How Microsoft Teams apps can help improve wellbeing at work

Summary:

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in digital solutions for health and wellness, and more organizations are now investing in technology to help improve the wellbeing of their workforce.¹ Microsoft Teams provides an ideal platform for deploying wellbeing apps to connect with users because the solutions exist alongside the rest of their collaborative tools, right in the flow of work.

Let’s discuss how Teams apps from Thrive Global, Gauge.it, FlourishDx, Limeade, and Breakthru are enabling wellbeing for employees and organizations alike.

Thrive Global helps build healthy habits with Microsteps

Burnout has become increasingly common, and Thrive Global offers a platform to diagnose and counteract it by reinforcing positive behavior changes in the flow of work. Thrive meets users where they are—right in Teams—with Microsteps, which are daily actions people can take to improve their habits. The app also includes tools like Reset, which helps people reduce stress in 60 seconds, and Daily Check-In, which prompts a moment of reflection and recommends personalized content.

When Pfizer, a global leader in the biopharmaceutical industry, identified employee wellness as a top priority, the company chose Thrive Global for Teams to support its workforce. With the help of these tools, Pfizer saw improvements in colleague wellbeing within the first year of deployment, including an 18 percent increase in productivity, a 15 percent increase in resilience, and a 16 percent higher colleague satisfaction rate.²

Gauge.it captures essential insights into team morale

Cloud Clover IT is a consulting firm headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, that provides managed service, digital transformation, software development, and IT consultancy. The workforce was primarily office-based, but Cloud Cover IT quickly transitioned to hybrid and remote working by necessity in early 2020. During this period, the company found it was becoming increasingly challenging to effectively support employee wellbeing and looked for a solution.

To address this challenge, Cloud Cover IT developed an app, Gauge.it, which was built exclusively for Microsoft Teams. It’s an easy-to-use solution that allows team members to send feedback anonymously to managers and team leaders, creating a safe platform to share and be heard.

Team members receive daily prompts for feedback to which they simply select the emoji that best fits their morale for the day, adding a more detailed written message if desired. Users can also submit Instant Feedback throughout the day to provide notable updates. All feedback is shared with the team owner, who can explore and interpret the data using their Gauge.it Dashboard.

Using Gauge.it with Teams enables organizations to easily recognize trends with morale, identify when teams are working under too much pressure, and create opportunities to help employees thrive.

FlourishDx promotes psychological health in the workplace

This leading psychological health and safety platform makes worker consultation on psychosocial hazards even more frictionless thanks to the launch of the all-new Microsoft Teams app.

FlourishDx for Teams provides a seamless experience for employees to access risk assessments, mental health eLearning, insight into character strengths, peer supporters for promoting and protecting mental wellbeing, and self-care resources. And it’s all available on the same Teams platform where they collaborate on other work tasks.

Combining FlourishDx’s expert psychologist consulting team with the app on Teams continues the company’s mission to enable organizations to build workplaces where people thrive and psychological harm is prevented.

Limeade Well-Being drives program participation and outcomes

Employees shouldn’t have to choose between work and wellbeing. With Limeade Well-Being for Microsoft Teams, they can engage with their Limeade wellbeing programs in the flow of work. The app delivers personalized wellbeing content, activities, and recommendations seamlessly in Teams, and it provides real-time personal insights with a dashboard that shows progress and incentive achievements.

The Limeade app also makes it easy to connect with colleagues through fun, robust challenges that inspire collaboration via invites, team chats, and peer-to-peer recognition. By integrating with Teams, wellbeing leaders can reach employees where they spend most of their workday, boosting program discovery, increasing registration and participation, and driving positive wellbeing outcomes.

Breakthru provides breaks for better productivity

Research proves your brain needs breaks,³ and when those “microbreaks” fit easily within the flow of the workday, they can provide a powerful enterprise-wide impact. To help organizations reap the benefits, the Breakthru app for Teams pairs research-backed, guided movement breaks of only two minutes with nature-inspired visuals and sounds. Powered by AI and spatial computing, every Breakthru session feels unique, with new content published monthly.

The app sends reminders to encourage employees to start a break-taking practice that can increase workplace engagement and counteract burnout. The breaks can help protect against the negative health effects of sedentary life for information workers, and they foster body awareness for frontline employees. Breakthru also offers the ability to share breaks and then participate with colleagues in Teams meetings, which can be an effective tool for high-stress, fast-paced jobs.

Not only can enterprises promote physical and mental wellbeing with Breakthru, the app also helps improve focus and productivity, and it all takes place in the flow of work in Teams chats, channels, and meetings.

Learn more about wellbeing apps in Microsoft Teams
Learn how to give customers a wellbeing experience they’ll love by building collaborative apps with Microsoft Teams.

Already have a Teams app? Check out these resources for more information on Teams apps and Microsoft support:

• Take advantage of best practices for growing your app.
• Find out how to expand your business with ISV Success.

1. Using Digital Tech to Support Employees’ Mental Health and Resilience, McKinsey & Company. July 8, 2021.

2. Pfizer Encourages Employee Well-being Using Thrive Global for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft. June 30, 2023.

3. Work Trend Index Special Report: Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks, Microsoft. April 20, 2021.

Date: 2023-09-06 15:00:00Z
Link: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/how-microsoft-teams-apps-can-help-improve-wellbeing-at-work/ba-p/3919790