Jessica Telford
4 min read
We all know how important it is to engage employees, because of the clear link between employee engagement and productivity, happiness, and retention. But how does that translate into solving the specific problems HR faces day to day?
Whether you're having trouble communicating the total value proposition to staff, connecting employees together, or trying to create company culture, the answer is an effective employee engagement platform.
All jargon aside, an engagement platform is a single portal for your employees to access all of their benefits in one place. More importantly, a good one will have the capability to be modelled around what's important to your business, whether that's acting as a day-to-day communication forum, a culture hub, wellbeing portal or a place for reward & recognition.
Doing it wrong...
Before I worked at Reward Gateway, I worked for a large UK recruitment company, which apparently had ‘loads’ of employee benefits. In my time there I couldn’t find any of them, and only heard about them when a colleague received an envelope full of random retailer vouchers at Christmas time. When I asked her how she got them, and where I could find mine, she said it was ‘just something that she gets for working here’.
There was no value attached to these vouchers, no meaning - and more importantly, nowhere for me to find out why she got them - and why I didn’t! I had absolutely no idea where I could find ‘these things that I got for working here’.
Having an effective benefits hub can change so much. Here’s four problems which can be solved by an engaging portal:
1. "Where are my benefits and what am I entitled to?"
If you offer your employees a range of benefits, housing them under one roof is really important. You've already invested a lot of money to introduce them, so if they're not having the intended impact, you need to consider how to maximise on the return. Employees shouldn’t have to search to find how they can save money on their groceries, or where to find information about their retirement plan or other benefits. Hosting everything in the same place makes it easy and accessible for your employees - and that's how it should be.
2. Invisible company culture.
If you’ve got a strong internal vision, or you’ve recently had a culture and values shake-up (like we did last year) then you need to be able to get that message through to employees. You want to enable them to identify with your company mission so that it reinforces their reason for working for you. Even having a simple page with ‘What it means to work here’ and ‘What we value in you’ etc. can reinforce good attitudes and behaviour and really make your employees feel valued.
3. No 'thank you' culture within the workforce.
One of my favourite benefits about working at Reward Gateway is our eCards. eCards are an inexpensive, significant peer-to-peer recognition system which can align with culture and values or can be as simple as ‘welcome to the team,’ or ‘happy birthday.' If a colleague went above and beyond to help another employee, would sending an email be as effective as sending a personalised card through a central engagement portal? Hosting eCards on a hub creates a thank you culture within your workforce which can only do good.
4. Employees disconnected from HR.
We know that sometimes it can be hard for HR to get airtime with employees about important announcements, policies and information, and getting the message out to all the departments within a business can be a real challenge. It can also be painful having a deluge of queries from employees about things like their pay, or holiday entitlement, where to apply for PMI… and so on. Hosting your HR library and providing an information hub via a central portal can help to put HR back on the map.
Every client has different needs and will have different problems that require a solution. Putting an employee engagement platform together, regardless of what benefits you offer, is always the first step towards finding that right solution.