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Old patterns need to be shed in order to usher in the new. Businesses are being compelled into steering in new directions. Internal communications too is a work in progress!
Internal Communications as we know it has been through a whirlwind shift in the last decade. But this transformation is incomparable to what lies in the offing for this underrated function.
Features like productivity and communications are bound to get a makeover in the constantly evolving new normal.
To say that Everybody communicates is stating the obvious! Communication is not just a verbal construct. Unspoken communication is as potent and prevalent as verbal messaging. Words are a powerful tool that can make or break a person, team or organization. The power of the spoken and written word should seldom be underestimated.
An internal communicator is not just a propagator of messages, information and newsletters. This is a nuanced role with multi-faceted responsibility, some of which is intangible and hard to define.
The internal communications team is endowed with the task of creating a conducive work culture and unison between teams and workers.
Teams and workers may not always work out of an office. In fact, deskless and frontline workers form almost 80% of the global workforce. They could be anybody from the line worker in an assembly plant, the cashier in a neighbourhood supermarket, your friendly neighbourhood barista, or housekeeping staff at your favourite hotel. The importance of deskless workers cannot be stated enough.
Then why are deskless and frontline workers seldom factored into an internal communications strategy?
Businesses are finally realizing the importance of frontline workers and are bringing them into the loop of company wide communication.
Internal communications professionals are factoring deskless and frontline workers into their communications strategies. These workers are the face of many industries and businesses today and are finally getting the importance they deserve.
This in-depth report touches upon the various facets of internal communications – from strategies, latest trends and challenges, to technology and intranets! This article covers the whole gamut of internal communications in this day and age, with a greater emphasis on frontline workers.
Cathy has a breezy beginning to her day. The bot on her internal communication app throws up a list of leave and order requests.
Soon after, Cathy is reminded of a scheduled meeting at noon by the AI-driven bot.
She quickly accesses her Google Drive that’s integrated with the app, and sends off pre-meeting notes as secure attachments to her team.
In the evening, Cathy sends a welcome note to the 25 frontline staff members on-boarded through the internal communications app that day — despite none of them having a corporate email address.
The new era of internal communications is smarter, secure, inclusive and more productive.
The use of cutting-edge technology is the backbone of internal communication strategy 2.0.
With deep advances in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing, internal communication tools are leveraging technology to make everyday communication more effective.
The rise of bots in such tools can help you carry out contextual conversations with them, and receive information and reminders.
Internal communication plans are also getting a boost through microapps.
Using lightweight microapps, you can now integrate your favourite work apps into your internal communication tool.
This gives you single-point mobile access to all work apps and work becomes more efficient.
Silos have been a barrier so far for enterprise internal communication.
Frontline workers were kept out of the communication loop since most don’t have a corporate email addresses, something that has been mandatory for on-boarding so far.
But today’s internal communication strategy removes this constraint and makes on-boarding a far simpler affair.
All your deskless workers need is a smartphone to get looped in and stay connected in a secure manner. They can on-board these comms tools using mobile numbers and QR codes.
Once looped in, deskless, frontline and remote workers can stay up-to-date with the latest information and policies within the organization. They can also communicate with their colleagues and other teams through these apps. Moreover, the distinction between consumer apps and official communication tools helps these workers maintain work life balance too.
For businesses, this is a means to engage and enrol frontline staff into the company’s fold. This promotes inclusivity and helps in reducing absenteeism, attrition and disengagement related productivity losses as well.
Today, communication is not only about staying connected but also about increased productivity.
With the right bells and whistles in place, Groupe.io ushers in the new era of internal communication. If you want more information on the Groupe.io employee communications app, write to us at [email protected].
No employee can reach a goal without mentorship – something that is effortlessly accomplished when a clear internal communication strategy is in place. Strategy is a very important factor for internal communications professionals. An effective internal comms strategy is crucial to success. However, very few IC teams actually have a robust plan in place.
Your employees hold more power than you think. They are the key to the reputation of your business and are the lens through which your brand is viewed. This is why internal communicators have a crucial role to play in the trajectory of your organizations’ growth. However, IC is more often than not overlooked by leadership.
The Constituents of an Effective Internal Communication Strategy
Revamping your internal communication strategy is quite a painstaking task.
Today’s workplace is in constant flux and needs timely revamping of IC strategies to get with current trends.
Before designing a strategy, it’s important to gain clarity on the goals you want to achieve. It could be transforming company culture, creating more inclusivity or just reaching out to a vast number of employees at the same time. No matter the objective, it’s important to list it out in a simple and succinct manner.
No employee can reach a goal without mentorship – something that is effortlessly accomplished when a clear internal communication strategy is in place. Strategy is a very important factor for internal communications professionals. An effective internal comms strategy is crucial to success. However, very few IC teams actually have a robust plan in place. `
Your employees hold more power than you think. They are the key to the reputation of your business and are the lens through which your brand is viewed. This is why internal communicators have a crucial role to play in the trajectory of your organizations’ growth. However, IC is more often than not overlooked by leadership.
The Constituents of an Effective Internal Communication Strategy
Revamping your internal communication strategy is quite a painstaking task.
Today’s workplace is in constant flux and needs timely revamping of IC strategies to get with current trends.
Before designing a strategy, it’s important to gain clarity on the goals you want to achieve. It could be transforming company culture, creating more inclusivity or just reaching out to a vast number of employees at the same time. No matter the objective, it’s important to list it out in a simple and succinct manner.
Before venturing out to create a strategy it’s important to ask a few vital questions as follows:
Is the internal communication strategy in line with organizational goals?
The success of a communication strategy depends on executive buy-in, and it must be at the highest level.
This is because the vision of these high-ranking executives shapes corporate strategy.
This exercise ensures that the internal communication strategy is in line with the overall goals and growth of the business.
How diverse is the organizational workforce?
Organizational diversity, today is huge and comprises employees that range from 18 to over 60 years of age.
While the baby boomers are more comfortable with long-winded emails, millennials and Gen Z veer towards social media for communication.
The ability to get the right message through the right channel is of utmost importance.
Does the strategy tie well with individual aspirations?
The internal communication strategy should make space for individual aspirations.
Although it is hard to appease each and every individual, appealing to a cross-section of the staff will make do.
This will encourage workers to don the shoes of brand advocates who take pride in their organization!
Have deskless workers been factored in?
Not every employee out there works out of the office at all times. Take for instance drivers that power truck fleets, technicians who work in remote locations like oil rigs, hospitality staff, and construction workers.
There are about 2.7 billion deskless workers around the world today.
If yours is one such industry, this workforce must be factored in.
Is there room for two-way communication in the existing strategy?
If employees fail to understand why a particular decision is being taken, they feel disconnected from the organization.
There needs to be a clear path of communication that breaks down the intent.
There should also be channels for bottom up communications. To give employees a space to offer feedback, address queries and just reach out to management and leadership, makes a huge difference.
How dynamic is the strategy?
A strategy that works like a charm today might not have the same impact tomorrow.
The fact necessitates dynamism. As digital technologies that surround us today evolve, so must the strategy.
From the assignment of tasks to companywide communications, the internal communications tool must be well-equipped to stay in tune with the times.
The strategy that you devise must answer these questions in the affirmative. It all depends on your understanding of the organization and filling the gaps.
Once you’ve gained some clarity, try to create a strategy that aligns with the vision of the leadership. Getting support of leadership and senior management is the final straw!
Once you achieve this leave no stone unturned when it comes to evolving the roadmap. Keep updated with the latest internal communication trends and technologies. Most importantly, stay in tune with people and employees to understand their pulse and what keeps them going!
Businesses depend on their employees to deliver results and propel their success. To say that “employees are an asset” sounds like a clichéd yet inevitable statement to make.
As stated earlier, a majority of these workers don’t work from within the confines of a cubicle. These workers, popularly known as frontline, deskless or non-desk workers are crucial to business success. They may not hold fancy diplomas or wear shiny suits, but businesses will fall apart without the hard work and skills that frontline workers bring to the table.
Imagine a hospital without nurses, a restaurant without waiting staff , a coffee shop without a barista, or a supermarket without checkout staff. This might give you a better picture of how essential frontline workers are to an organization.
Industries with a large number of frontline staff are retail, hospitality, production, manufacturing, construction and agriculture to name a few.
