The workplace. This is where people spend most of their adult lives – in spaces where they interact with colleagues, attend meetings, manage deadlines and navigate personal and professional politics with varying degrees of deft precision. It is also where most people experience significant burnout as they struggle to find a work/life balance and to meet the increasingly challenging demands of business in the digital era.
The Microsoft 2023 Work Trend Index Report reflects these challenges and how people are struggling to find balance and wellness in the workplace. The report found that:
- 64% of employees don’t have enough time and energy to complete their work and they also struggle with innovative and strategic thinking. This is defined by Microsoft as ‘digital debt’ – the amount of time spent, or needed, to manage the sheer volume of emails, data, conversations and interactions that flow towards the employee every day. And this pace of work? It’s getting faster and more intense.
- 60% of leaders are concerned about this reduction in innovation – people are too busy trying to finish what’s on their plate to even consider thinking outside the proverbial box.
- 68% of people don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during the day and, even more alarming, the mount of time spent in Microsoft Teams meetings has increased threefold since February 2020.
- Then there are the stats around app usage – heavy email users spend nearly nine hours a week on email, meeting users nearly eight hours a week on meetings. Meetings are often unnecessary or inefficient and people struggle to find the information they need, to catch up if they join a meeting late, and often are uncertain of the final outcomes.
In short, people are tired, disrupted and stressed and every one of these factors contributes to less productivity and poorly organised workdays that make it even more complex and exhausting, creating a cycle of work wellness poverty that directly affects creativity, wellness and innovation.
Enter the right digital tools for the modern workplace dilemma
While the Microsoft survey isn’t telling the organisation good news, there are Microsoft solutions designed to shift these narratives and introduce fresh ways of working and connecting that promote employee wellbeing and productivity. One of these is Microsoft Viva.
This solution allows for your organisation to bring together communications, knowledge, learning, resources and insights to create a culture that empowers people and helps them to thrive. The solution is designed to fit within the modern workplace so employees can engage with one another and the business regardless of whether they work in the office, remotely or within a hybrid working framework.
Microsoft Viva is centered around four key pillars, addressing Learning, Connections, Insights and Topics, with the employee at the centre.
- Viva Connections allows for your organisation to implement a personalised communication experience that keeps employees informed, engaged and empowered.
- Viva Insights provides the business and employees with insights that help them to monitor and improve the effectiveness of meetings, prioritise productivity and take charge of their wellbeing, at a personal level, team or department level, as well as across the organisation.
- Viva Topics provides employees with access to an artificial intelligence (AI) interface that helps them to more easily search for information across topics, conversations and content.
- Finally, Viva Learning provides employees with accessible skills development tools that help them do more with their careers and within their roles.
Viva maximises the benefits of Microsoft and Mint helps you maximise the benefits of both. We can help you boost your employee experiences and overcome the hurdles affecting productivity, innovation and wellbeing with a seamless integration of this suite of tools within your organisation. Creating a positive employee experience is challenging, but it is achievable with the right technology and the right partner.