Reaching every worker: How to evolve employee engagement

Reaching every worker: How to evolve employee engagement
08 Apr 2019

Eighty per cent of the global workforce are ‘deskless’ (Deskless Workforce). No corporate email. No Office 365 account. Employees have customer type expectations. They want to be cared about. They expect personalisation and - in today’s market - they have choice.

That’s why HR professionals and communications teams need to do more than just ‘reach’ employees. They need to engage and activate them. They need to build and maintain a connection through culture, communication, and technology. That means keeping pace with changing consumer-driven expectations of employees and the distraction of their daily media habits.

In our private lives we would feel hugely disappointed if our favourite clothes brand treated us as one of the masses. But many companies still operate with an outdated one-size-fits-all strategy for internal communications that is indifferent to the individual needs of their most valuable resource: people.

Internal ‘comms’ matter

Internal communications matter a lot - even more so in today’s decentralised business landscape. That’s why it’s imperative to personalise internal communications to drive a deeper connection with employees.

Achieving more personalised communications can have profound results across the board. Staffbase research has shown that effective internal communications greatly benefit companies as a whole, with a 40 per cent increase in customer satisfaction, 30 per cent increase in profitability and 36 per cent in overall performance. Creating a greater affiliation between employee and company leads to less staff turnover and increased employee satisfaction. Not to mention more informed employees.

Creating employee engagement

A SocialChorus 2018 Comms Effectiveness Survey analysed data across global programmes, with information from more than 1.5 million employees in 20 industries across 180 countries. It looked at the figures from hundreds of millions of user events and millions of emails and push notifications sent and surveyed 840 end users.

The results showed that most communicators publish content to multiple sources, including company intranets and newsletters. But employees are three times more likely to interact with mobile than web-based content.

A closer look at the data showed that the most active, retained users came back to their company apps frequently over 90 days. The data found that personalisation and customisation drive retention and help form a ‘power user’. A power user will create and personalise a profile (86 per cent), read content from emails or push notifications (77 per cent) and contribute content (25 per cent).

Creating this level of employee engagement doesn’t come from spamming employees and assuming that one-size-fits-all. Content should be bite-sized and varied. People have adopted scrolling as a preferred way to scan the news. Think of how you read your newspaper on your phone or how you look at Facebook. We found that employees use their company app for around two minutes at a time. Content needs to be written and presented in a way that is quick to consume, easy to dive into if you want to, and rich in pictures and video.

The SocialChorus workforce communications platform enables HR and comms professionals to evolve their employee engagement strategies. Users have one place where they can plan, create, publish and measure their employee communications, enabling them to focus on results, alignment, productivity and engagement.

It has helped Vodafone reach employees across 25 markets in 30 languages, supported M&G Prudential as they merged two companies and assisted global brewing company, AB InBev and their global team of 150,000 people.

Eighty per cent of the global workforce are ‘deskless’ (Deskless Workforce). No corporate email. No Office 365 account. Employees have customer type expectations. They want to be cared about. They expect personalisation and - in today’s market - they have choice.

That’s why HR professionals and communications teams need to do more than just ‘reach’ employees. They need to engage and activate them. They need to build and maintain a connection through culture, communication, and technology. That means keeping pace with changing consumer-driven expectations of employees and the distraction of their daily media habits.

In our private lives we would feel hugely disappointed if our favourite clothes brand treated us as one of the masses. But many companies still operate with an outdated one-size-fits-all strategy for internal communications that is indifferent to the individual needs of their most valuable resource: people.

Internal ‘comms’ matter

Internal communications matter a lot - even more so in today’s decentralised business landscape. That’s why it’s imperative to personalise internal communications to drive a deeper connection with employees.

Achieving more personalised communications can have profound results across the board. Staffbase research has shown that effective internal communications greatly benefit companies as a whole, with a 40 per cent increase in customer satisfaction, 30 per cent increase in profitability and 36 per cent in overall performance. Creating a greater affiliation between employee and company leads to less staff turnover and increased employee satisfaction. Not to mention more informed employees.

Creating employee engagement

A SocialChorus 2018 Comms Effectiveness Survey analysed data across global programmes, with information from more than 1.5 million employees in 20 industries across 180 countries. It looked at the figures from hundreds of millions of user events and millions of emails and push notifications sent and surveyed 840 end users.

The results showed that most communicators publish content to multiple sources, including company intranets and newsletters. But employees are three times more likely to interact with mobile than web-based content.

A closer look at the data showed that the most active, retained users came back to their company apps frequently over 90 days. The data found that personalisation and customisation drive retention and help form a ‘power user’. A power user will create and personalise a profile (86 per cent), read content from emails or push notifications (77 per cent) and contribute content (25 per cent).

Creating this level of employee engagement doesn’t come from spamming employees and assuming that one-size-fits-all. Content should be bite-sized and varied. People have adopted scrolling as a preferred way to scan the news. Think of how you read your newspaper on your phone or how you look at Facebook. We found that employees use their company app for around two minutes at a time. Content needs to be written and presented in a way that is quick to consume, easy to dive into if you want to, and rich in pictures and video.

The SocialChorus workforce communications platform enables HR and comms professionals to evolve their employee engagement strategies. Users have one place where they can plan, create, publish and measure their employee communications, enabling them to focus on results, alignment, productivity and engagement.

It has helped Vodafone reach employees across 25 markets in 30 languages, supported M&G Prudential as they merged two companies and assisted global brewing company, AB InBev and their global team of 150,000 people.