As stated earlier, deskless workers constitute over 2.7 billion people of the global working population!
Despite being such a large majority of the global workforce, these employees have been kept out of the loop of company communications for too long now. Moreover, companies rarely invest in nurturing their deskless workers. This trend, however, is witnessing a slow and steady shift. With employers realizing the massive impact this group has on business outcomes, investment into this faction of staff is witnessing a steady uptick.
These workers engage with customers, vendors, and so on. Hence, having a streamlined communication channel goes a long way in harnessing their potential. A dedicated communication tool for these employees also gives them access to top down messages, information, policy changes and other data.
Therefore, each organization needs to address the following concerns for developing an effective internal communications strategy.
Relying on Traditional Communications Channels isn’t Effective for Frontline Workers
Emails have been the main mode of communication for organizations for a long time. But if you delve deeper, you’ll find that it isn’t practical for frontline workers.
Emails often have the chance of being overlooked or missed, and their effectiveness of relaying updates or information has been proven to be ineffective, especially for deskless workers.
Frontline staff cannot rely on a mode of communication that isn’t accessible to them at all times.
Moreover, a recent study found that over 83% of frontline workers don’t even have a corporate email address.
Organizations often rely heavily on verbal or paper-based communication channels like bulletin boards or newsletters.
In hindsight, this is a very unreliable and ineffective way to keep the frontline staff updated about the on goings and requirements of the organization due to its lack of reach.
The viable solution to this problem-statement would be to define a mode of communication that could be easily accessed by the frontline workforce at all times.
Mobiles are the most practical solution for this communication gap. BYOD or Bring Your Own Device, which is a growing trend nowadays, is a very effective strategy that can help in the implementation of this solution.
Frontline employees should be able to join the organizations’ communication channels using their mobile numbers, which makes it convenient for the organization to reach and connect with them anytime, anywhere.
Being Cautious With Mobile-Based Communication Channels
More often than not, mobile-based communication amongst employees, whether they are non-desk or desk, happens on various third-party apps like WhatsApp.
The main problem that arises out of this approach is that managers have no means to keep track of the work being done and information being shared by the employees.
Having an employee communication app that connects the entire frontline workforce with their respective managers and heads of operations can significantly boost their productivity.
Communication Barriers Will Still Be Prevalent
Implementing the aforementioned solutions is still not enough. Some other elements that are missed out while devising an internal communications strategy are as follows:
These elements play a major role in determining the productivity of frontline employees. While solutions like Skype, Microsoft Teams, Flock, Slack, and so on, can garner results for the knowledge workers, they aren’t useful for the deskless workers.
The solution to this would be integrating an employee communication channel that can take care of these elements seamlessly.
With an app that supports in-line translations that can be localized to bridge the multiple language communication barriers, and a peer-to-peer communication option to eradicate the time-zone barriers, the internal communications strategy for your organization can be free of any loopholes.
Introducing a mobile-first communication tool is great, but how do you ensure tool adoption across your workforce. This webinar on getting through adoption challenges is interesting and gives you good tips to increase overall app adoption in your enterprise. Watch or download the video here:
How to Overcome Adoption Challenges in Internal Communication
Today, internal communication has turned out to be extremely crucial in any business. For the first time, it has an impact on a number of key business drivers like:
Organizations must have an effective internal communication strategy in place. There’s no shortcut to achieve it. Your internal communication strategy is best based on the pillars of:
Efficient outreach: The internal communication strategy should be such that it ropes in all employees — be it knowledge, deskless or remote workers — in an organization.
Employee engagement: The aim of any strategy should be to constantly keep the employees engaged with the right content and the right methods.
Workforce productivity: If communication is smooth and employees are well-engaged, the natural by-product of any internal communication program is high productivity.
A majority of businesses today have an internal communication strategy in place. However, they fail to make the most of it due to some common errors. Some make the mistake of relying on consumer-grade communication tools only because they are easy to use. They soon realise those apps don’t guarantee enterprise-level security, control, and convenience. There are others who make the fatal mistake of ignoring their non-desk workforce. And of course, have to pay for it dearly. Modern internal communication strategies can’t afford to have these counter-productive elements as their building blocks. Some of the common barriers to an organizations’ IC strategy are:
Compromising Security
At a time when no amount of security is enough, being lax about communication lapses is unforgiving. One oft-repeated mistake is carrying out internal communication via consumer-grade platforms like WhatsApp.
