4 Tech Solutions for Improving Employee Communication

Did you know that companies that maintain a well-planned communication strategy produce a 47 percent greater return for shareholders, better employee engagement, and lower employee turnover? If your business is struggling in these areas, you may find it helpful to take a page out of the playbook of other successful businesses and integrate cutting edge technology into your organisation.

The Keys to Effective Employees Communication

Employee communication is arguably the cornerstone of high-level employee engagement. Without a strong communication strategy, it’s nearly impossible to engage employees at a meaningful level and spur them to create maximum impact for the organisation.

“In most organisations, there is a significant opportunity to enhance and sustain your employee engagement with employee communications as the keystone and hallmark of your people strategy,” Cornerstone Learning mentions. “However, there are several factors that impact outstanding employee communications efforts.”

This includes factors like:

● Who is in charge of facilitating the strategy, coordination, and execution of employee communications within the organisation?

● What sort of feedback loops do you have in place for streamlining communication?

● How much freedom and autonomy do employees have?

● What tools, platforms, and technologies do you have in place for streamlining communication and eliminating unnecessary points of friction?

This last factor is supremely important yet often overlooked. So in the remainder of this article, we’re going to focus on how you can improve in this area.

4 Practical Tech Solutions

Combined with a strong underlying strategy and attention to detail, the right tech solutions can dramatically improve employee communication within your organisation and produce a significant return for all shareholders. Here’s a closer look at some specific types of technology that are proven to be most effective:

1. SMS Communication Platforms

Communication between upper-level management and employees – including the flow from the HR department to employees – is a process that’s often filled with friction. Companies try employing a variety of mediums – including email and snail mail – but neither is very effective.

There’s one channel, however, that people always pay attention to: SMS. Text messaging is quick, accessible, and mobile friendly. It’s also much harder for the recipient to ignore a text than an email or piece of mail. (Consider using it to send employees URLs that direct them back to a resource page or online form.)

You always have to be thinking in terms of minimising friction and making communication convenient for employees. A good SMS communication platform checks both of these boxes. And while not appropriate for all forms of communication, it’s highly effective for day-to-day facilitation.

2. Social Intranet Solutions

Looking for a way to organise communications, centralise documentation, and establish a cohesive digital platform for your team? A social intranet could be the answer.

A social intranet is an internal internet ecosystem that is private to your organisation. It’s a place where you can share files, chat remotely, and drive employee engagement. Typical features include personalised home pages and news feeds, activity streams, group pages, employee profiles, and document libraries. 

3. Video Meeting Platforms

In a world where virtual engagement and remote teams are ubiquitous, few things are more important than video meetings.

Video meetings provide an opportunity to get face-to-face with someone – even when you aren’t in the same physical space. They make it possible to see body language and understand inflection – things that are impossible over email. Put simply: They dissolve the friction that typically exists with virtual communication.

To excel in this area, you’ll need a good video meeting platform. There are a host of good options, including Zoom and GoToMeeting, but you’ll ultimately have to decide which features are most important and necessary for your team.

4. Project Management Apps

Trying to juggle multiple projects at once is challenging. But you can keep all of the details and tasks organized by implementing an advanced project management app. 

While every project management app is different, most implement some sort of system for organising projects by tasks, subtasks, assignees, deadlines, etc. And with robust document storage and sharing solutions – combined with full-fledged integration into other tools in your tech stack – they’re fairly easy to use. 

Adding it All Up

No app or software can magically improve your employee communication and take your organisation to the next level. But when combined with a strong underlying strategy that emphasises the right principles, anything is possible. Use this article as a launching point and look for new opportunities to grow.