5 ways to boost employee engagement with an enterprise intranet

The impact of poor employee engagement

Poor employee engagement can lead to a raft of issues which spread much further than you might think.

Common positive effects of increasing employee engagement include reduced staff churn, increased confidence in the company, higher productivity, and increased customer satisfaction. Ultimately, an increase in productivity and customer satisfaction means improvements to the bottom line and higher numbers of new and returning customers.

The opposite can be said for poor employee engagement, where feelings of disenfranchisement, loneliness, frustration and general negativity are commonplace. Staff turnover tends to be higher in companies with low engagement, productivity is slower, and customers tend to have lower levels of happiness. All of this adds up to increased costs, poor staff and customer satisfaction, and decreased productivity. Using an enterprise intranet to help counter low engagement helps your company invest in both your staff and customers at the same time.

5 features of an enterprise intranet which increase employee engagement

#1. Make communication easy

Adoption and engagement

Positive adoption and continued engagement are key to a successful enterprise intranet. Leveling the playing field and reducing the number of systems your employees need to use to communicate with each other encourages longer, more frequent interactions and increased collaboration within the company. Many of the negative impacts of the pandemic can be offset with good adoption and engagement of an enterprise intranet, helping staff engage with each other and the company to ensure good lines of communication and a feeling of togetherness despite the current circumstances.

Keep it simple

Keep your intranet software easy to use and make sure all users have quick access to help guides and how-to videos to ensure they can always find out how to complete an action without stress or frustration. Your intranet should be intuitive, with simplicity at the heart of it, helping users find what they want and engage more deeply with the platform. Ensure you provide staff with a means to feedback on areas which could be improved. This feedback should be regularly reviewed, discussed, and acted upon quickly when an improvement is highlighted which would benefit internal communications and employee engagement.

Mobile devices

Ensure your employees can access your enterprise intranet at any time by choosing an intranet designed to offer a native app experience and complete access to your digital workplace on any device. A well designed and constructed app experience which works equally well with Android and iOS, ensures your staff all have the same experience, and encourages increased engagement.

For some employees, work has moved from office based to home based, and they may be using their mobile devices for work more than previously. For others, such as those in warehousing or distribution, mobile devices have been part of their tool set for a long time. To engage employees more effectively, an enterprise intranet can be used to create messages tailored to different groups of employees, helping increase engagement and responses. Having an intranet designed to offer the same experience across all devices helps unify their experience and increase engagement.

#2. Build a social platform

Get social

Drive conversation and increase interaction in your teams using the social elements of your enterprise intranet. Help build colleague relationships and give your employees a voice through social channels, feeds, and media which involves everyone and boosts engagement and employee happiness.

Increase familiarity

Through the use of a social intranet, faces become more familiar and users often have increased confidence speaking with others and are more comfortable to extend their co-worker relationships further afield. An organizational chart shows who’s who, and users can choose to follow, message or call others in their social intranet network. User generated content and announcements help further increase employee engagement and happiness.

Encourage engagement

Ensure your intranet social channels are regularly updated and kept fresh to help keep up engagement. No one wants to see old or repetitive content, so make sure you have a social content plan in place to keep things interesting and staff buzzing and engaged with the content. Give your staff the ability to upload and create, as well as engage, creating a social space where everyone can share and communicate.

Moderation tools

Utilize moderation tools to keep conversation going in the right direction and addressing any content and comment issues before they arise. Moderation tools help increase positive engagement and reduce the need to keep checking in on your enterprise intranet social channels.

#3. Engagement automation

Automate engagement

Enterprise intranets with engagement automation help ramp up employee engagement by communicating with them in a similar fashion to the way companies communicate with customers. Creating automated workflows triggered by specific actions taken on the platform will personalize their experience. This enhances engagement and keeps employees interacting with the intranet and each other.

Omnichannel engagement

Integrate your existing channels and digitize your systems and processes to create an intranet experience which saves employees time and administration. Reduce dissatisfaction and increase engagement by making your intranet the ‘go-to’ platform for your staff. By creating a platform which is easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and gets the job done quickly and easily, companies see an uplift in engagement and employee satisfaction which leads to improvements on all areas of business.

#4. Reward and recognition

Custom badges

Using customized badges to recognize and celebrate the achievements of your employees can be a great way to increase employee engagement and help them feel valued. Leaderboards and mobile rewards ensure your staff can see their badges and get kudos no matter where they are or where they work.

Peer recognition

Enterprise intranets offer users the ability to reward their colleagues and co-workers as a public way to recognize their efforts and send thanks. These points accumulate to create a leaderboard of people recognized by the company entity and the employees within it.

#5. Smart search

Help employees find what they need

One way to ensure your employees will not want to engage with your enterprise intranet is if they struggle to find what they are looking for. The inability to locate documents, help or take required actions inevitably reduces employee engagement. Ensure the enterprise intranet you choose contains an intelligent search facility which is quick and easy to use so that your staff never experience frustration or lost time searching through your intranet.

Keeping staff engaged affects every aspect of business and should be a priority for all internal communication teams. Speak to one of our internal communications experts today to find out how we can help.