Human Resources of a company are the building blocks of its success and achieving the desired business strategy and goals. What makes it one of the most important functions in the company as it deals with its topmost assest- Employees. According to a report on Global Human Capital Trends presented by Bersin Deloitte, the need to create a strategy for employee engagement has been the most important focus areas of HR. This is a response to the growing worries of employee retention, owing to challenges of diversity in culture.
Collaboration is the key
Here at SpadeWorx, SharePoint is our ‘go-to’ technology for intranet projects. Our clients have found that it opens the door to collaboration, social interaction, and is an effective tool to connect their disconnected workers.
Imagine if your managers had everything, they needed to manage their team in one place.
What if doctors had a way of consulting each other on the fly through hand-held devices to help them make faster and more accurate diagnoses?
If your employees have to travel, what difference would it make to have an online data bank of travel tips, recommended hotels and restaurants? Not only could it save them time, but it could also help keep their expenses down.
Therefore, an intranet that contained information in one location that can be accessed from anywhere would not only help the engagement of your employees, it would also have a positive effect on your productivity.
Keeps communications flowing
Another key ingredient to employee engagement is communication.
All too often companies communicate from on high – where senior management merely broadcast one-way messages to their workforce, which is a real shame, because news is a great tool for engagement.
Adding a social element to your intranet gives employees the opportunity to comment and share ideas. Collaborating in this way makes them feel part of your organization rather than just a faceless employee.
Learning from each other as a Knowledge Management Tool
It is this social element that really drives employee engagement.
The ability to contribute ideas can drive innovation and inclusivity. An intranet that enables instant messaging, video conferencing, online meetings and online document storage gives your employees the freedom to manage their own time and opens up the possibility of remote working.
Employees also need to be able to provide feedback and voice their opinions, beyond the standard review sessions with managers. Introducing a social element will enable this and make it easy to conduct polls and provide a useful forum for online discussions.
Listening to your employees with polls in SharePoint
According to a study conducted by Dale Carnegie Training, 71 percent of employees are not fully engaged with their work. And, without a positive, meaningful environment, employees will disengage and look elsewhere.
One of the big distinguishers of Millennials is the need to have their voices heard. Using polls is a good tactic to use with this demographic because it creates a culture that makes them feel safe to speak up. In addition, it allows a company to cross reference from month to month to see an increase or decrease in employee engagement. The ultimate goal of course would to see a steady increase in employee happiness levels.
SharePoint can help make their jobs easier
SharePoint has the potential to make work a lot less dull. It removes the need to do endless filing, it makes it much easier to find company information and makes it much simpler to get documents signed off (and many more things besides). SharePoint can reduce the pain points of your employees, and with a little development, can cut out many of their most hated tasks.
So, how are your competitors using SharePoint to reduce employee pain points? The most obvious method here is regular, practical training. We’ve all been to generic training sessions and struggled to keep our eyes open. However, if training is targeted at your users’ specific needs and shows them how they can save time and effort, they’ll be wide awake.
All of this adds up to greater engagement.
SharePoint’s powerful platform can easily be manipulated and molded by skilled designers, architects and developers, to create tools that will help you achieve your business goals.
By empowering your staff through greater collaboration, on-demand learning and clearer communication channels, you’ll see greater engagement levels that will have a positive impact on your ROI.
