How your employee engagement platform can solve 5 top HR challenges

It probably goes without saying that companies that invest in good technology already have an advantage when it comes to building a connected workforce that is more engaged, productive and innovative. But can an employee engagement platform help achieve these things while supporting the specific challenges HR leaders face day-to-day?

Absolutely! 

Whether you're trying to attract more talent by communicating your Employee Value Proposition, finding new ways to connect employees who are working remotely, or charged with the competing task of boosting morale while lowering operational costs – an effective employee engagement platform could be the key you’ve been looking for. 

So… what is an employee engagement platform? Let's put all the HR and tech jargon aside for a minute. An employee engagement platform is a centralized home for your employees to access everything they need to know to make working at your organization amazing – all in one place. 

More importantly, a great engagement platform will have the capability to be modeled around what's important to your business – whether that's a day-to-day communication channel, a culture hub, wellbeing portal or a place for reward and recognition.

Here are five ways that an employee engagement hub designed to inform, inspire and empower employees can help you tackle common HR challenges:

1. Inform employees about the benefits they’re entitled to

If you offer your employees a range of benefits, housing them under one roof is a great way to save time and increase its adoption. How much time is wasted when employees struggle to find policies or login details for different systems? House the information about your employee benefits or your EAP in one easy to access (and searchable) hub. 

It can also be painful having a deluge of queries from employees about things like their pay and holiday entitlements or which team to contact to help them solve their specific problem. Hosting your HR knowledge base and providing an information hub via a central portal can help your people find what they need faster, and save you on admin time too (a central source of truth? What a great idea)! 

You've already invested a lot of money to introduce employee discounts or a L&D initiative so if they're not having the intended impact, a centralized portal that houses the information about each program can help you maximize on the return.

2. Demonstrate what makes your company stand out to maximize talent attraction

When I ask HR professionals or employees, "What benefits would I be receiving if I worked at your company?" the most common answer is usually, "Besides salary and super payments, I’m not too sure actually." If most of your employees would answer that question in this way and don’t actually know what makes your company unique, it’s hard to imagine them advocating to their network and encouraging people they know to join your organization.

But if your people do have a clear idea about what makes working for your company great and what makes their job rewarding, it not only makes them more collaborative and loyal, they’re also more likely to share that experience and information with friends and family. Whether you offer flexible working, pet-friendly offices, free yoga or an employee discounts programs, having an employee engagement hub helps keep your people connected, informed and – of course – engaged. 

In other words, engaged and informed employees play a key role in talent attraction and expanding your access to a broader talent pool. 

Case in point? I heard about Reward Gateway after watching a video where one of the employees told me he tap-danced to work every day! 

3. Strengthen awareness of your company purpose, mission and values

If you’ve got a strong company mission or vision, or you’ve recently had a culture and values shake-up, then you need to be able to get that message out. 

You want to enable employees to identify with your company mission so that it reinforces their reason for working for you. 

An employee engagement hub can make it easier for your leaders to communicate "What it means to work here" or "What we value in you" to your new (and existing!) employees. It can also help reinforce good attitudes and behaviors and really make your employees feel valued.

Our CEO publishes a weekly blog series called "Mission Mondays" - it helps set the tone for the week and re-connects the work that’s happening around the business to our bigger mission. As an employee who's been working remotely for the past year, I’ve found it really powerful reading blogs from members of our leadership team. Our company blog provides me regular connection and insight into the day-to-day life of co-workers across our business that I might otherwise never hear from or even meet. 

4. Improve morale and productivity with a culture of thanks

One of my favorite things about working at Reward Gateway is our eCards and our social recognition feed or "Wow Wall."

A peer-to-peer recognition program like eCards is an inexpensive way to create a culture of thanks and encourage employees to recognize their peers any time, from anywhere. 

They can help strengthen your culture by encouraging people to send simple greetings like "Welcome to the team," or "Happy birthday" or they can go one step further to align specific achievements with your company values. Adding a company reward on top of that moment of recognition is also any excellent way to show that a specific achievement or action has had a big impact. Introducing different tiers or layers of your employee recognition pyramid can help you demonstrate what good, better and best looks like for your business. 

If a colleague went above and beyond to help another employee, sending a personalized card or nominating them for a company award through a central engagement portal can help reinforce the value of their efforts while also amplifying that great behavior across all layers of the organization. 

5.  Cut through the noise with clear, company-wide communications

We know that sometimes it can be hard for HR to get airtime with employees about important announcements, policies and information. With thousands of instant messages and emails landing in people’s inboxes every day, getting the message out to all the departments within a business can be a real challenge. 

You can set custom alerts, follow blogs from specific team members and issue a company-wide announcement all from one place. 

A centralized employee communications platform also enables other teams' voices to be heard. Your Product or Engineering team can share their latest releases, Finance can share a video announcing their quarterly results. The People Team can do a weekly update with interesting facts about new starters. These types of posts help boost connections with remote workers and increases cross-departmental visibility on certain projects. 

As your team adapts to new challenges, technology will only play a bigger role in improving and maintaining employee engagement and addressing challenges such as lack of visibility, and limited communication. Putting an employee engagement platform together can be the first step towards informing, connecting and strengthening the culture of your increasingly hybrid workforce. 

Get in touch with us to learn how our suite of employee engagement solutions can help your business.