A 10,000-feet view might make consumer apps a great medium but they pack in a lot of trouble for businesses.
But consumer apps are not secure as business communication tools. They run the risk of sensitive enterprise data being leaked to a third party.
Compromising Control
If your internal communication strategy does not involve holistic control of your communication platform, you lose control of efficiency as well.
Leaving control to a third-party app or your employees leads to haphazard, irrelevant, and amateurish communication and security issues.
Keeping it Solely ‘Internal’
Does your internal communication strategy loop in all your employees? We are not talking about only those within the ‘internal’ confines of your office space.
Historically, frontline workers have always been left out of the loop, which results in poor communication, lack of motivation and productivity, and a rise in attrition.
It is not only mandatory but common sense to rope non-desk workers in your internal communication strategy if you want to make it highly effective.
Sending Irrelevant Communication
Roping in deskless workers doesn’t work if you reach out to them with irrelevant communication.
For example, you can’t send out desktop computer maintenance schedules to your construction field workers.
Continued irrelevant messages on their feed will slowly but surely wean them away from the platform.
If you can’t reach out to the right people with the right message at the right time, communication loses its relevance.
Restricting Activity to Communication
Remember, your internal communication tool should not be only a chat or a feeds app.
Businesses must be able to use technology to do more with their employee communication platforms.
A great enterprise communication tool should have integration capabilities, powerful built-in microapps, AI prowess, and high-quality analytics abilities.
No internal communication strategy is perfect. But, if your internal communication strategy has the above-mentioned errors, it’s time to fix them to make it more efficient.
Everyone has access to a truckload of data today. Employee tools have only made it easier. They dip into organizational data to make daily work efficient. Want to dial up a colleague? Just open the company phonebook. Need to communicate an office policy change? Just send across the latest company policy handbook. Need to exchange sales reports? Attach one with your ongoing conversation thread. Work’s easier with employee apps nowadays.
But don’t overlook an important factor: there’s sensitive company data exchanged all over. All this in a time of increasing security threats in the global business landscape.
In 2019, Canva, a graphic-design tool website, suffered a data breach that affected 139 million users.
In the same year, Capital One, one of the largest US banks, suffered a data leak where more than 80,000 bank account numbers and 140,000 social security numbers, and more, were stolen.
According to a research by IBM, the average total cost of a data breach is pegged at $3.92 million.
The cost of data and security breaches on a business can be steep. This is all the more reason for companies to take heed to security across all its digital platforms, including communication tools.
Security Lapses
More and more data is being shared than ever before. This leads to rising cyber-attacks and security threats.
This is why internal communication compliance is getting stricter by the day.
In businesses with a large number of deskless workers, the risk of unsecure internal communication is stronger.
Around 80% of the global workforce today is deskless and a growing number of them are connected through IM.
So, there’s a massive amount of sensitive official data being exchanged between on-the-go workfers on a daily basis. Any data leak or hack will cost the company dearly – in terms of both expenses and reputation.
Frontline staff are more susceptible to data leaks because:
There are organizational loopholes as well. While employee apps might not be strongly secure, companies could also lack strong internal security watchbodies that can prevent security malpractices. There are some basic errors as well.
For example, there are businesses allowing the usage of consumer IM apps (like WhatsApp, WeChat, FB Messenger) as employee communication tools.
Consumer chat apps are not secure and have no centralized control measure through which businesses can regulate data exchange.
In this case, protecting business messages and shared files becomes challenging.
Getting Enterprise Security in Order
Security is becoming less of a checklist item and just another layer to add. It is a well-thought out part of organizational strategy now.
In two more years, the worldwide spending on information security is expected to top $151.2 billion in 2023. And a large portion of it is expected to be spent on security for IM apps engaging the desk and non-desk workers alike.
Security should be sustainable in organizations, not sporadic. The CIOs should lead the charge and incorporate a strong internal communication strategy and compliance in the organization.
They need to introduce security as a part of workplace culture and work practices.
