8 Essential Steps to Consider in the Digital Transformation Process of Employee Communication

As we find ourselves in the age of digital transformation, many organisations are reexamining the value of employee communication and how it relates to information sharing within organisations.

Employee communication: A two-way conversation

For many companies, the employee experience, communication content, and the methods in which it is delivered are not part of a greater digital workplace strategy. Traditionally, the means of communication adopted by organisations has been one-way, with their internal communications strategy focusing solely on information dissemination, rather than engaging employees in a two-way conversation. Many companies are still relying on email and intranet as the primary method to reach their employees. While this might work for office-based workers, those employees who are on the frontline have little to no access to this technology. In fact, it is this segment of the workforce that feels the least engaged and the most marginalised as the result of a lack of access to the necessary technology where company communications are available.

The Wyzetalk solution, which is a mobile-first digital employee engagement platform, provides the tools to reach previously out of reach employees and create a sense of connection via an authentic employee experience that puts the end-user first. Through the implementation of a carefully throughout digital communications strategy, the Wyzetalk solution boosts employee engagement, boosting employee productivity, and overall business performance.

It is our experience that an absence of a strong, digital internal communications strategy can have a long-lasting effect on the overall digital transformation process for an organisation: employees who are not engaged will fail to adopt new digital processes, halting digital transformation across the business, which in turn has a profound effect on productivity and the company’s bottom line.

As a starting point, it is important to understand the power of an internal communication strategy as part of the bigger picture when it comes to digital transformation. For any digital transformation strategy to be successful, employee buy-in is essential.

Eight-step process for modernising employee communication

Step 1: Identifying Goals

It is important to establish an emotional connection between employee and employer, so unpacking the company’s goals goes beyond just the business objectives. There are cultural elements that make the business human that needs to be considered too. These include the vision and mission of the organisation, employee wellbeing, social responsibility, employee feedback, rewards, and recognition among co-workers, to name a few. It is these elements that bring the communication strategy to life and engage employees.

So, how organisations convey goals is important. They must ‘walk the walk’ and show a commitment to being authentic in how they communicate with their employees if they are to achieve true engagement and create a positive employee experience. At the end of the day, effective communication of the organisation’s goals plays a critical role in the overall employee experience.

The Wyzetalk solution provides an ideal platform to share goals and to enable digital dexterity, which is what is required for employees to participate in the digital workplace. The platform enables true communication, and therefore real employee engagement and an overall improvement of the employee experience.

Step 2: Segmentation

Segmenting an organization’s communications provides a way to focus on messaging and have relevant content directed to the relevant people. The Wyzetalk platform provides a mechanism for organisations to segment messaging, ensuring that the right message gets to the right person at the right time.

Step 3: The Communications Journey

When mapping out the employee communications journey it is important to look at current behavioural patterns, and what works, and what needs to change. Another factor to consider is why digital transformation is necessary and conveying this so that employees can understand the ‘why’ to buy in and adopt a change in behaviour.

When we create employee engagement solutions for our clients, we do all the groundwork to ensure that the employee communication journey is carefully mapped out to affect an improved employee experience. All elements of the experience are considered by our highly experienced Professional Services team, who walk every step of the way with our customers.

Step 4: Establish Behavioural Objectives and Metrics

For a communications plan to be successful and put organisations on the road to digital transformation, it is important to establish benchmarks from the get-go.

Behavioural change can be a challenge to quantify, so according to the Gartner report using HR (Human Resource) and process-related KPIs are one way to measure the effectiveness of a communications strategy.

Working hand in hand with our customers, Wyzetalk establishes measurable, definable parameters by which to gauge employee engagement and the efficacy of the communications plan.

Step 5: Determining the Device, Media, and Content Experience

By defining the workforce segments, providing a detailed framework for the communications journey, and identifying what behavioural change is required, organisations can determine what technology is required, how it is disseminated, and what the desired experience should be.

For example, when it comes to choosing the delivery device, frontline workers who do not have access to computers will fall short of the employee experience if these are the main tools for content delivery. So, a mobile-centric solution is required. Enter the Wyzetalk platform. Ours is a solution that can be used on both feature and smartphones and can utilise reverse billing to eliminate the cost to the employee.

When choosing appropriate media to share, considering the experience of the end-user is the only way to improve engagement. For example, sharing a text-heavy PDF will have the same impact as sharing a video clip.

It is also important to consider employee feedback and peer-to-peer communication, as well as employee-to-business communication. These elements speak to the idea of a two-way connection, not just the imparting of information on the part of the employer.

Another key element to consider, that the Wyzetalk platform provides, is the integration of existing systems. Rather than reinvention the wheel, our platform can be integrated with HR and operational systems, so that relevant, correct, real-time, business-critical information is available to those who need it when they need it. In the case of HR integrations, such as payslips and leave applications, this improves the employee experience tenfold by putting the power of their data in their hands.

Step 6: Assess Technology Enablement Options

This step is all about choosing the right technology. There are several products on the market that all fulfil different elements of the employee experience as a whole, and that incorporate employee communication. But few tick all the boxes required for successful employee adoption and engagement. For a seamless employee experience, and successful buy-in, simplicity and ease of use are key. As an enterprise solution, the Wyzetalk platform has been designed as an employee engagement solution that can be customised to suit the needs of both employees and organisations. It is scalable, and we offer our customers the guidance and expertise of our Professional Services team to create strategies specific to individual business requirements that are agile, flexible, and that achieve high levels of engagement.

Step 7: Executing the Campaign Process

The Gartner report correctly states that successful communication strategies are those that are executed like digital marketing campaigns: all messaging and the channels used follow an overarching story. This, states the report, is the first step to improving the employee experience.

As part of the execution of the content, rigorous reporting needs to be carried out. All comms need to be tracked and monitored via analytic information provided and put into a digestible report. The Wyzetalk platform is accompanied by an analytics dashboard that provides organisations with key metrics and insights so that when a change of approach is required, it can be easily identified.

A further element of a successful campaign strategy is to encourage employees to interact with content: like, share, and comment. This once again speaks to two-way conversations between the employee and the employer, making people feel heard and cared about.

Step 8: Measure Success, Adjust, Repeat

A successful communications plan revolves around the employee experience. So, how workers interpret and engage with the content shared is a particularly important measure of success and needs immediate adjustment if the results are negative.

While success is the desired outcome, often some elements prove not to be as effective. When these are identified, immediate action is needed.

The agility of any employee engagement solution is one of the key determining factors in its success – if something does not work it needs to change or be reimagined completely. The Wyzetalk platform is not only agile, but we have a dedicated team that works closely with our customers to create content that works, is relevant, and that is engaging. Moreover, we can respond to crises as they happen due to the dynamic nature of our platform.

Areas to look at include:

  • activity-based data, which covers the participation and contribution of employees
  • feedback-based data, which incorporates surveys, employee feedback, polls, and ideation
  • outcome-based data, which connects the achieved behavioural changes to a set of predetermined KPIs to measure how engaged an organisation’s employees are in their jobs.

So, in conclusion, not only does the Wyzetalk platform provide a myriad of solutions for modernising employee engagement, but it can also enable digital transformation in the workplace itself by its very nature of being a digital employee engagement solution.

To find out more about the Wyzetalk platform, and how it can help your organisation engage its employees speak to one of our experts.

 

*Source: Gartner: Eight Steps for Modernizing Employee Communications in the Digital Workplace May 2020