Windows 11 outlook regularly hangs/freezes

I've had Parallels for years specifically for using Outlook for Windows, which is far superior to the Mac version. Despite the better features, my M1 MacBook with 16gb ram struggles to run it. It often hangs/freezes, especially when I do a search, but other times doing tasks as simple as opening emails. When this happens, I can't click anything, but after 5-30 seconds, I can use the app again. I even upgraded from 8gb of ram to 16gb to fix the problem, but it did nothing.

I have parallels automatically allocating my resources. Is an 8gb M1 not fast enough to run Windows as a virtual machine? Even Windows itself doesn't run speedily. Curious if anyone has feedback on how to make it snappier.