The stepping stone is organizing awareness sessions and then ensuring stronger E2EE and protection from cyberattacks. There should also be prompt and effective troubleshooting and advisory teams in place.
No matter how powerful your message, without effective corporate communication tools, it is destined to make zero impact.
The question is what makes a great tool that an organization can rely upon for all its communication needs.
Corporate Communication Tools must be Mobile-First
A mobile-first strategy reaches employees wherever they are. It brings inclusivity, cohesion, and collaboration into the picture.
Security is of Paramount Importance
A secure communications solution ensures data security:
Automation is the Way Forward
Corporate communication tools with built-in AI-enabled bots are most effective to achieve this objective.
A Push towards Process Compliance
From maintaining stocks in retail outlets to safety, checklists play an important role to get the work done on time and efficiently.
The point to note in this context is that such checklists necessitate deskless workers to either access nearby desktops or rely on paper documentation.
The lack of real-time communication to get the checklists filled is a challenge that managers frequently face. Mobile-first digital checklists are the ideal solution.
Deskless Collaboration without In-Person Meetings
Collaborating with deskless workers can be a challenge, but with the right features, it ceases to remain so.
File sharing, peer-to-peer messaging, a comprehensive directory of employees, real-time conversations, and the ability to receive read receipts can make the whole exercise effective.
Only those corporate communication tools that factor in each employee and department can catapult a business to greater heights of success.
According to a study, 73% of consumers claim customer service drives their purchasing decision.
Most customer service executives are deskless workers.
These non-desk workers perform the most crucial duty: their level of service makes or breaks a customer’s relationship with a brand.
Customer service is efficient when someone communicates these to the employees in a smooth, timely and efficient manner.
IGNORING DESKLESS WORKERS IS A Costly affair
It’s an age-old problem. Desk workers have always outshone their field-working colleagues.
They not only enjoy the best status and recognition but also the top advantages. This may have been okay a decade back but nowadays, it is not only archaic but also self-destructive.
The deskless workforce gets allocated – believe it or not – only 1% of the total enterprise software funding!
And when it comes to the vital aspect of communication, most of these non-desk workers stay looped out.
They feel like they don’t belong since most of the office communication is carried out via traditional channels like bulletin boards and emails.
Most deskless workers simply don’t have access to these channels.
This leads to low engagement and motivation levels among these folks, in turn leading to a high turnover rate.
Lost productivity costs due to disengaged workforce in the US lies between $483bn and $605bn.
Some organizations have taken “corrective measures”. They have ditched the traditional forms of communication and introduced enterprise communication networks like Slack and Yammer.
Unfortunately, even this step comes with a lot of baggage. Enterprise tools like Slack and Yammer are primarily built by office workers for office workers. So the benefits largely go only to the desk workers.
Thereby, deskless workers still remain disconnected.
EXPANDING THE LOOP WITH INSTANT MESSAGING
Here’s what the time is right for: instant messaging for businesses with non-desk workers. So far, the non-desk workforce sure has the ‘means’ (smartphones and other digital devices) and the ‘motive’ (need to be informed) but not the ‘message’ (inclusive and instant communication).
Instant messaging is the perfect communication type for the deskless tribe because:
Instant messaging is a great fit for deskless workers because:
LEADING THE WAY
It’s only today that we are talking about employee communication in terms of desk and non-desk workers. The lines between desk and non-desk are fast blurring.
The future will see seamless communication among all employees, desk or non-desk, and there won’t be any need to write articles like this. Enterprise instant messaging will soon evolve as a culture within organizations that have a large number of non-desk workers.
Company-wide emails, bulletin boards, newsletters, even print magazines—there are many ways of communicating essential company news to all the employees. This is commonly called internal communication within an organisation.
Internal communication, though, goes beyond just announcements addressed to your workforce. You need to make sure that all your employees have read and understood the communication.
This is all the more essential when you have a distributed workforce and a large number of deskless workers.
Collaboration vs Communication
When you read “app for internal communication”, it’s natural to think of apps like Slack and MS Teams.
These apps enable employees to create their private groups or channels. They also enable you to make company-wide announcements where employees can interact and voice out their opinions.
