Founded in 2013, Centrical is an employee experience (EX) and workplace gamification company based out of New York, the US, and Israel. It uses artificial intelligence technology to provide employees with personalised microlearning, performance management, and advanced gamification to elevate the quality of EX. Centrical caters to mid-sized and large organisations around the world including HP, Microsoft, Verizon, Payoneer, and several others.
In 2019, Centrical raised $13 million in Series C funding to power future development and expansion. v Centrical announced an integration for Microsoft Teams in May 2020, when organisations were struggling to maintain a consistent EX as they switched to remote work. At that time, Gal Rimon, Centrical’s Founder and CEO, commented that COVID-19 created a major operational challenge in terms of employee experience and performance – “The integration of Centrical with Microsoft Teams helps solve that, easily and effectively.”
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Using the Centrical app for Teams, you can deploy remote learning, optimise performance management, encourage collaboration, and follow the principles of gamification across all of these aspects of EX. Let’s now review the app in more detail.
Inside Centrical for Microsoft Teams
Having a Centrical account is a prerequisite for using the Centrical integration. Primarily, the app targets large and global organisations, so you would have to contact the company for a custom quote. Once you have installed and logged in to Centrical, you can download its Teams integration directly from Microsoft AppSource.
The Centrical app for Teams offers the following features:
- The Centrical chatbot – The Centrical Bot is at the heart of the app experience in Teams. You can interact with the Bot to perform common actions like sharing recognition, submitting feedback, and receiving notifications on important events. It also helps employees complete learning activities without interrupting the conversational flow.
- Performance leaderboards – Performance management is a key module of the Centrical product, and you can keep an eye on team performance using the leaderboard feature. It enables a gamified view of team performance, with each level of performance assigned a name, almost like a video game. The leaderboard also tracks score improvements over time.
- Personal KPI tracker – Employees can track their performance and progress using the Centrical Bot. It tells you about your current performance level, the points accumulated so far, strengths, and improvement areas. In other words, you can get actionable recommendations on KPI-based performance.
- Personalised training and microlearning – Centrical provides users with a learning experience that’s in tune with their KPI goals and unique learning pace. As employees progress to new levels, they will receive learning recommendations in the form of PDFs, videos, and other content types. It enables micro-learning through short-form content that can be consumed in the flow of work.
- Badges and Kudos – The Centrical app encourages employee recognition via the Microsoft Teams interface. For specific achievements and on special days, employees can earn badges to commemorate good performance or simply employee loyalty. Kudos are a type of peer recognition that one Teams user can share with another, thanking them for their contribution to a specific task.
- Team engagement – There are several ways Centrical drives team engagement through Teams. In addition to leaderboards and Kudos, you can conduct intra-team quizzes and training sessions. One user can send questions to another using the Centrical Bot and get notified when there is a response. Teams can also undertake group challenges, puzzles, and other engagement activities with Centrical.
- Learning content – Centrical can double up as a basic LMS (particularly for micro-learning) thanks to its content library feature. You can populate Centrical with a variety of content, including PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations, and videos.
- Manager evaluations – Managers can use Centrical data to conduct employee performance evaluations, aided by real-time updates.
Why the Centrical App Makes a Difference
Centrical provides a comprehensive solution for people management, covering team engagement, performance, and learning. This makes it an end-to-end HR solution, with close integrations with your favourite collaboration tools. The combination of Teams and Centrical allows for an engaging and enriching employee experience so that your adoption rates improve. As a result, organisations can get maximum ROI from their training programs, rewards and recognition campaigns, and performance management processes.
What We Think
Large or fast-growing companies looking to centralise the three key pillars of talent management (engagement, performance and learning) should consider Centrical as a platform of choice. The integration with Microsoft Teams enhances usability and brings HR to where employees “hang out” the most.
Download it here.
