When you get distracted from work, it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully recover the focus you had before. And while Michael Scott was right, people do actually work faster after their work has been interrupted, those interrupted people develop a way of working faster by doing less to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being distracted. This leads to workers feeling the weight of a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and more effort required to work. 

Deep dive: The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress

TL;DR – Distracted people are really bad for your team, so help your team remain focused through simple strategies like filtering their @ mentions!

It may not seem like the most noteworthy news story of the century, but for almost a quarter of the American workforce, the idea of going back to a full 9-to-5 in an office five days a week isn’t just horrifying, it’s downright impossible for some.  

To keep tabs on what others are saying about the topic, here are some of our favorite recent articles for you:  

Insights from our global hybrid work survey | Google Workspace 

Key Takeaways:

1. Top tech concerns for hybrid workers include: 
   1. unreliable internet access  
   2. reliance on slow or outdated tools 
   3. accessing and maintaining files in multiple places 
   4. relying on too many applications in order to get work done 
2. Hybrid work doesn’t need tons of apps and collaboration surfaces, but it needs those apps and surfaces to create deeper, more meaningful connections. 

How the office space is changing to suit hybrid working | AV Magazine 

1. The global pandemic is refocusing the discussion on how employees can best work and produce for their employers.
2. The idea of people traveling to work to sit together silently doing work they can accomplish just as easily from home has become incredibly old-fashioned in just 18 months.
3. Consider systems that are familiar across all meeting rooms and work seamlessly in parallel with your employee’s UC platform so your software quickly becomes familiar and intuitive.

10 tech predictions for 2022 | The Enterprisers Project 

Key Takeaways:

1. Jamshid Rezaei, CIO of Mitel, suggests we could see the accelerated adoption of hybrid cloud options. 
   1. Jamishid believes these options can deliver the ability for businesses to be agile and grow to support remote employees in completely new ways.
   2. This will enable companies to pivot more quickly as business demands evolve and change in an uncertain world.
2.  Jeff Ton, Strategic IT Advisor at InterVision, believes the market will continue to see new tools launched which add functionality to our day-to-day.
   1.  These tools could make communication and collaboration smoother and more efficient, enabling workers to connect well beyond basic collaboration. 

No matter which you’ve chosen, it’s very likely your team leverages some kind of software to stay organized, on-task and connected. And while there are many imitators, there are few options on the market as robust or useful as Microsoft Teams.  

Here are a few quick tips from our blog How to Get the Most Out of Microsoft Teams:  

1. Remember the Tech Tip from earlier? Filter activity by @ mentions!
   1. Why: Filtering your mentions focuses your feed to your specific tasks and notes.
   2. How: Click on Activity, then click the filter button and choose @mentions.
2. Not ready to respond just yet? Mark messages unread!
   1. Why: Give yourself time to circle back to important messages without leaving your coworkers “on read”. 
   2. How: In your message, click on the ellipses then in the pop-up window click “Mark as unread.” 
3. Heading out for a Dungeons and Dragons vacation? Utilize the /dnd feature!
   1. Why: Do Not Disturb, /dnd, stops the Teams noise and prevents pop-ups and other distractions.
   2. How: Type in “/dnd” (do not disturb) in the search box. To switch off, type in the command “/available.” 

For more details about how to best leverage Microsoft Teams for your office, check out the full blog here! 

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