The News: BetterUp has announced an integration and partnership that will unlock science-based supporting technologies to the millions of users on the Microsoft Viva employee experience (EX) platform. These enhancements could include easily accessible personalized insights and guided practices to further purpose, performance, productivity, and wellbeing. The content and coaching will incorporate well-known personalities and athletes.
Microsoft Viva customers will be able to access the BetterUp experience in early August via their Microsoft Viva Digest emails. BetterUp will be launching an app this Fall in Microsoft Teams, which will provide another option for access. See the complete press release on this integration on the BetterUp website.
BetterUp and Microsoft Viva Integration Supports Positive Employee Experience
Analyst Take: BetterUp and Microsoft Viva have announced an integration and partnership that will provide Microsoft Viva users with access to BetterUp’s science-based and personalized journeys. Currently, there are millions of users on the Microsoft Viva employee experience platform that should benefit from leveraging BetterUp’s tools that support performance and productivity by offering tailored insights. This content will also feature well known personalities, such as athlete Maria Sharapova.
EX can be helped (or hindered) by a variety of strategies and technologies. One thing that is certain is that for an employee to have strong EX and high levels of engagement, they must feel connection and purpose, and that their wellbeing is at the very least, on the radar of the company they are working for. If not, there will be issues with engagement and retention.
BetterUp claims to be the world’s largest mental health and coaching startup in the world with a network of over 3,000 coaches who offer support in 64 languages. Its technology is in use by more than 600 organizations. The BetterUp experience was built in partnership with Microsoft Viva and is based on scientific findings, research, and insights from nearly 3 million BetterUp coaching sessions. This research has found that behavior change is best done with small, targeted practices. This is the foundation of BetterUp’s model.
In practice, the experience will look like content such as transformational stories, personalized insights, and guided practices, which in turn, should scaffold purpose, performance, productivity, and wellbeing. The personalized insights are based on quick science-based assessments that uncover strengths and opportunity areas.
These mini assessments will also provide guidance to support actual actions and practices such as visualizations, guided self-reflections, values affirmations, meditations, etc. These small actions help move employees toward more improved wellbeing, which is a worthwhile goal. Research from BetterUp Labs shows that employees with the best wellbeing had 56% fewer missed days at work and were five times more likely to be rated top performers. Employees who made wellbeing a top priority also had lower levels of burnout and are more resilient in the face of stressors.
For BetterUp, this partnership offers a great opportunity to broaden its already strong user base via the Microsoft Viva EX platform user base. For Microsoft, it gives a richer and engaging experience to Viva users. Microsoft has been making a solid series of enhancements to the platform, with a growing list of tools for connection, insight, purpose, and growth. Having this extra layer that users can access right in their flow of work will make it easy to potentially get that behavioral nudge, coaching moment, or personalized content that could make an impactful difference in an employee journey.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
