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Citrix launches well-being microapps for Workspace
Citrix will help companies measure employee wellness with simple programs that can take surveys and distribute health and corporate news.
Citrix has added to its Workspace SaaS platform microapps that help companies measure and bolster employee well-being. The programs help monitor the health of employees working from home during the pandemic.
Citrix released this week four wellness-related microapps within the platform for delivering virtual desktops and other business applications. The small programs perform only one task, and companies can easily customize them using templates.
Tasks that companies can perform with the latest microapps include distributing surveys to track employee happiness. They can also share corporate and health news, announce employee recognition awards and deliver FAQs. Citrix said the microapps are more effective than a company's Intranet for distributing a company's well-being efforts.
IT professionals can find the programs in Workspace's microapp builder.
"Organizations have control over what these [microapps] look like, the types of questions and, ultimately, how they fit in their overall well-being strategy," said Citrix executive Alysia Eve.
Failing to help remote workers manage stress and stay healthy can cost a company money. Lost productivity from depression and anxiety disorders damages the global economy to the tune of $1 trillion per year, according to the World Health Organization.
Keeping track of remote employees has become a higher priority for IT staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enterprise Strategy Group* analyst Mark Bowker said a November 2020 survey of 354 IT professionals showed that 48% felt more pressure to monitor employees since March. While productivity is the top consideration, about 43% of IT leaders reported that their companies asked them to monitor wellness.
Other tech companies have moved to address the need to monitor employee health. Last week, Microsoft announced an intranet-like platform called Viva, which includes well-being features.
Bowker said Citrix and its virtual desktop rival VMware are moving away from their previous roles of simply delivering applications and desktops. He cited Citrix's recent purchase of project-management firm Wrike as an example of its ambitions to provide more holistic services.
"The digital workspace is being viewed as a platform to pull in other things that matter, things like employee well-being," he said.
*Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget.
Mike Gleason is a reporter covering end-user computing topics such as desktop management. He previously covered communities in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts for the Milford Daily News, Walpole Times, Sharon Advocate and Medfield Press. He has also worked for newspapers in central Massachusetts and southwestern Vermont and served as a local editor for Patch. He can be found on Twitter at @MGleason_TT.
