How Microsoft Teams apps help improve employee engagement for organizations

Summary:

Employee engagement is vital for the growth and success of any organization. Organizations can foster positive engagement by enabling effective communication, offering rewards and recognition, and discussing career advancement opportunities with their employees.

Apps on Microsoft Teams play a key role in enabling employers to better engage with their team members right where they are already working.

Employee communication, innovation, and social advocacy

For any organization, thriving employees are key for driving innovation and building a successful brand. There are apps available, like those featured here, that enable organizations to enhance employee communication, crowdsource ideas from team members, and encourage collaboration while also enabling employees to become advocates for the company brand.

NewCommunicator is a broadcasting app that allows organization-wide instant messaging on Teams. It optimizes Teams chat and push notification to instantly deliver messages to employees’ individual chats, so that important messages are never missed! With NewCommunicator, organizations can gauge engagement utilizing statistics such as read status and click-through rate per individual recipient, empowering organizations to gain insight in employee interests and improve internal marketing.

Sideways6 for Microsoft Teams is an idea management solution and aims to make Teams a home for employee ideas, intrapreneurship, and innovation. The platform enables employees to share ideas and collaborate, while managers can review and shortlist the best options. Organizations can launch fully branded campaigns within Teams, collect ideas from employees with a few clicks, and communicate back to those that submitted the ideas automatically. The app also centers collaboration around these submitted ideas with likes and comments, allowing users to manage solutions that are shared in Teams from inception all the way through to delivery.

Employee recognition and rewards

Giving employees recognition and rewards is key for business success as it can increase engagement, productivity, performance, and loyalty. It is important for organizations to foster this type of positive work culture by encouraging managers and employees alike to acknowledge the efforts and achievements of peers and team members. Here are few examples of apps that can help teams build a community of appreciation.

TeamsSticker by Communitio is a digital Thank You card app integrated with Microsoft Teams. The app improves work engagement and fosters emotional connections in the workplace by enabling employees to express gratitude to their colleagues and celebrate achievements together. The digital gift feature, “Peer Gift Campaign” encourages employees to reflect on their colleagues’ contributions to the team and recognize accomplishments periodically. TeamSticker also has a broadcasting functionality that helps promote company culture and motivates employees to participate in related events. It optimizes Teams chat and push notification to deliver messages directly to employees’ individual chats.

Empuls by Giift on Teams enables employees to send and receive appreciation and awards to colleagues and team members via channel conversations or group chats. This app allows employees to redeem points they received as awards and gifts from a catalog of over 1M+ reward options. Teams can also participate in surveys and polls to share their feedback with leadership. This feedback, along with the statistics and analytics of recognition and engagement activities, can be viewed by team leaders seeking a deeper understanding and insight into their team.

In addition to enabling employees to show appreciation for colleagues and redeem points, the Vantage Rewards application from Vantage Circle enables employees to take an active role in building positive work culture. With the app, they can access their company feed and company leaderboard, deliver instant notifications on company-wide recognition posts, and drive engagement on posts with likes and comments. Vantage Rewards also enables employees to approve recognition nominations instantly within Teams.

BHN Rewards is an innovative rewards application that enables managers to give employee rewards and recognition directly within meetings on Teams. With a few clicks, users can now celebrate endless milestones and achievements, from work anniversaries to project launches—all inside their daily digital meeting space. This easy-to-use app helps teams meaningfully connect in a digitally centered work environment.

Peer feedback and teamwork

Colleagues play an important role in sharpening individual skills with teamwork, and peer feedback is key to fostering a great culture of continuous learning and improvement for all individuals in an organization.

PerformAI was developed as a native Teams app and allows employees to request and share meaningful performance feedback instantly with the help of generative AI. The app also alerts employees with notifications about any feedback requested and received, allowing everyone to stay on top of their own performance progress.

Giving and receiving feedback regularly can build high-performing teams. With Culture Amp, employees can trade effective feedback with their colleagues directly in Teams. These comments are stored in the app for future reference, proving especially useful when it comes time for performance reviews. Culture Amp also delivers notifications for surveys, skills insights, and goal updates allowing employees to take action on the feedback given.

Learning, upskilling, and growth

Upskilling is important for employees to stay motivated and invested in their daily work because it contributes to their personal development. These applications on Teams help employees discover recommended learning content and stay on top of mandatory training—giving them the tools they need to grow.

ISV applications like LMS365 and Degreed leverage the catalog discovery experience within Teams to help employees discover relevant courses and consume learning content within the flow of work.

Users can conveniently utilize all their LMS365 learning tools through the dedicated LMS365 app within Microsoft Teams. The personalized training dashboard provides learners with a clear overview of their assigned courses, empowering them to initiate training sessions and effortlessly consume learning content within the Teams platform.

With the Degreed Microsoft Teams App, users can discover and engage with learning content relevant to their personal development goals, without breaking your flow of work. Embedding Degreed’s functionality to share and recommend content inside a collaboration platform like Teams sets up an organization for increased knowledge sharing, which can lead to more and better learning. Teams’ integration also helps ease the burden of upskilling by incorporating learning reminders from Degreed inside the Teams notification feed that employees already rely on. The goal of this app is to facilitate more learning completions and improve skill building. By combining the easy access to learning inside Microsoft Teams with the personalized learning made possible by the Degreed home page, learning can become even more efficient.

In today’s fast-paced work environment, continuous skill and career development is crucial. Gloat for Teams enables this by allowing employees to discover development opportunities like projects, jobs, and mentorships directly within their flow of work. This seamless integration facilitates on-the-job learning and growth, leveraging Gloat’s advanced neural networks to match employees’ skills with organizational needs efficiently. By implementing this app, enterprises can foster a culture of continuous learning and skill development, enhancing productivity and innovation. This strategic alignment of employee development with daily workflows can help organizations adapt swiftly to changing business landscapes.

Another app for Microsoft Teams that can help companies foster a positive growth culture is the Tigerhall app. This app is designed to help companies work better as an accelerator for organizational change. The platform features byte size content from industry leading experts and provides a single space for organizations to streamline internal communications, centralize internal knowledge, and experience real-time collaboration. Organizations can create curated learning paths to achieve their goals, driving company-wide change at the speed of need.

Learn more about engaging employees with apps in Microsoft Teams

Find more Teams apps that can help boost morale, loyalty, and productivity on Microsoft AppSource.

Interested in reaching an audience of 320 million users with your employee engagement app? Give customers experiences they’ll love by building collaborative apps with Teams.

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.

Date: 2023-12-13 16:00:00Z
Link: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/how-microsoft-teams-apps-help-improve-employee-engagement-for/ba-p/4006841