When it comes to employee communications, there are so many ways to get your message across creatively. Depending on your budget and the company's culture, the possibilities are endless! From over the top communication campaigns like wall murals that detail a high level strat plan, to email and video campaigns that create buzz for new employee programs, and of course, morale boosting events like Office Olympics, there are so many ways to keep employees engaged and informed. While new campaigns and creative outlets keep things interesting, a steady, one-source hub for day-to-day communication is vital to keep communication on point and on source.
In the office, we recently launched the iCIMS Employee Portal. Over the course of the past three months, it took the collaboration of employees from across the organization to pull together what we needed to jam-pack the site with relevant content. Our goal was to create a single source where employees could go to find everything they needed to do their job, communicate with one another, and build a sense of community.
A big part of this project centered on communication – we essentially turned the way we communicated with each other inside out and pushed aside our mass distribution lists. This now requires employees who would normally send a company-wide announcement via their Outlook email to post their news to the portal instead. This helps reduce the amount of mass email. In a way, the employee portal takes all of the communication that already existed and funnels it into one key location – where everything is documented and searchable. In fact, employees can now pick which communications they want to view by choosing to subscribe to specific pages and then, they will receive notifications once there’s been an update. Thus, reducing inbox inundation.
So, with a whole new way to communicate, share, and find information, comes the topic of adoption – and it takes time. By monitoring the back end and understanding what people are interested in, we can tailor our messaging and build campaigns to help shift attention to important areas. The continuous promotion of the new site will be essential in moving the needle towards full adoption and help to do away with mass communication that blankets multiple organizations, if it’s not necessarily needed.
By changing the way we communicate, we can better ensure that strategic messages are consolidated, which in turn paves the way for team initiatives and ensures proper alignment. By consolidating the information, we’re providing employees with one place to go to find key metrics, to pinpoint progress and to define accountability. By combining the portal as our single source for communication and knowledge as a baseline, we can build on that by integrating company-wide meetings, events, contests, and collateral, while knowing the site is our solid source, or baseline for need to know items.
So, as we continue to work on the iCIMS Employee Portal, and increase adoption rates through fresh, relevant content, contests and consistent strategic messages, we hope to give employees an outlet to build and share their knowledge and provide a soapbox to state their case on current projects, programs, milestones – or simply plan the next company happy hour.
