) event on June 23, 2021, where members of the Viva team will be available to respond to questions.
- Join Kamal Janardhan, Product Management lead for Viva Insights and Jeremy Chapman, the host of Microsoft Mechanics, as they walk through the Viva Insights user experience and showcase steps for IT admins to configure access. Watch the full Microsoft Mechanics video series at aka.ms/VivaMechanics.
