Improving employee health and performance with chatbots?

Healthy, happy employees are more productive and more likely to stay with a company. As a consequence human resources teams often set up programs to help employees with professional development, exercise, and mental health.

Recently the Covid-19 pandemic has put these initiatives to the test, significantly increasing stress levels, job insecurity and forcing many to work from home. Unfortunately, most employee support systems have not been able to help, either because of capability issues or because they are dependent on the company’s offices.

A new challenge

The pandemic has had a significant effect on workers’ mental health, increasing loneliness, isolation, and putting self-motivation to the test. This created a significant challenge for HR teams that all of a sudden have to find ways to keep employees healthy and productive remotely.

One of the biggest parts of this challenge is identifying those that need help in order to prioritize them and focus the limited resources on the most serious cases. In normal conditions managers would be able to keep an eye on direct reports, noticing any unusual behavior and warning signs. In a remote work environment, this has become almost impossible and HR teams have to rely on people reporting their problems and proactively looking for help.

This has proved to be a recipe for disaster since most employees do not naturally seek help, and proactive campaigns by HR teams have limited effects. Managers try to help by checking in with their direct subordinates, but this cannot be done regularly, and it puts additional pressure on team leads that may themselves be struggling to adapt.

Automated systems can help

Some companies have found a solution in the form of chatbots. These tools are able to message users automatically through apps like Slack, Messenger, or WeChat and have brief conversations to check in on them. The results of the conversations can then be used to generate alerts for the HR teams.

Others take a different approach and create virtual wellness assistants that can help people with things like meditation, journaling exercises, and other proactive ways of staying healthy. These chatbots can be created by the company and made available for free to the whole team, creating a personalized and scalable experience.

To find out more about how these systems work and understand how your company could benefit from them, reach out to our team using the contact link below.