As remote work becomes the “new normal” for millions of people around the world, staying connected and aligned is more important than ever. With rapidly changing market conditions and buying behavior, companies are turning to Reflektive to help their employees work smarter during this time.

In this time of remote work, we’ve noticed two major trends:

Employees are spending even more time in their productivity tools, such as Gmail and Slack
HR teams are encouraging employees to stay more connected and aligned through ongoing recognition and feedback

Given these trends, we’ve developed tips and best practices to help companies get more out of Reflektive, right in their employees’ favorite workplace apps.

Get Started: Set Up Reflektive Integrations

Reflektive’s integrations with productivity tools help drive employee alignment and connectedness. Without leaving their collaboration platforms, employees can view goals, recognize their peers, and prepare for 1:1s. With these functionalities at their fingertips, workers can better focus on what’s most important, right now.

It’s easy to download and install Reflektive’s plug-ins. The below support articles (currently viewable for Reflektive customers only) provide guidance for HR and IT teams, and include links to employee instructions as well:

Drive a Culture of Recognition

One of the keys to boosting productivity and engagement is through recognition. In fact, people who receive meaningful recognition when they perform well are almost 2X more likely to work at their company two years from now. By empowering users to give feedback and recognition in the tools they use most, Reflektive makes it easy to instill a culture of appreciation across your workforce.

With Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft Teams: The Reflektive plug-in now populates next to other Gmail add-ons for even greater ease of use. In Microsoft Outlook, the Reflektive plug-in automatically populates when you have a message open.

In Gmail, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams, users are reminded to give recognition and feedback. At the top of the plug-in, employees can click “Thanks” to share praise, tag it with core values, and select how to share the recognition. They can also write a note to share feedback with the recipient.

With Slack: Reflektive’s integration with this tool provides gentle nudges to drive peer recognition. Employees can give praise — even if they’re not thinking about it. Users are prompted to provide recognition that appears on their company’s feedback wall when:

They mention a colleague and type “thanks”
They mention a colleague and type a company value

What’s more, HR teams can customize the keywords that prompt users for recognition. At Reflektive, our keywords are “thanks”, “thank you”, “great job”, “awesome”, “sweet”, and “recognition”. Per Jessica Adams, Brad’s Deals’ VP of People, “With the Slack integration, everyone can see recognition and react to it. It’s worth the 30 or 60 seconds it takes to drive a culture of appreciation”.

With Reflektive’s email and chat integrations, companies can continue to build their feedback culture — even when their employees are remote. With continuous communication and appreciation, employees are more likely to be engaged and productive during this uncertain time.

Improve Organizational Alignment

In addition to driving engagement and productivity, companies also want to ensure that their employees are focused on the right priorities now. To boost this alignment, Reflektive makes it easy for workers to view their goals, and those of their peers.

With Gmail, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams: A quick reminder of key objectives helps employees stay on track — and stay mindful of what’s important to their colleagues, too.

With Slack: Similarly, in Slack users can get a snapshot of their goals, and those of their peers. To see their goals, they simply type “goals” into the Reflektive bot. To see their colleague’s goals, employees type “goals” and include their peer’s name.

Drive Productive 1:1s

While Reflektive goals drive overall alignment, 1:1s help workers stay on track by discussing goal progress, blockers, and updates. Reflektive’s 1:1s enable employees to take ownership of these meetings, and cover important topics. Our 1:1s integrations provide several functionalities to help employees prepare and get the most value from these conversations.

With Gmail, Outlook, and MS Teams: In these platforms, users can easily review agenda items, mark them as complete, and remove them. They can also easily add topics as shared or private.

With Slack: Employees have the same 1:1 functionalities in Slack as they do in their email platform — they can add, remove, and complete agenda items. They also receive a notification when 1:1 agenda items are added, so they can view and prepare for these discussion topics in advance. With built-in reminders to reflect on agenda items, employees and managers can have meaningful, productive conversations that drive their business forward.

Interested in learning more about Reflektive’s integrations with employees’ favorite tools? Contact us here.