Why now is the perfect time for a digital workplace
Do your internal comms suffer from pants technology? If so, you’re in good company, including some of the most esteemed brands in UK plc.
If you’d relish taking the axe to your creaky old tech, we make your business case for a new digital workplace – a company intranet – here.
Since lockdown, our use of email has exploded
The pandemic has seen the use of email as an internal communications channel rise steeply. As armies of workers toil from their kitchen tables and spare rooms, email is the default employee comms tool for countless organisations. Why? Because it’s easy. But ease of sending doesn’t necessarily equate to a good experience for the recipients.
Your senior execs want guarantees their messages are reaching the right people on time. And there’s challenge no. 1; are their emails consumed? Especially if dozens more land on the same day.
At the height of the lockdown when news broke then turned on a dime, emails were falling thick and fast. Enter challenge no. 2; employees feel bombarded. And what about when an employee needs to refer to that email? Can they even find it, or is it lost forever?
This overboiled soup of communications serves no one. In response, many organisations have adopted collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or Yammer. But because much of this happened at breakneck speed, things are still messy.
What channel is that urgent update from the CEO in? And maybe you have guests in Teams, or you operate in multiple tenants, so you end up duplicating your message to be sure it reaches everyone. Yep, the old ‘spray and pray’ approach. Which is a shame, as it potentially undermines the value and distinct roles of these channels, diluting their benefits to your organisation.
But we’re not saying email is old hat; far from it. What we are saying is that when it comes to employee comms, it’s better to use email as a notification channel. Instead of an arm’s long message (cue collective eye-rolling) alert your employees to the communication and point them to where it is.
This is where a company intranet like Fresh pays dividends; centralised and accessible storage for your internal comms. If you’d had this at the start of lockdown, what difference would it have made to you? How would it have helped your people?
And as we steel ourselves for more restrictions, Covid-20 or the zombie apocalypse, is there a better time to modernise your comms tools? You might have 101 problems, but the lack of a slick and established comms channel needn’t be one of them.
Onboarding new employees in the middle of a pandemic is complicated
While there can be no winners in this ghastly place that we find ourselves, some sectors – like essential retail, are bucking the trend and recruiting in vast numbers. But social distancing has put paid to traditional inductions.
Without the handshakes and in-person handovers, how do you ensure new recruits get a consistent view of your organisation? With a digital workplace like Fresh, you can give your newbies a hub for everything they need in those crucial early weeks.
And we’re not just talking about a route to your HR policies. Your intranet is the ideal place to house company videos (say, a message from your CEO), organisation charts, learning zones and company FAQs.
You could also use your digital workplace to welcome new people and give them an easy route to a buddy system or support, so they quickly feel part of your company.
You might also like How to Make Your Company Intranet Sing.
We have a company intranet but pushing out critical information to our people is painful
At the height of the pandemic, we talked with household names with company intranets but no quick route to publishing employee comms. In every instance, they had limited autonomy because third parties control their intranets.
Picture the scene; it’s 9 pm, and the Government announces a significant change. You have over 1,000 employees this affects, and you need to let them know how you’re handling it, and fast. But first, a commercial transaction is necessary. You must raise a PO before your provider uploads the content to your intranet.
A digital workplace like Fresh gives you the agility you need to share that essential update without going through hoops. And you get the best of both worlds because we’ll help you build the structure and functionality in line with good practice and give you the control you want. Plus, you’ll have the optimism that it serves your long-term needs. So, do your worst, zombies.
You can also give your employees personalised experiences, so they only see content that’s relevant to them – by department, team, role or location, for example.
For a deeper dive, catch our blog: Crisis Communications: Advice for Employee Comms in the Covid Era.
We’ve been going at 100mph, and we’re accumulating content and technical debt
In the haste to adopt collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Yammer and (dare we breathe its name, Zoom), many organisations have got themselves into something of a pickle.
There wasn’t the time to properly consider stuff like good governance and best practice when implementing these tools.
And now there’s a jumble of content residing in email and multiple channels, with no real control or oversight of it. Nor indeed any insight around the risks this may pose to your organisation in the future.
A global pandemic is enough to cope with, without the spectre of the GDPR or the Information Commissioner knocking on your front door. Or indeed a cyber-criminal sneaking in through your back door.
But let’s wrap up on a positive note; you can fix this, and we can help. We can bring together a team from across our specialisms and box everything up securely inside Fresh.
To learn more, we hosted a special online event in November, and you can watch completely on-demand. It’s called Digital Revolution Live. If you’re in internal comms or HR, you won’t want to miss our sessions on Designing your digital workplace with end-user needs in mind and Operating a successful, focused digital workplace and more. To register, click on the button below.
