Ashima stares disinterestedly at her screen as another email hits her inbox, reminding her of the deadline she has not met. She pushes the thought aside and turns to look at the time, wondering how long until she clocks out. While most of her teammates have begun working from the office, Ashima works remotely. The only interaction she has with her company is through email and virtual meetings, where she merely glances at names that light up when people on the other end talk.

Like Ashima, many who joined companies just in the past few years experienced the "tectonic shift" of work. With the initial impetus to shift to virtual and remote working slowly turning into a hybrid model, companies have had to rapidly adapt to the changing business environment. For employees, this shift has come with many challenges. The lack of engagement, poor connection with other team members, and consequently a disinterest in the company have all become major impediments to productivity. With the dissolution of the shared physical workspace, employees like Ashima look for alternatives to connect and engage with their teams. The answer? A digital collection of fun, interactive content available wherever they work – a curated platform known as ExtraMile Play.

With an exciting range of virtual team bonding solutions, ExtraMile Play helps companies create an immersive and engaging employee experience that many crave today. By allowing teams to interact and collaborate virtually, the platform enables successful engagement in a hybrid work model. 

Engaging content for a hybrid workforce

With an intuitive "Netflix-style" approach to its design and interface, ExtraMile Play gives companies affordable access to more than a hundred games, icebreakers, team activities, assessments, and facilitator-led webinars. The brainchild of ExtraMile, its parent company has been in the business of employee engagement for 10years now with their virtual engagement vertical dating back to the pre-covid era in 2015. This new SaaS platform offers content aimed at driving engagement, where the users are employees who enjoy stress-busting games and the admins are managers who need ways to keep their respective team conversations beyond transactional or HR leaders who need an easily accessible platform for team collaboration. ExtraMile Play has options for all.

"Our engagement platform," says Pooja Bajaj, founder, and CEO of ExtraMile Play, "enables managers and HR leaders to make engagement a frequent and impactful activity. All that, while helping them maintain in-house control over the content."

ExtraMile Play provides HR leaders with an easy-to-access content gallery. "Companies can turn the different touchpoints across the entire employee lifecycle into engaging events," Pooja explains, adding that the innovative build also allows for "hybrid teams across locations and time zones to interact with fresh content added each month". 

As most workplace experts would suggest, an engaged workforce is the bedrock of a successful hybrid work environment. 

Virtual tools can enhance the mental and emotional well-being of employees and boost engagement between team members – all while bridging the "distance" between them. 

This level of interaction is critical for the workforce to remain productive. But while some companies are aware of this need, many still lack the internal resources to make engagement impactful. ExtraMile Play puts the power back in the hands of HR professionals to drive engagement.

Reimagining engagement

While Ashima finishes another day falling behind her deadlines, her manager Saloni faces a different challenge. She sees signs of Ashima’s absenteeism and a lack of productivity growing among her team members as well. Her current dependence on HR only to address her team's challenges limits her capabilities as a manager. She hopes she’s able to address the issue in the next team meeting. But without the right tools, Saloni has little scope to make the right impact.

As virtual platforms become the norm, Saloni's problems aren't just a hypothetical example. Today, managers across India are experiencing a lack of tools to engage a hybrid workforce.

ExtraMile Play helps leaders tackle this issue. "Why must engagement only be an HR agenda? We allow line managers the freedom to engage with their teams without being dependent on a central body that plans and executes engagement activities," Pooja says. 

This enables companies to make engagement more organic and intuitive. Managers now have the freedom to plan and address issues as they see them in their teams. 

ExtraMile Play proves staying connected in a hybrid work environment is essential to the success of teams.