Australian startup Mesh Ai has announced the release of Simpatico Teams, a “pioneering AI-driven mental health application” for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 and Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Mesh Ai says the application ”will help employers better manage the growing psychological challenges of the modern workplace”.
Mesh Ai says Simpatico Ai - the company’s very own AI solution for employee experience and mental health - is now seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft app marketplace, Simpatico Teams enabling organisations to “harness the powerful capabilities of AI to identify and monitor psychological risks across teams.
“The solution also gives employees a suite of personalised and anonymous digital tools to help support mental wellness. All of this now also works within Microsoft 365 as well as the new Copilot for Microsoft 365 tool launched this year.
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“The product was developed as a partnership between Dr Simon Kinsella and Mesh Ai, a leading Australian Conversational AI platform.”
Mesh Ai says Dr Kinsella is a recognised Melbourne-based clinical and organisational therapist with more than 30 years of experience, and he is the official series psychologist for many reality shows in Australia including MasterChef Australia and Celebrity Apprentice and a regular media commentator on psychological issues for the country’s leading news channels.
Mesh Ai also notes that according to a report from PwC and Beyond Blue, “one in five Australians will or has experienced a mental health condition at some point in their life. This can translate into billions of dollars in lost workplace productivity, including $146 million per year in employee compensation claims alone.
“In 2022, an update to the Australian Work Health and Safety Act made it mandatory for organisations to actively manage psychosocial risks. This means that costs for supporting employee wellbeing programs will continue to climb. Yet, Employee Assistance Programs – the tool companies traditionally turn to for this purpose – are only used on average by 6% of the employee base and their overall impact often comes under question.
“As a result, company boards are seeking ways to better meet their duty of care obligations, including searching for more cost-effective options to achieve this goal.”
“I have directly observed the evolution of employee wellness programs over the past three decades and it is encouraging to see mental health initiatives being given more priority in businesses of all sizes,” said Dr Kinsella, Mesh Ai’s Chief Science Officer.
“However, the post-COVID mental health fallout combined with the increasing severity of legal consequences for non-compliance means employers need to leverage technology-driven solutions to help them be more effective at serving diverse stakeholders. This also includes meeting global WHS standards such as the new ISO 45003 and the World Health Organization’s ‘Mental health at work’ guidelines. EAP programs alone are no longer sufficient.”
According to Mesh Ai’s CEO, Alistair Wardlaw, Simpatico Teams is the company’s solution to helping workplaces address mental health with a scalable technology built upon a robust, scientifically validated framework.
“We’ve built Simpatico Teams with the advanced capabilities of our Conversational AI suite. This ensures the platform’s consistency and effectiveness when addressing mental health challenges even for large corporations with a distributed workforce,” says Wardlaw.
“We have witnessed the platform’s efficacy through thousands of mental health conversations undertaken in various settings, including assisting victims of trauma and those who have been exposed to extreme levels of psychological distress. This makes us confident that Simpatico Ai can deliver even in the most challenging mental health environments.”
Mesh Ai says the Conversational AI ‘Empathy Engine’ that underlies the platform allows employees to have anonymous and personalised conversations with Mesh Ai’s mental health bot within Teams and Microsoft 365 instances. Research has shown that people are more willing to open up to AI compared to static forms or surveys.
“The real-time nature of Simpatico Teams also makes it a game-changer in the world of human resources (HR) solutions. For the first time ever, HR teams can have a finger on the pulse of employees’ aggregate mental wellbeing data and monitor changes as they occur. The innovative platform also provides the following benefits:
● AI-driven mental health conversations: AI helps to facilitate non-judgmental conversatiions about mental health, offering a humanised employee engagement experience.
● Engagement and connection: employees can discuss their mental health challenges in their own words – rather than via a static survey – which promotes engagement and a better sense of psychological connection.
● Scalability and personalisation: tailored conversations address individual mental health issues, categorising potential symptoms and specific conditions using a scientific framework.
● Unique insights: organisations gain anonymised dashboards and actionable insights into the mental health of their workforce.
● WHS risk and compliance support: Simpatico Teams references
ISO 45003 and World Health Organization standards to identify and flag various workplace psychological risks.