Employee engagement is the cornerstone of a strong and successful HR strategy. It’s more than just a buzzword swallowing up the industry – countless studies have shown a clear correlation between happy and productive workers. One example is the now famous study from the University of Warwick which found an average increase of 12% in productivity amongst happy workers. The evidence is clear but how to put this science to practice isn’t quite as straightforward. It’s a question most HR leaders are constantly trying to address, how can I drive employee engagement at work and how can we ensure employees feel happy?

Consolidate and Connect with your Employees

To answer those important questions, HR teams are innovating with new people policies. Research has even shown that businesses are planning to increase their employee engagement spending, on average, by up to 45% (G2 Crowd, 2019). One common theme, when thinking about effective employee engagement, is the importance of clear communication with staff. Communications provide an opportunity to reinforce purpose and vision and keep employees informed. Many companies try to connect with their employees over email, an internal intranet, instant messaging platforms, pdfs, shared documents, and more. It can be a pretty complicated minefield when navigating across multiple information channels. Avoid confusion and enhance the employee experience by consolidating these channels, ideally on the platform staff use the most - their smartphone. HR technology has come leaps and bounds in the last 10 years and it’s well accepted that implementing the righttechnology can free up time, money, and resources. If you’re implementing HR technologies with the aim to improve communication and drive engagement, mobile should be the first platform you consider. Going mobile and creating an app for your staff can initially seem intimidating. But creating an app doesn’t have to cost the Earth and take up 9 months of IT and developer teams’ time. Guidebook’s self-serve platform allows you to build an employee-facing app in a matter of hours. And by placing self-service tools in the hands of managers, HR resources can be untethered to spend more time proactively working. Recent research from PwC highlights the growing popularity of do-it-yourself technology; 47% of HR managers are already using self-service tools. If you’re still curious about the types of apps you could create for your staff, check out some of the examples below.

Training - Employees on the Go

Employee training materials are often scattered across a number of communication channels. Creating an app enables HR teams to organize everything in one, easy to access place. Share information, schedules, pdfs, images, and provide a platform for users to share knowledge  – all within your mobile guide. With mobile, teams can instantly update policy documents or training materials, then send out push notifications to alert employees of these updates. As workforces are increasingly on the move, an app allows your employees to access information anytime, anywhere.

Employee Support

Providing employees with effective support is an essential pillar of employee engagement. For employees at certain career junctions, it can be challenging or scary to find the right advice. Creating guides for employees returning to work, new starters, or providing information about emergency procedures can ensure your employees feel supported and confident they have access to important information when they need it. App metrics can provide valuable insight into the topics your employees are most interested in - it’s possible to drill down into more detail to see what menu items are the most used and where users spend the majority of their time inside the app, giving you insights into the support content

Internal Meetings

Create an app to ensure you get the most out of your internal meetings. Our range of features ensures you have the tools to drive engagement before, during, and after your event. Schedules are easy to understand, content is at hand, and tools such as live polling ensure sessions are as interactive as possible. We know attendees of internal meetings are often from a diverse range of locations and different areas of the business, so our engagement tools allow attendees to communicate with each other no matter the distance with a social wall, messaging, and a photo album. Surveys allow you to easily gather feedback from attendees after the event and process results on one platform. If you’d like to learn more about how Guidebook could enhance your internal meetings, read this blog post. These are just a few examples of how you can empower your workforce through deploying mobile. With Guidebook, you can connect, engage, and support your staff through every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Want to Hear More?

If you’d like to discuss employee engagement strategies in more detail and find out how Guidebook can support your business, you can find us at the Festival of Work in London on 12-13th June 2019. If you're attending, book a meeting with us in advance and we hope to see some of you there.