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Microsoft (MSFT) is bringing meditation and mindfulness app Headspace to its Teams platform. The move aims to combat the seeming collapse between working life and home life and increased burnout that has resulted from the new, post-pandemic work-from-home environment.
“The future of work has completely shifted, and the direction and signal from all of our customers from the industry, from the market, and from all of the employees out there is that hybrid work and remote work is here to stay,” explained Kamal Janardhan, GM of Microsoft Viva Insights.
“And while people love the flexibility, they need some of the cognitive structures or the variation that they got from commuting or going to work that are completely lost.”
To help combat the loss of things like commuting and walking to grab lunch that help break up the day and give employees the opportunity to mentally prepare for work or get ready to head home, Microsoft introduced its Viva app as part of Teams in February.
Now the company is adding guided meditations and mindfulness exercises from Headspace to provide workers with the ability to clear their, well, heads while working from home. The idea is that the new tools will help employees who have switched to a permanent work-from-home or hybrid working environment stave off burnout.
“With modern work, you took a bunch of people, you put them in cages and then you're like ‘Why are they stressed out?’ And of course they're stressed out because we are not remembering to get up, walk around, listen to music, interact in a more human way,” explained Janardhan. “And the pandemic, while it allows us to be at home, it's just exacerbated that part of it.”
According to a survey of 5,000 workers across 21 industries in the U.S. and four other countries conducted by Headspace, the number of employees experiencing burnout has increased by 10% year-over-year from 42% in 2020.
Burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon characterized by “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy.”
“It's everything from folks leaving [their jobs], because they're burned out at work due to not being able to find that balance, as well as people being away from work, whether they're taking sick days or not able to show up with their best self at work,” explained Headspace’s chief product and content officer Sam Rogoway.
“It's pretty encompassing, but at its core, it's stress, anxiety, hard to find focus and then hard to find separation in order to find that balance between your workday and your personal life.”