Employee engagement is a workplace approach which results in conditions where all employees or all the members in an organization work together to give their best performance each day. Where the goals and values of the company are in sync with the employee’s objectives. Contributing to organization’s success along with a sense of their own well-being.
Shockingly, the most engaged segment of workers, consisting of managers and executives make up for only 38% or barely over a third of the total workforce, according to a recent stat
So what in its true sense can be called as an engaged employee?
It maybe refers to an employee who wakes up in the morning thinking “Great, I am going to work on what I need to accomplish today. I have some ideas about how to do it easily and I am looking forward to seeing the team and helping them work well today”.
Recently, Harvard Business Review published research on top factors leading to employee complaints about their leaders. An astounding 91% agreed that lack of communication can drag executives down. The miscommunication factors consisted of drawbacks like: not providing clear directions, not knowing employees names, and not recognizing employee achievements.
Company intranet portal are a traditional way of connecting staff. This should be the hub of communication and the base of knowledge sharing for the employees. But on the other hand intranet are old, under used and not valued by the employee. There is a stagnancy with the old intranet systems. According to a research done by McKinsey Global Institute, using social tools to boost communication can raise employee productivity by as much as 20 to 25%. The social intranet derives its base functionality from the traditional intranet like starter information, contact directory, team hierarchy and so on, combined with social networking tools. Which enables them to form groups for particular projects, online communication and sharing resources.
Let us check some of the ways that can jumpstart the process of engaging your employees:
- Keep things simple
The best thing about modern intranet is that it can be customized, and configured in several different ways according to your requirements. An intranet should be easy to navigate rather than causing confusion. What intranet should do is to simplify complex issues and makes them easy to use without losing style and substance.Bringing top level executives and management in the picture would certainly help to clarify things with respect to, what needs to be done. They should consider establishing focus group with representatives of different levels deliberating on what the business needs are and how intranet is a solution. So the basic question to ask is “why Intranet would be the tool for engaging the staff”. - Give a voice to your employees
Sometimes employees feel that their voice is not being heard and it can become the most disengaging factor that decreases morale. Asking employee feedback on ideas and new strategies as a manager through creation of a digital platform that allows employees to express their opinions can make a huge difference to employee perception.Intranet based forums are a great way to ask questions and share ideas where not only employees can participate in a discussion but even the management can get involved and respond to queries. - Take things on cloud
Cloud and mobile technologies offer a great way to expand on ideas of delivering information to employees with a set of tools that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. Mobility is one such factor which companies should consider while adopting Intranet, because security potential is high with self-hosted intranet and privacy is maintained at all the levels.Cloud based intranet solution are preferred by vast number of businesses today. The reason being that cloud does most of the heavy lifting and removes the confusion while maintaining privacy in the process, if you are choosing a good vendor. With the rise of millennials it is seen that global accessibility will also continue to increase. They believe that working remotely increases there productivity. Which increases the need for collaboration software that is accessible at locations apart from office premises. - Existing IT issues
It takes time and lot of planning when deploying a new software in a company. That is no different than having on-premise intranet. Which will require both the expertise and extensive work hours to secure and maintain such infrastructure. Unless your in-house IT is ready to deploy such a solution which will in the end require training and continuous improvement, if your options are limited.A cloud based solution on the other hand will reduce the need for dedicated IT resources and free your technical dept. So choose a good intranet vendor who will remain till the software is live but also further supports and trains your IT for such a change. - Make room for fun
Modern Intranet doesn’t have to be slow and boring where all you are doing is to check for any important update or for data storage when you need it.Today’s intranet is about much more than that, features like direct messaging, chat groups, news, audio and video file support etc. are among few of the features of modern day intranet. You can create groups on hobbies, start sharing videos where a long day of work can convert into a fun discussion by sharing a funny meme or video.So last but not the least, when looking to set up intranet there are up-front costs of purchasing hardware and licensing fees. With cloud based solution there are advantages like 24/7 support, free upgrades and other benefits. Which can be huge cost saving factor for any company. So before you go ahead into making a decision, check for all the factors. Lay out a well-planned strategy of adopting such software and then compare them with others scrutinising the long term benefits.
What Waferwire can do?
Waferwire intranet solution is not just easy to deploy but also takes most of the in-house development and deployment responsibility away from your shoulder, so that you can focus on other important issues. It provides all the features which a modern day intranet should have along with the added benefits of Microsoft Office 365 which from time to time keeps coming out with new and exciting features.
We have plans for all types of business verticals providing them with personalized and easy to deploy SharePoint intranet site. When it comes to collaboration within the company it is very important that your needs and all the aspects of your business are understood. We take the time and with the help of our expert developers, deliver a solution which is not just restricted to document sharing and file transfer. In fact, we ensure that this platform creates and adds value to your organization.
