A new “future of work” means new challenges for business leaders. As digital market leaders like Microsoft have revealed, we’re amidst a significant shift in the modern workplace.
Around 70% of employees want flexible work options to continue in the years ahead. However, these staff also want to feel as though they’re still getting adequate support from their employers, respect, and adequate opportunities to connect with colleagues from a hybrid environment. To both attract new talent, and retain existing employees, companies need to do a lot more than simply give their staff the right video conferencing tools.
In the age of the “Great Resignation” when more people are leaving their jobs in search of new opportunities than ever before, it’s crucial to ensure you have the right applications in place to engage and empower your workforce.
Microsoft Teams Enables Staff Retention
On its own, Microsoft Teams has emerged as a powerful tool for staff retention. The flexibility of the Teams environment empowers a highly versatile work environment where people can work comfortably from various landscapes.
As hybrid and remote working spaces became increasingly common in the last couple of years, Microsoft even began investing in new solutions to tackle staff turnover. For instance, after discovering that many employees experienced burnout and overwhelm from constant video meetings, Microsoft introduced tools that allowed staff to set aside “focus time” and gaps in their schedules between meetings.
Microsoft also introduced Together mode, to help employees feel more connected in a distributed environment where isolation was growing more common. What’s more, Microsoft Viva within Teams allows business users to get insights into their performance within Teams and arrange their schedule for better wellbeing.
Access to tools like these, as well as reports and analytics about how staff are interacting with collaboration services on a regular basis, can help to pave the way for better staff retention. The more employers enable their staff, and acknowledge their needs, the less likely those employees are to leave.
Microsoft Teams Apps for Staff Retention
Another way Microsoft started enabling better opportunities for retention, was with access to third-party apps from approved vendors. These apps enable everything from better conversations and bonding between teams, to improved employee wellness.
Some of the most effective solutions for staff retention in the Microsoft Teams AppSource market include:
- HeyTaco!
Created to encourage stronger company cultures in the world of remote work, HeyTaco! Inspires positive communication and regular appreciation for staff. Each day, everyone on your team gets five tacos they can give to other team members. Tacos both show the appreciation of colleagues, as well as recognising all kinds of small and big wins.
Depending on your business structure, you can offer people in your teams the opportunity to trade their accrued tacos in for individual or team-based rewards. There are various gamification elements like achievement levels and leader boards to help keep your staff members as engaged as possible too. Some of the benefits include:
- Gamification and friendly competition options
- Peer-to-peer or leadership feedback options
- Easy way to track recognition and improve staff morale
- Customisable reward structure
- Polly
Polly is a popular Microsoft Teams add-on that allows managers to collect information from their employees in the form of surveys and questionnaires. By encouraging everyone in your team to get engaged with regular conversations, Polly can improve collaboration. However, it’s also a great way for business leaders to keep their fingers on the pulse of employee happiness.
You can use the same tool to run trivia sessions and quizzes, which help to break the ice in conversations and get people in the right frame of mind for bonding. Polly even helps business leaders to boost their chances of engagement with automated reminders for staff.
Features include:
- Remote team check-ins
- Trivia and quizzes to get staff chatting
- Meeting agenda setting
- Engagement pulse tracking
- Live Q&A experiences
- Bob HR
Part of ensuring your team members want to stick around for as long as possible, is making them feel like a valued part of the time. Efforts to consistently update your staff with information about your business can make your company feel more transparent. Bob HR makes it easy to share this information through shoutouts and daily digests.
Bob HR can also help with all kinds of HR activities within the remote and hybrid environment. You can start new joiners in your team on onboarding activities and allow staff to clock in and out with ease. Bob is also great for tracking time-off requests too. Features of Bob HR include:
- Work anniversary, birthday and event tracking
- Onboarding support for new staff members
- Shoutouts and kudos for employees
- Easy updates and daily digests to keep teams informed
- Convenient knowledgebase access
- Employee Wellness by Health Hero
More than just a trend in today’s modern workplace, employee wellness is an essential consideration for all business leaders. The top talent in your industry wants to work for a company they know cares about their mental and physical wellbeing. Tools like Employee Wellness by Health Hero can be excellent for showing your customers how invested you are in their health.
The Employee Wellness app is available from all devices through Microsoft Teams. The app brings a level of gamification into the workforce through health competitions and leader boards. You can also capture wellness information from the app to determine which staff need extra help. Features include:
- Health risk and mental health screenings
- Virtual primary care support
- Biometric screenings
- Competitions and gamification elements
- Social tracking of health targets
- ClipTraining
Finally, an excellent way to improve employee engagement and reduce turnover in today’s landscape is to help your employees see a strong future with your brand. One excellent way to help your staff envision this future, is to provide them with opportunities to expand their skills and learn new things.
ClipTraining is an app for Microsoft Teams with access to more than 5,000 task-based learning sessions and videos. You can learn directly from Microsoft MVPs, and even learn how to use Microsoft tools more effectively. Features include:
- Comprehensive guidance for Microsoft tools
- How-to video lessons for teams
- Training tracking and gamification
- Configurable learning paths for individual team members
