22 Feb
How to improve internal communication Amid the New Normal
While navigating through the complexities of the pandemic, the need to communicate just-in-time information to their team became very crucial for any organization. It highlighted the need for many open-ended improvements in the workplace to run it more efficiently.
Organizations realized internal communications, which were previously overlooked for a reason, are now the lifeblood for every organization. Organizations initiated transformation to ensure remote employees are well updated and engaged while sustaining productivity. According to Gallup research, 67% of US employees are disengaged at work. It also states that sales increase by 20% when employees are actively engaged, 17% higher productivity, and 21% higher profitability.
On the other side, Gallup poll revealed that 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news.
Moreover, employees are the engines that move the company ahead. Fueling effective communication within the organization will reap the benefits of a thriving, engaged, and well-performing digital workforce.
Unlike the old clunky intranet platform, the modern evolving intranet works as the best tool for collaboration within organizations and simplifies internal communication across all departments and teams. It delivers personalized information at fingertips according to preference, role, location, and activities. Thus, the modern intranet for internal communication will act as the cornerstone in the new normal of work.
It’s time to explore how an intranet can support internal communication amid new normal:
1. Centralized information hub
Businesses mostly have several departments which even work in silos. All these entities often have multiple channels of communication and collaboration, causing the connectivity gap. An average employee spends 2.5 hours a day searching for information due to which employees often miss out on important ones.
Regardless of where the employees are working, it is crucial to ensure employees can access the right information, news, and updates, resulting in employees feeling more informed, engaged, and motivated towards a business goal. Intranet equips employees with one centralized hub that enables easy access to company news, insights, and information through automated push notifications that boost internal communications in the digital workplace.
The single interface brings all day-to-day apps under one common platform to discover all information smoothly without the hassle of logging and switching into multiple apps. It acts as a one-stop-destination to collaborate, communicate, search, and share information at fingertips. If you want to improve internal communications, start with exploring how your employees get the relevant information at the right time.
Learn More: Workplace Effectiveness In The New Normal: 5 Myths Debunked
2. Virtual water cooler
Remote work has been on the rise ever since the pandemic broke out. In such challenging times, a virtual water cooler for remote workers becomes a necessity. It gives the space to communicate informally without the burden of mandatory meetings and can help encourage impromptu brainstorming sessions so that they can share their ideas and thoughts freely. It offers the chance to build a bond with the team when people are not working in physical space. This virtual water cooler for remote workers accelerates performance and will be easier for the employees to work together, thus improving levels of productivity and engagement.
3. Team engagement activities
Empowering your employees to share their opinions is one of the most effective ways to improve communication in the workplace. The modern intranet feature encourages the productive two-way dialogue between managers and employees —make sure employees share their ideas and discuss issues when they arise.
Implementing an open-door policy can help in numerous ways. The modern intranet features for employees and leadership facilitate both sharing information and articles, providing feedback, likes, and comments. These communication ideas give employees a feeling of importance and a remarkable way to be motivated towards their work. The best engaging social platform revolutionizes employee interaction and collaboration. It facilitates everyone to react, comment, share ideas, ensuring a remarkable social experience for everyone. Additionally, gamification-based idea sharing is often a fun treat for employees that motivates creating healthy engagement and collaboration within the workforce.
4. Round the clock virtual assistant
Chatbots are a predominant asset to the internal communication strategy. It facilitates the workforce to obtain information with push and pull, reducing the response time and quickly rendering answers to important queries.
With the new normal of remote work or hybrid work culture, there are multiple questions to be answered, which becomes difficult for the support and HR team to handle due to high call volume. Intranet bot works as the robot co-worker to support internal communications answering FAQs, IT support, important information, news, etc. As a result, many companies are readily adopting and using their conversational interfaces in multiple ways to navigate the pandemic with evolving needs. Thus, this innovative technology offers tremendous potential to enterprises that allows everyone to work according to their schedule. Talking about flexible working hours that can be late evenings or about frontline workers, there is a lack of collaboration and information availability. For example, the onboarding process, form-related questions, leave requests, expenses claim forms, health insurance, and so on. The chatbot will solve all these problems quickly. It can help 24/7, directing the workforce to real-time data and trotting off the relevant answer to company queries.
Conclusion
The crisis has been cataclysmic with its twists and turns and, businesses are now learning to cope with unfolding situations. Hence, internal communication plays a pivotal role in any business functionality. A Well-thought-out internal communication strategy fueled by meticulous digital solutions provides essential and timely insight into business challenges, effective in decision making that drives engagement, collaboration, and productivity even while the employees are continuing to work remotely.
Why MESH?
Mesh, an AI-powered Employee Experience Platform, transforms the way an organization communicates, collaborates, and makes working from anywhere easy. It acts as a one-stop-shop in providing relevant information at the right time to the right people at their fingertips. It provides employees with a single point of access to personalized information by breaking down silos, tailored based on teams, geo, activities, preferences, etc. It helps organizations transform their internal communications and take employee experience and organization productivity to the next level with a seamless deployment framework.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug