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Working from home has been life-changing for some. Your people are able to be more flexible with their time during the day, fitting in time for school pick-ups and appointments where perhaps they couldn’t before.

And in return, it means that more work is being done in the evenings.

Microsoft recently did an internal survey on how working from home affects collaboration. It’s so they can make more improvements to Teams.

It found that there are two main spikes in productivity in a typical day:

• One before lunch
• One after lunch.

For a third of its workers, there was a third productivity spike, at around 10pm. That’s people replying to emails before bed.

Where employees have removed commuting time, their working time and availability has increased.

Within Microsoft, employees actually increased their working time by 46 minutes – or 13% each day – with a huge 28% increase in after-hours work.

And although it sounds like it could be good for business, it demonstrates just how blurred the lines between work and home life have become, post-pandemic.

Because this third peak of activity actually has the potential to cause a LOSS of productivity. Employees are feeling more pressured to respond to emails quickly, which increases their stress levels in the evenings, affecting morale and overall well-being.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said businesses need to place more emphasis on soft skills and good management practices so that employee well-being is taken care of properly.

He advises that business owners and managers set very clear expectations on after-hours work, so that employees don’t feel any undue pressure to always be available. One of these expectations should involve not feeling the need to respond to emails at the weekend, even if it’s from a manager.

Are you setting the right expectations for your people, and providing them with the tools they need to increase productivity without increasing their working hours?

Here’s a quick win you can personally drive. Instead of sending emails at night, schedule them to be sent the following morning.

When your team see the boss doing this, it could quickly become the accepted culture of the whole business. Give it a try.

The use of Microsoft Teams has just exploded in the last few years, and it now boasts 270 million people using it every month.

Of course, it was the right tool at the right time when we all rushed to working from home at the start of the pandemic. But the growth of Teams has continued, even if some believe the growth has slowed down a little recently.

Teams is so important to some businesses, that the owners and managers wonder how they ever managed without it. Teams gives us the ability to stay connected wherever we’re working, and to collaborate on projects with no fuss.

Because it’s part of the Microsoft 365 package, it’s the logical solution to keep a team working together in the hybrid work age.

One of the things that makes Teams so special is Microsoft’s commitment to constantly making improvements and adding features. They’re not just making the core features better. They’re helping all of us be more productive and less distracted.

Over the past few months we’ve seen new features such as a virtual whiteboard you can use to throw around ideas in a video meeting.

Also, new and improved chat features, such as pinning chats to the top. You can also filter messages more easily. And change your view to allow you to focus just on the task you’re working on.

There are always more new features in development to make the experience even better.

There are three new features being released soon that we’re excited about.

1. This feature feels like it should have been there from day one. When you rename a Teams channel, it will automatically change the name of corresponding SharePoint folder. Due later this month.
2. New Chat With Self feature will be released. This will allow you to send yourself notes, messages, files and images. How have we lived without this feature for so long?! We think this could be a real game changer. Due in June.
3. Upgrades to teams calls you make from your browser, rather than the Teams app making it. The new releases in June improve the experience with the same features as the app.

Of course, there are many other updates being released throughout the rest of the year. With Teams, there’s always an exciting new update on the way.

If you need any help setting up Teams so it’s customised to your business, get in touch.

Early on in the first lockdowns in 2020, did you ever sit at your computer and think “I really like working from home”?

Or were you the opposite; desperate to get back into a building and meet with other people like in the old days?

Whichever was the case – and whether you feel the same now – we’ve ended up with a mix of the two: Hybrid working. Some people are in the office. Some are at home. The days of having everyone together at the same time are gone. Maybe forever.

Which means that video calls are here to stay.

If you want to invest in your video call setup, here are three easy upgrades for you.