But there’s just one glitch: though these are good workplace apps, they’re meant for employee collaboration and not internal communication.
What’s the difference?
The definition of collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce something, whereas communication can be defined as the act of imparting or exchanging information through various means.
Collaboration is where groups of employees discuss and work together on the smaller picture and management gets a broad view of it.
Collaboration can happen over multiple platforms. Some employees may choose to collaborate via Whatsapp groups, some might use Slack or Teams, and so on. There need not be a single platform for all of them.
On the other hand, internal communication is top-down, where information comes from top management, providing the bigger picture to all the employees.
Internal communication forms the backbone for streamlined org-wide collaboration.
Though the traditional top-down approach is more one dimensional, today’s technology solves that problem and makes internal communication an engaging process.
But, unlike collaboration, communication cannot happen over multiple platforms.
Being delivered through different channels will lead to miscommunication and loss of information.
Does it really matter which app you use?
Using a collaboration app for internal communication will be counterproductive in many ways.
Organizations need to augment their collaboration tools with modern internal communication apps to ensure that all employees are aligned towards common goals.
Collaboration and communication tools need to coexist, but their functionalities are not interchangeable.
So what should you look for in an internal communication app?
Though internal communication follows the “top-down” approach, a good IC app will enable an omni-directional flow of information.
Here are some of the key features you need to look for:
Top-down broadcasts
First, of course, is a way to send out the information which is the primary function of the IC app. This information could be in the form of an announcement, a survey, or polls.
Consumer-app-like interfaces
Information needs to be easily available to the employees and has to give them a easyway to process what is being put out.
The UI of the app needs to be simple and not require the users to be tech-savvy.
Onboards frontline staff
Your frontline workforce may not all have corporate email IDs.
Choose an app that facilitates signing up with the help of mobile numbers or QR codes instead of mandatory corporate email IDs.
Targeted reach
Sometimes, you need the information to reach only a certain group of employees, like for instance, just meant for the employees working in a certain time zone.
Studies show that almost 15% of employees total work time is wasted on inefficient communications since their feed is inundated with announcements that aren’t relevant to them.
Your internal communication app should enable you to define groups and departments within the organisation to make sure the right information reaches the right people.
Mobile-first
While the app needs to offer exclusivity, it also needs to be inclusive in the sense that your announcements need to be accessible to your frontline employees as well.
Mobile friendly, simple apps help your deskless workers feel included and well-informed.
De-siloing is the buzzword in enterprises today.
The most crucial step to get rid of organisational silos is strengthening employee communication.
However, in most cases, enterprise communication is lopsided, haphazard, and irregular. According to a Gallup survey, 87% employees feel the leadership does not communicate effectively with the rest of the organisation.
Inefficient communication becomes a liability for businesses.
It’s not that business leaders don’t understand the value of sound employee communication — that it leads to proper employee engagement and, in turn, to greater productivity. But are they taking the right steps to ensure that?
Take a look at these useful hacks that pave the way for great employee communication in your organisation.
Keep it simple: Most enterprise-grade employee communication tools lack a user-friendly experience. As a result, adoption rates suffer and weaker alternatives gain ground. What enterprise communication software need is a consumer app-like experience that guarantees employees the best of both the worlds — efficient performance and ease of use.
Keep it secure: In an increasingly unsecure digital world, data breach is a huge worry. Your employee communication tool should have the proper security apparatus in place so that sensitive internal data stays internal, even if accessed from multiple devices and by non-desk employees.
Make it do more: Communication shouldn’t only be easy but productive as well. You should be able to perform multiple tasks — all from a single platform. That’s why enterprises need to leverage cutting-edge tools and technologies to push the boundaries of employee communication.
Don’t let interest dwindle: Nothing fails like irrelevant and irregular communication. Sending the right message to the right set of people at the right time is key. This builds attention, increases click rates, and improves employee engagement. Your employees feel more trusted, valued, and thus, more motivated.
Loop in your non-desk workforce: In the times of mobile and dispersed workforce, you should never commit the cardinal sin of ignoring your non-desk workforce. Think about it: More than 80% of employees today don’t work out of office environs. Making them feel disconnected and demotivated is organisational harakiri. Your employee communication tool should be designed in a way to strongly loop in your non-desk employees.
Heading into 2020 we expected businesses to be faced with many challenges.
Now, it’s clear that even the most cautious of predictions had underestimated how difficult the year would turn out to be.
The need of the hour is to digitize internal communications (IC) for remote, frontline, deskless and knowledge workers, through mobile-first communication tools.
This will also help with business continuity during and after the pandemic.
As we start off this decade, we expect to see the focus of IC shift towards clarity and practicality.
This is more prevalent in frontline industries that are witnessing a shift from the traditional, paper based forms of communication.
What follows is a brief overview of internal communications trends 2020.
1. Digital Transformation – Mobile-First Communication
A fragmented digital landscape and a large number of processes going online, makes it that much harder to identify a platform that helps every business.
A mobile intranet should be a central control unit to all tools within any digital workplace. To put it simply – it is an integration of multiple digital channels under one umbrella.
2. Give Your Employees a Content Experience
Some communications are worthy of an email or a long winded memo, but others can be delivered in more engaging ways.
Apps, videos and images offer an engaging way of communicating with your employees and make it more likely that they will pay attention to important issues.
Personalizing messaging is also gaining ground at the start of this decade.
3. Employee Experience – Turning Workers into Brand Advocates
Happy employees will share a lot about their work lives with their friends, and can be some of the most powerful advocates that your brand will ever have.
It’s well-known that word of mouth is a hugely effective marketing tool. Messages distributed by employees will get shared more than those distributed by the brand’s social media account.
Internal communications plays a huge role in creating a positive employee experience.
4. Security is the Prime Focus while choosing an Employee Communications App
In order for an employee communication app to be vetted by an IT manager, it has to have robust security related features.
An IT employee will most likely review the security features followed by how customizable the platform is. They will also look for integrations supported by the internal communications tool.
5. Gathering Input Internally
It’s hard for bosses, especially those in large or rapidly growing companies, to stay on top of what is going on within their businesses. Employee communications apps can make the job easier.
The advantage of a digital communications tool is the open feedback loop that it provides, where feedback flows instantly between employers and employees.
When your employees feel listened to they’ll be more productive and they’ll be more likely to be loyal too.
6. Make Productivity Easy
The practice in many frontline industries so far was to hand out timesheets that are actual paper sheets.
Forms, checklists and processes were all stored in huge paper files. Those paper backups are certainly useful to have, but they should be exactly that – backups.
Employee apps are now integrated with smart productivity apps, electronic calendars and easy-to-follow workflows.
7. Collaboration Breeds Success
Internal communication isn’t all about upper management sending messages to frontline workers.
Having a clear, moderated and logged communications channel for workers to communicate with their peers helps them and protects your business interests.
Keeping your internal communications in one place helps foster a spirit of communication and collaboration and makes your employees feel like they are working towards a clear brand mission.
Choose the Right Tools to Empower Your Workforce
The IC space is evolving rapidly. Tools such as AI assistants, translations, and location-aware communication apps are becoming more readily available and more user-friendly by the day.
What’s more, with cloud-based apps there’s no need for a sophisticated in-house IT team to maintain them.
In business, the questions of “who, how and when” are all important, and a good internal communications app will make content easy to find, view and share internally.
To sum things up, internal communicators are getting a seat at the table. Today, communications teams and communications strategies are being given a second glance. This is due to the fact that communications plays a key role in driving business and retaining good talent. Internal communications is also a driving force in creating a healthy work culture.
The mobile intranet is becoming more and more commonplace in today’s workforce. Mobile based employee communication tools are helping businesses loop in frontline workers. These tools are also pivoting to vehicles of crisis communications during crucial times. The employee communications app is here to stay, and is an inevitable part of the digital transformation of an organization!
Why Groupe.io is a Good Internal Communications Tool for Frontline Workers?
Groupe.io is a mobile-first, secure employee communication platform!
It is ideal in frontline industries with a large number of deskless workers. No email address is needed for onboarding.
Groupe rolls out in 24 hours and is Free for 100 users!
It not only facilitates seamless employee communication but also has the following benefits:
If you’d like to know more about how Groupe.io can help your business, write to us at [email protected] or schedule a product demo today!
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