How do you reach your employees? Your teams and departments? Or individuals? Can you get through to everyone with real-time alerts? Personalized information? Or to employees in different languages and locations? Companies with a diverse and widespread workforce need to up their game when it comes to employee comms.
If you have teams who work remotely, in the field, or on the shop floor, then you’ll know how tricky it can be to keep them all engaged and involved in the company mission and feeling like they’re a valued part of the team. And there’s been plenty of recent research that shows how important employee communication is in the post-pandemic world.
The hidden cost of poorly designed work environments
Most companies invested in technology during the pandemic to help their teams work remotely. And while employees have embraced remote and hybrid working, with a majority preferring to work from home at least some of the time, research has found that there’s a growing divide between in-office and remote or hybrid workers, with a recent report from Deloitte finding that 60% of women who work hybridly feel shut out.
The study goes on to say that hybrid working, while creating many opportunities “if done right… also creates a risk of exclusion for those not physically present”. The Chartered Management Institute in the UK, for example, found that hybrid working is entrenching the gender pay and promotion gap, with the blame falling on poorly designed working environments. The report states: “working from home can mean reduced visibility in the workplace which may result in different rates of progression for some workers” such as disabled workers, the under 24s, women, and those with caring responsibilities.
And while employee communications software has come a long way over the last few years, it’s clear that many businesses still aren’t making the most of it.
Here are 3 signs your company needs an employee communication platform
- Your company suffers from low productivity, with employees spending too much time searching for information or switching between apps to communicate.
- Employees feel disengaged, with remote or hybrid workers feeling overlooked, left out, and unmotivated.
- A negative impact on employee health and wellbeing and a high turnover of staff (resulting in increased costs for recruitment and onboarding).
Ok, great. So, what is an employee communication platform? And what can it do for you?
No one wants to keep having to ping in and out of apps to complete tasks or connect with colleagues. Right?
An employee communication platform brings together disparate communication tools under one roof, creating a more productive and collaborative working environment. These tools include digital signage, messaging, third party app integration, mobile apps, content and file sharing, and more.
A good employee communication platform can:
- Help foster a positive culture at work, making it easy to share praise for good work and foster communities of interest, so staff can support each other – helping to create a culture where all employees look forward to work
- Give you valuable data on activity and engagement. If you already have a platform in place, do you know how well it’s working? Do you have a strategy in place to boost engagement? And do you have champions to encourage more innovative use of the platform?
- Help you gather feedback from your teams and employees wherever they are. It should help you keep track of any changes in how people feel at work, and take action to improve the situation. The bottom line is: it can help you retain your top talent.
- Give your company and employees a simple, intuitive way to engage and interact – one that doesn’t interrupt the flow of work.
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of an employee communication platform is that it can level the playing field, so employees have equal access to communication across the whole company. It can reach people where they are, and enable two-way communication and collaboration for colleagues whether they’re at home, in the office, or on the front lines of business.
Finding more innovative and intuitive ways to communicate won’t just improve inclusivity and morale – it will also boost your bottom line. And that’s good news for any organization.
Why choose Appspace?
Appspace works right across your organization to bring people together and create an inclusive and connected workplace.
Our Intranet, powered by Beezy, offers a wealth of communication and collaboration tools including a personalized home page that’s targeted to each employee based on their job role, communities they follow, and relevant topics.
Our Content and Publishing tools make it quick and easy to get your messages across to staff via the Employee App and Digital Signage, with professional-looking templates.
Appspace is designed to make employee communication smarter, easier to manage, and more inclusive.
Want to know more?
Request a personalized demo and see what Appspace can do for you.
