Slack, an internal communications platform designed to improve workplace communications, grew to a $1.1 Billion valuation within eight months of launching to the general public. Their adoption rates are off the charts, and their users adore them. There’s a very good reason for this:
Clear workplace communication leads to team success.
But many of us forget how significant communications is to the bottom line, or how detrimental lack of communication is to the employee experience.
A recent study by AON Hewitt on global employee engagement trends shows a -26 percent downward slope in overall work experience between 2013 and 2014. Ouch!
They also found that a disengaged employee costs a company $10,000 in revenue annually, according to a survey of more than 7,000 enterprises.
Oh, and guess what? In 2014, CareerBuilder reported that 59 percent of workers surveyed expressed general dissatisfaction with their jobs.
That’s getting expensive fast.
As an enterprise working on your employer brand, you know how important employees are to attracting top talent.
So what to do now?
Improve Employee Experience and Drive Employer Brand
When it comes to sharing the employee experience with the world, your employees are your best assets.
And the best employer brands exist because employees genuinely love them and want to talk about them. This produces a ton of benefits, including better employee engagement and talent acquisition:
- Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate – only 7 percent of applicants are via employees but this accounts for 40 percent of all new hire hires (Source: Jobvite)
- 67 percent of employers and recruiters said that the recruiting process was shorter, and 51 percent said it was less expensive to recruit via referrals (Source: Jobvite)
- 47 percent Referral hires have greater job satisfaction and stay longer at companies (Source: Jobvite)
According to a data published in Altimeter and LinkedIn Relationships Economics 2014, employees of socially engaged companies are:
- 57 percent more likely to align social media engagement to more sales leads
- 20 percent more likely to stay at their company
- 27 percent more likely to feel optimistic about their company’s future
- 40 percent more likely to believe their company is more competitive
And yet, as described in the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study, disengaged employees make up 74 percent of the average company’s workforce. Your employees play a significant role in communicating your employer brand, but this becomes a huge challenge with a disengaged workforce.
How Do You Improve The Employer Experience?
Despite the downward trend in work experience globally, AON Hewitt discovered reported that work experience is looking optimistic. The North American work experience improved 21 percent between 2013 and 2014, mostly fuelled by Canadian ratings.
On top of that, the best driver to this increase was enhanced communication within the company.
Without the proper communication channels in the workplace, it’s hard for employees to stay engaged. They need to feel like they have a voice. They need to feel empowered to make decisions. They need to know what’s going on in your enterprise. If they don’t, they’ll leave.
Or even worse, they’ll stay as a disgruntled employee and cost you a ton of money.
So what if you could create a communication channel for employees where they feel empowered?
How Employee Advocacy Helps Improve Communication
Employee advocacy is the result of the right culture, communication, and content. Employees become knowledgeable about your company and WANT to talk about you positively, both online and offline. And establishing a formal employee advocacy program can help improve communication and better the employee experience, resulting in a stronger employer brand.
But how does employee advocacy actually help?
- Content as Knowledge: By creating a centralized content library that employees can securely access, they can consume your content, making them smarter about their industry. This content knowledge translates into better communications skills, making them better at their job.
- Modernizing the enterprise: Because of the complexity of implementing an employee advocacy program, you most likely don’t have an existing communication tool that can centralize all content and employees, and make it easy for them to communicate internally and externally. Adopting a program forces you to change, and invest in digital technology that your employees actually want to use.
- Developing daily communication habits: By integrating the right technology within your existing enterprise stack, you can help employees develop daily communication habits, like consuming enough content and sharing to their personal social networks. Technology helps activate social media training for employees and helps communicate your brand appropriately.
All of this helps improve the employee experience and distribute your employer brand.
Everyone Benefits From Improved Communications
By giving your employees the right content and access to modern technology that improves their skills, you’re investing in their professional development. When you show them you care, they become more engaged, which in turn improves the overall employee experience.
And by improving the employee experience, your workforce wants to participate in your employer branding efforts.
As an enterprise, it’s your responsibility to grow your employees. Give them the right knowledge and tools, and they’ll help attract and keep the right talent. Period.
How are you improving employee communication at your company? Do you invest in the employee experience? Leave a comment below and share with your colleagues!
photo credit: Business Computer and IT Support via photopin (license)
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