5 ways an employee experience platform unites enterprises

Preventing silos in the remote age

There’s no doubt that the shift to remote work has made enterprise-wide cohesion and knowledge sharing more challenging. Your employees can no longer glance around the office to see what their colleagues are working on or stop by a teammate’s desk to learn how to navigate a new system.

Many employees are starting to feel the effects of workplace dispersion, with more than 40% of respondents noting that they don’t feel connected to colleagues when working remotely. While a lack of water cooler chats and social events certainly contributes to these feelings, ultimately it is silos that takes most of the blame.

Unfortunately, remote working can leave you particularly vulnerable to silos. When you’re working from home, it can be easy to keep your head down, cross the items off of your to-do list, and forget about what’s happening within your organization. However, this disjointed mentality takes a toll: both diminished output levels and subpar consumer experiences are linked with working in silos.

Turning to technology to connect the dots

41% of employees will continue to work remotely in post-pandemic age. Given that telecommuting shows no signs of slowing down, leaders are increasingly looking to digital technology to unite their enterprise and maintain connectivity. In fact, 68% of respondents agreed that more C-level execs have expressed involvement in the digital workplace since COVID-19.

As an evolution of the intranet that is designed to tackle a broader array of communications and engagement challenges, employee experience platforms (EXP's) have emerged as a crucial tool for unification. In the same way that your business leverages every advancement in technology to connect with your customers, an EXP engages your employees and enables them to be more effective in their job with advanced communications, networking, and knowledge sharing experiences.

5 ways your EXP cultivates workplace unification

As opposed to simply bringing your people closer together or centralizing a few disparate tools, EXP's take a comprehensive approach to uniting your enterprise. In fact, there are five dimensions of workplace experience that your EXP unifies, including:

#1. Unite experiences

Part of bringing your enterprise together is creating a digital experience that is universal and accessible to all. Frontline engagement often suffers because deskless workers can’t access the same tools and communications channels that their corporate colleagues have grown accustomed to. If this scenario continues, a sense of divide is almost inevitable.

Sidestep segmentation and avoid creating an “us versus them” mentality by ensuring everyone can access your EXP from their device of choice. While mobile responsiveness is a minimum for your EXP, take employee satisfaction to the next level with branded mobile apps and targeted experiences. In an ideal world, your EXP should function more like a headless content management system (CMS), enabling you to deliver consistent digital experiences across any device, including digital signage boards.

#2. Unite comms across touch points

The omnichannel movement continues to gain momentum. As consumers, your employees have grown accustomed to integrated messaging experiences that are personalized and user-centric. They get text messages about promotions, targeted ads on their social media accounts, and emails with product recommendations.

With your EXP, you can bring the omnichannel approach into your workplace comms. Take advantage of your CMS to design, create, push, and track content that will drive employee engagement amongst multiple touchpoints. Your internal comms team can leverage content targeting and access multiple channels to develop a messaging strategy that will resonate with every user and cultivate a shared sense of purpose.

#3. Unite technology

How can you make sure your employees can access the tools and information they need, when they need them? As the digital landscape grows more complex, it’s easy for informational silos to form when your workplace technology is disconnected. However, your EXP can overcome this challenge by providing a single gateway to apps, tools, and the data that resides in them.

A single pane of glass approach is a hallmark of your EXP. Instead of constant platform-switching, your EXP brings all of your employees’ apps and tools together, creating a consistent experience layer that makes it easy for your employees to complete daily tasks and avoid distraction.

#4. Unite knowledge

A consumer-grade search experience is your best line of defense when it comes to preventing knowledge from slipping through the cracks. Your employees are busy people who have come to expect a Google-like experience from every app or website they interact with. They want to be able to type in keywords and find answers without having to sift through information or conduct duplicate searches across disparate systems.

Create a single source of truth for your entire workforce with your EXP’s sophisticated search experience. An intuitive search function that connects with all of your knowledge repositories will make it easy for your users to find the answers they are looking for.

#5. Unite people

With more than a quarter of employees feeling isolated due to remote work, it’s evident that your people need opportunities to connect with their colleagues. Now that office happy hours and traditional team-building activities are temporarily on hold, what can you do to bring employees together and help them build strong relationships with their peers?

Your EXP takes intranet social capabilities to the next level. In addition to standard features like reacting, commenting, and sharing, the EXP is a place for employees to raise their profile within the organization by crafting a digital identity. Through rich user-profiles and responsive people directories, employees can begin to develop digital networks and internal communities, creating a sense of camaraderie that will span your entire enterprise.

Learn more about internal communications solutions.

Are you ready to unite your entire organization with an EXP?

Although cultivating connectivity may be more challenging in the new world of work, that doesn’t mean unification is out of reach. If you’re looking to bring together your entire enterprise by leveraging next-generation technology, get in touch with our digital workplace experts.