1. The first is about improving your picture quality. Many people use the built-in camera on their laptop, which is OK. Cheap webcams also do the job. However, if you’re spending a lot of your day on video calls, you can instantly make yourself look better with a decent camera. The simplest option is to use an old smartphone. The cameras in most modern phones are great. And it’s really easy to link them up to your computer using a free app, like Iruin. Alternatively you could invest in a 4K webcam for the ultimate professional look, but this can be pricey. Most people find that a 1080p Full HD resolution webcam is more than enough.
2. The second and the most important part of your video call - and the one most often neglected - the sound. Think about how well you can hear the other people on your calls, and how well they can hear you. Most video platforms allow you to do a test call to check your quality. If your computer’s built-in microphone isn’t up to the job, get a USB desk microphone. The other alternative is to buy a headset with a mic. If you work in a noisy environment, not only will people you call be able to hear you more clearly, but you’ll hear them better too.
3. Finally, think about your lighting. Even the best camera will struggle to make you look great with poor lighting. The very best solution is to use natural light. That means sitting facing a window while you are on calls. When that’s not practical you can give your lighting a boost with a ring light. This will give you even lighting all over your face. Again, this doesn’t have to be an expensive option. You can get great ring lights without spending a fortune. If you wanted full control over your lighting, consider two LED lights. These can be adjusted to light the whole scene. And with some, you can adjust the colour temperature of the lights to match the natural daylight coming through your window. That will give you a consistent look on each call, day and night.

Finally, here’s a thought. If you don’t want to have lots of accessories cluttering your desk, consider a webcam with built-in microphone AND ring light. What you lose in control you gain in convenience.

The best part about all of these solutions is you don’t have to be an expert to set them up.

You can get them all working with minimal technical knowledge and make your next video call look more professional.

Need specific recommendations on which accessories to buy? Get in touch.

Microsoft’s decided to retire and rework an AI tool that could not only recognise our facial features, but also identify our mood.

Azure Face is an emotion recognition tool. These are highly criticised by experts who believe they violate human rights.

Microsoft has just published the updated version of its Responsible AI Standard.

It wants AI to be a positive force in the world, and says it recognised Azure Face has the potential to be misused.

It seems like it’s not goodbye for good for the AI facial recognition technology though. Although the public won’t be able to access it, Microsoft sees the value of controlled access for specific needs, such as assistance for the visually impaired.

One thing that has been cut is the AI’s ability to recognise individuals based on their gender, age, hair, and even facial expression. The concern is that the feature could be used by cyber criminals to impersonate individuals and commit fraud.

On top of the Azure Face change, Microsoft’s also limiting which businesses can access its Custom Neural Voice service. This is a text to speech app that’s said to be very lifelike.

In other related news, it’s not the only new step that Microsoft is taking right now to help protect us from fraud and threats.

It’s also adding new features to its email service in Microsoft 365, that improve how something called Tenant Allow Block List works. Previously, this was a feature that allowed people to block contacts. If a blocked contact tried to email you, the email wouldn’t reach you. Now, Microsoft is previewing an additional control which also allows you to stop emails being sent to these blocked contacts, too.

It means the threat of being caught out by a phishing scam is reduced, giving you another layer of security as part and parcel of your Microsoft 365 subscription.

With phishing scams becoming increasingly more dangerous, it’s not a moment too soon in our view.

The feature should go into preview soon, and is expected to be available by the end of the month.

In the meantime, if you’re concerned about your business’s email security, get in touch.

When you’re browsing it can feel like you’re being bombarded with things other people want you to see. Not only do we have to click on permissions for cookies and tracking, but now a lot of websites ask for our permission to send us notifications.

And while many of these notifications are harmless – news updates, latest recipes, product releases – sometimes they can be outright spam.

It’s distracting, it’s making us less productive at work, and it’s just really annoying.

It’s called ‘notification spam’ and it’s becoming a problem. In fact, Google says it’s one of the top complaint reports from people using its Chrome browser.

So now the tech giant has decided to do more about it.

Back in October 2020, Google first acted on harmful notifications by exposing websites that misled people into giving permission. It created its own prompts to warn people the website may have malicious intent.

Now, Google intends to take things a step further if it feels the website is ‘abusive’ or ‘disruptive’. It’ll revoke a website’s permission to send notifications, and even block attempts to request permission.

Even if you’ve accidentally allowed a malicious site to send notifications, Chrome will be able to step in and block the alerts.

While it’s not yet clear how Google will define websites as ‘abusive’ or ‘disruptive’, it feels like a good move towards reducing the amount of spam we’re exposed to.

Google has explained that this new feature works to strengthen its ‘Developer Terms of Service’ that pledge not to use the company’s API to send any form of spam. It shouldn’t affect the majority of websites, but instead should go some way to keeping your Chrome notifications spam-free.

Development on Chrome’s notification spam block protection has only just started, so we don’t yet have a release date for the new feature.

As always, if you’d like any further advice on protecting yourself from spam and other productivity killers, get in touch.