With the recruitment market still playing hard ball, it’s never been more important for employers and managers to work on the culture of their business for the sake of staff retention.
Even before the pandemic, replacing staff was expensive, but now it’s expensive, extremely time consuming and sometimes almost impossible.
Companies who are in touch with employees expectations and needs will win out.
A recent Microsoft survey (2022 Work Trend Index) revealed that 53% of employees say they’re more likely to prioritse their health and well-being over work than before. On top of that 43% are somewhat or extremely likely to consider changing jobs in the coming year.
So what can be done? Luckily if you already use Microsoft 365 and Teams, you have a wealth of features at your disposal, that won’t cost you anything more.
Viva Insights is part of the Microsoft Teams app and has been designed exactly for the purpose of supporting work life balance and employee well-being.
Send Praise
Here at Bluegrass Group we’ve started using Viva Insights to send virtual praise to each other. It allows you to show your gratitude to your colleagues when they have gone above and beyond. It only takes a few clicks and can be sent privately to an individual or publicly on a group channel. As businesses now settle into their hybrid environments, virtual praise is just one of those ways we can all stay connected to each other and show our appreciation.
Reflect on your own feelings
Also within Viva Insights you can report on how you feel every day, by simply choosing your emotion from Very Good to Very Bad. After a few weeks you can start to see patterns emerge on what might be causing the bad days and how you can get to more of the good days. It’s just a quick private check in with yourself, which alone can start your thinking as to how to improve your mood.
Book focus time
Distractions have multiplied in recent times, with more online messaging apps, social media channels and now with lots of us back in the office, interruptions at your desk too. Viva Insights encourages you to book out focus time, where you shut down your apps and emails and become unavailable for small bursts of time. This really improves efficiency and productivity across your day.
Practice Mindfulness
Staff have access to a serious of mindfulness exercises within Viva Insights ranging from 3 to 10 minutes long. Encourage your staff to make use of these videos when they are feeling disengaged or at burn out.
Stay Connected
This features encourages you to collaborate with colleagues and offers suggestions on how to do this. For example it picks up on if you haven’t got a 121 in the diary with your line manager and suggests booking one. It highlights recent tasks you may have outstanding and allows you to pin colleagues who you need to connect to most.
Inspiration Library
The newest addition to Viva Insights is the Inspiration Library. This new features helps cultivate a culture where every individual can learn and share best practices that help support a healthy work life balance. Using content written by experts from Harvard Business Review, Thrive and Microsoft, it offers insight into how to navigate this changing world of work through culture, leadership and well being. It’s all research backed guidance and it’s accessible anytime, anywhere all within the Teams app.
If you haven’t checked out any of these features yet, I would really encourage you to do so and empower your staff to do the same too.
Employees who are enjoying a healthy work life balance will always be the most productive and happy of staff and this will reflect in your operations, customer service and profitability.
It really is win win.
If you’d like some help exploring what other features Microsoft 365 has to offer, get in touch today by starting a Live Chat on our website or calling 01392 796 779. Or email us at ask@bluegrass-group.com.
If you haven’t yet adopted Microsoft 365 but want to find out more, visit our product page.