21 May
How to Transform Digital Workplace Culture with Employee Engagement
An organization’s culture is the collection of shared beliefs, assumptions, values that determines how their employees behave in the organization. Every company develops and sustains a unique culture, that provides guidelines and limitations to its workforce. Culture is also determined by the company’s physical location, the facilities that are given, and the ambiance created for the employees. As the corporate world transforms into a remote work environment in response to the pandemic, how will the digital workplace culture ever transfer?
Even before the pandemic, technology was equally important to the workforce. Many businesses were dependent on technology for engaging with clients, flexible work environments, and automation processes, etc. However, the coronavirus outbreak and the worldwide lockdown accelerated the use of collaboration tools at a faster pace. It enforced the corporate companies to opt for digital collaboration tools so that the organizations could continue their operation remotely and continue to serve their clients.
A digital workplace enables the remote workforce to communicate and collaborate in an unprecedented way. By integrating the technologies that employees use, the digital workplace will cut down the communication barriers, thereby transforming employee engagement by fostering efficiency and growth. The key to success lies in the proper adoption of a digital workplace strategy capable of transforming the company culture.
Employee engagement nurtures company culture
Employee engagement highly impacts the business- growth, innovation, collaboration, employee turnover, customer satisfaction, etc. While organizations are transforming their workplace culture, it is very important to keep employee engagement in their mind. Connecting the dispersed workforce will make the company’s internal network strong. Brainstorming during coffee breaks will lighten up the mood, connects the team members, ideate and this is the best way an employee can contribute to the business goals.
Recognizing and rewarding the employees will motivate them to do their best to meet organizational goals, culture, and strategic priorities. The survey conducted by SurveyMonkey partnered with Bonsly shows that 82% of employees are happy when they’re recognized at work. Valuing the employees will enhance employee engagement and also reflects the company’s culture.
Employee engagement initiatives transforming digital workplace culture
1. Collaboration
Remote workers mostly feel lonely and shunned. Connecting them via an internal communication tool is very important. Collaboration is vital for an organization’s success and productivity. It is important to use internal communication tools that boost collaboration with the team members and employees from other departments. The core benefit is to share knowledge and expertise quickly with ease. This leads to better innovation which drives profitability and employee satisfaction. Internal communication tools will enable employees to connect to the organization, company strategy and contribute to it.
2. Workplace socialization
Feeling stressed and isolated during remote working has become very common. Encouraging social conversations and building connections with fellow workers is one of the solutions to break the work-related stress. Collaboration workplace tools like intranet facilitate virtual tea breaks, team-bonding activities that boost conversations with their colleagues and act as a stress buster. Social relationships are much needed to reduce workplace dissatisfaction and increasing productivity. LinkedIn study says, 46% of workers feel that friendship with their colleagues makes them grow happier. Social wellness is an important factor that builds trust, decreases stress, helps in team-building, and makes collaboration work.
3. Mobile-friendly
Employees are distributed throughout and work at different times. Reaching workers on time is the tedious task one can ever do, as they work in different time zones. Also, some frontline workers do not carry the laptop with them. Intranets with the mobile-ready feature can help to reach employees, irrespective of their location. It helps the workforce to access the digital workplace on the go, they can catch up on company news, policies, and activities at any time. Push notifications on mobile devices will engage the employees and ensure that they do not miss out on any important notification.
4. Gamification
Often, we get caught up in our daily routine work activities and miss the thrill of games and competition. Gamification is a trending topic among the top leaders in the business world and internal communications. Employee engagements are extremely low and reports show that 70% of the US workforce tag themselves as disengaged from the work. Intranets using game-based elements like leaderboard, achievement medals, competition will get people actively engaged with their work and builds bonding between the team members. According to the Medium article, 90% of employees are more productive and 72% of workers are inspired to work harder upon gamification. This article also includes that game-based motivation leads to a rise in engagement levels by 48%. Engaged employees are motivated which leads to high productivity and attain business goals.
5. Rewards and recognition
Remote culture witnesses poor employee engagement, which is a common problem encountered by every organization. Employee appreciation is very necessary at the workplace. Recognizing the employees to know that their hard work and efforts are valued and acknowledged. Intranets can help in noticing the recognized employees. This practice makes employees increase their engagement levels, push themselves to exceed goals, and keeps their morale high.
Ready to transform your digital workplace culture?
Company culture is a two-way communication between employees and their leaders. Intranets act as a ladder that fosters communication within the organization and develops a sense of connectivity within the employees. They are used to share trusted information that helps the remote workforce to work effectively and align with the company’s priorities and cultural norms. With the internal communication tool, the remote employees are aligned and strongly connected to the organization and feel like they are part of a family.
Acuvate’s Mesh 3.0- digital workplace accelerator platform helps in the swift transformation of your company culture. It includes features such as Personalization and recommendation, mobile-friendly, communication and collaboration, knowledge mining, and much more. Mesh has it all!
To know more about Mesh, please contact our digital workplace consultants to get a personalized demo.
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