Connecting employees across various locations, offices and workspaces with your central organization presents significant challenges in a hybrid workplace.
If you don’t have a platform that connects employees to your central organization, you risk having a blind spot on those who need your support. If you have multiple platforms, apps and tools, you risk overwhelming them with information and ‘noise’.
However, what you might not know is just how important it is to have a single platform (an employee communications app) that connects them to the resources your organization provides
The better connected remote and hybrid employees feel to their workplaces, the more engaged, productive and satisfied they are at work – which is reflected in your organization’s profitability and the customer perception of your brand.
You need to choose your employee app very carefully, which is why we have put together this list to show you exactly what it needs to do to be of use to you and your mobile-first teams.
10 things your employee communication app needs to do
Send ‘super-powered’ push notifications
Smartphones and push notifications go hand in hand. However, these notifications can get a bad reputation if they are more annoying than helpful.
That’s why you need to be able to customize them to your needs – and let your employees have a say in what they receive.
For example, if your employee wants to follow a conversation or receive an update on when a workspace is updated with new sales material, they can get that.
However, if they need to sign a policy document, or be made aware of a local issue that could impact their safety, you can send nudges and priority notifications to them… entirely customizable to region, seniority and interest.
This ensures what they see is essential or meaningful – but never irrelevant.
Immerse your employees in your brand
For many of your frontline employees, remote workers or contractors, the (digital) employee experience you provide via your employee app will be the only experience they have of your company.
That being said, even if you never meet an employee face-to-face, you don’t lack the means to immerse them in your brand – and as you may know, well-executed internal branding drives loyalty and engages employees with your mission.
That’s why an app that uses the colours and iconography of your brand or sub-brand is a must-have, and if it’s completely white labelled, a generic ‘employee app’ can be transformed into your must-have platform.
Add, remove, and tweak functionality on the fly
Whatever tool you use to connect with your employees needs to support your organization’s ability to be agile and adaptable.
This is especially true for an employee communications app that may be your frontline teams’ only lifeline to your central organization.
That’s why your internal communications app should allow you to tweak, remove and add functionalities progressively.
Integrated Microsoft Viva Connections Cards can set up simple news functions, or complex Global Directories – and support for Microsoft Power Platform can allow you to rapidly deploy apps that support rapid growth, such as inventory management and employee onboarding apps when opening new stores.
Tip: Microsoft integration isn’t a pre-requisite – the Reach Plugin Framework and Zapier compatibility allow you to build Reach applications that work for your business.
Analyse, improve and iterate with reporting
Data helps you make better decisions, including those related to the effectiveness of your internal communication.
Within your employee communications app, reporting and analytics can help you see what kinds of posts and content are getting the most engagement, how many people are benefitting (or not) from your latest update, and – for compliance – how many people have read and signed important policy documents.
With Microsoft, you can integrate this into the PowerBI platform – but LiveTiles Reach has robust tools for doing this too.
Store and share content reactively
When it comes to the rapid response required by frontline and regional teams in seizing promotional opportunities or the necessity of promptly providing new joiners with training materials or policy documents, your employee communications app should facilitate immediate access to these resources without the need for a computer.
With MS365 integration, you can place SharePoint file storage and sharing within easy reach. This empowers local retail teams, for example, with the capability to print reactive sales collateral directly from their phones, while providing regional management teams with a secure platform for central file sharing within their communication network.
Connect employees socially
Connecting distributed and hybrid teams is one of the biggest challenges organizations today face – and yet doing it successfully brings some of the greatest boosts in employee engagement, retention and job satisfaction.
The social experience at work is a vital part of your employee experience, and your internal communications app should provide the tools to connect disparate teams on a more ‘human’ level.
A corporate social network might sound ‘gimmicky’, but the fact is that when employees can share personal successes and come together over shared interests, that contributes greatly to a positive corporate culture, and is a significant driver of workplace well-being.
Organise events
In the same vein, organizing workplace events can be brilliant conduits for team building, socializing, and idea generation.
It’s not just social events – though these are important – but webinars, in-person seminars and more compliance-focused campaigns such as policy updates and facility safety announcements.
Setting up virtual or in-person events, targeting invites by specific business unit, location or interest group, and nudging employees to attend are powerful functions you can achieve with a dedicated Viva Connections card.
Translate content across borders
Including employees everywhere doesn’t just mean adapting to regional customs – it also means overcoming language barriers.
However, the same is true even within the same geography – as frontline teams are frequently ethnically and linguistically diverse.
That’s why your employee communications app – already a powerful tool for inclusion – should adapt to your user’s preferred language.
Empower organizations with AI
In any employee communications tool, AI is now a non-negotiable productivity aid.
Even at this early stage, tools such as an AI virtual assistant to help employees find resources and organize tasks can eliminate human error (and reduce hours searching for information).
Meanwhile, a content-writing assistant can give time-poor team members the ability to not only write content, but understand how it will be received before it’s even published, thanks to sentiment analysis.
The most important factor, however, is that your employee communications app is built to accommodate new advances in AI – and it’s not something every app is capable of.
Authenticate Securely
Authentication management is vital for mobile-first teams.
After all, even if you can’t always guarantee the security of the mobile/Wi-Fi connection your mobile employees access, you can at least guarantee that your internal communications app data is safe.
Your authentication should use a secure platform – and preferably allow for several, such as Authenticator, Google, Okta and OpenID.
Remember, not every frontline team, temp, or contractor will use the same tool, and this flexibility ensures that only people who need access to your platform have it.
Get Early Access to the new LiveTiles Reach
When employees everywhere are demanding better digital employee experiences to connect them to their organizations, LiveTiles Reach can provide a single, universal hub for your mobile-first employees to engage with all the resources your company has to offer.
It’s releasing soon, and if you want to see how it will transform the way your organization connects, you can reach out to learn how to get early access.
