Four ways to develop meaningful relationships with your people

5 min read

How do you communicate with your employees? Do you still rely on traditional methods that aren’t exactly reaching your people? As we move into a new era of communication and employee engagement, it’s time to embrace technology and try new things.

Because what good is a nicely-crafted message if there’s no one on the other end to read it? 

The old ways of working just aren’t working anymore. It’s time to get out of the cavern of engagement abyss, where you’re throwing paper airplanes, even screaming and shouting. No matter how loudly you shout, all you can hear is, well, yourself. You’re not reaching your employees, and something must be done.

Let’s uncover four new ways to develop meaningful relationships with your employees through powerful, on-the-spot communication.

1. Interactive, two-way engagement opens up opportunities

To figure out what makes your business an attractive place to work, where employees are excited and want to shout about it from the rooftops — you’ve got to showcase the things that make your organisation great.

On-the-spot, real-time communication with reactions and comment threads can give opportunities to your employees to speak up and express excitement, encouragement or yes, even disappointment.

Each and every piece of employee input you gather can help your business make more informed decisions, from the top-down, and do it quickly — before it’s too late.

Connecting your employees to both your message and to one another by highlighting specific people within your messages — and giving employees an opportunity to recognise them – helps bridge the gap between employer and employee, and also across teams, offices and remote locations.

2. Visible employee communications reach people where and when they want to be reached

Say it with me: Communications are never “done.” Now say it again: Communications are never “done.” You can’t rely on only one message, so why rely on only one approach?

Mobile and tablet-friendly tools help you communicate with offline employees who may not be at their desktop computer, or who have a personal preference on communications channels.

Technology helps segment messaging so you’re reaching the right audience, and take it one step further by automating communications to make sure you’re reaching them at the optimal time. Everyone digests information differently, so make sure you’re using a platform for employee engagement that can support everyone’s individual style.

It’s essential to keep your workforce connected with timely updates. 

Pro tip: Keep a pulse on employee engagement mobile trends and stay ahead of the curve. Reward Gateway’s Connect+ app empowers workforces to stay connected no matter where they are. With a mobile app, employers can keep people in the loop with alerts and send the right content at the right time.

3. Inclusive engagement means everyone, everywhere has a voice to listen to — and to speak up from

How can you tell if people are listening? While looking at data points on page views and content interactions are important and shouldn’t be absent from your engagement strategy, the real evidence is in the volume and variety of voices you’re hearing.

Giving the power to publish (with certain limitations) to more employees than just your HR or marketing teams means more voices can be heard. Empowering your employees drives employee motivation.  

Your ‘team’ is your entire workforce, working together to shout successes, failed innovations and more, from the rooftops. 

Make individual contributions count even more by linking your people to your company’s purpose and your engagement platform. With an employee engagement platform, you can even enable “following” capabilities, where employees can follow certain bloggers or topics and receive alerts in their inbox or on their cell phone to make sure they never miss a beat.

4. Social media transforms employee communications to employee conversations

According to Pew Research, 76% of Facebook users log in daily, and 60% of these users log in up to eight times a day. Employees are continually expressing themselves on these social platforms, and it’s become a natural part of their every day.

What does this mean for you as an employer? Organically integrating these features into your internal communications platform with emoji-driven reactions, the ability to “tag” fellow colleagues in announcements and within comments makes your employee communications even better — it creates employee conversation.

Bring the experience to life even more by displaying these moments on a social ‘wall’ to capture the familiarity of social media feeds. 

Never underestimate the power of timely company updates. Having a centralised location to share news and updates is key to fostering better relationships with your people. When you adapt employee communications for a social world, employees can easily like, comment and join in on the conversation with teammates, managers and even the company’s CEO.

It’s key to make employee communications a fundamental part of your organisation. When communications are interactive, inclusive, accessible and social, employees feel a stronger connection to your company’s purpose and to one another – helping you improve employee engagement and establish stronger employee relationships.

What next step will you take towards develop meaningful relationships between employer and employee?