Heart is where the home-office is? As business leaders across the world grapple with the very concept of what a workplace should be in 2021 and beyond, we explore how remote workers may need extra support to not lose their vital lines of communication to management. It still feels too early, and precarious, to predict how exactly return to office trends may pan out over the coming months, yet multi-nationals are en masse preparing for the ‘remote worker’ to stay. This means leadership teams, human resources and communications functions will have to develop new ways of engaging with their employees, a challenge which according to data collected by Leesman suggests many companies struggled to overcome in 2020. Over a third of remote workers felt detached from their organisation and 31% felt disconnected from their colleagues whilst working from home.
This pattern of disconnect, whilst varying dependant on industry, highlights the lack of pertinent communication between employees and business leaders. We know these communication failures are directly hurting businesses as valuable ideas and insights born outside of the board room are not filtering up to where they might be actioned. Organisations, therefore, need to introduce more effective ways of communication to improve engagement, creativity, and productivity.
In pre-pandemic times, the majority of leaders would stay connected with workers through informal conversations and meetings. The casual methods of communication and meetings are often unplanned, and happen due to chance encounters; so how do we resolve the employee engagement challenge when the majority are working from home?
According to global frontline research from Workplace in 2020, 90% of deskless or mobile workers have said that an integrated communications platform would enable them to better engage with a management and collaborate with co-workers. One of the recognised hallmarks of high-performance organisations is their ability to innovate, and to do so successfully means adopting software solutions that evolve with the business and are available to all staff. Intelligent and accessible communication platforms are the lubricant for excellent ideas to become visible to those that can make decisions as well as allowing direction from the leadership team to be accessible to all employees. When simple to use, instant and thoughtfully categorised solutions that allow remote workers two-way digital access to the rest of the company are introduced, we have found adoption rates dramatically improve. As a recent example, the new AddIn365 digital workplace implemented by our client Highways England on their mega-project Lower Thames Crossing achieves overall adoption of between 83.5% – 100% each month since launch. When designing a digital transformation strategy, AddIn365 can support clients with communications and employee engagement solutions to reach all employees and in many cases partnering businesses and even client entities.
AddIn365 were selected to solve the front-line communication and engagement challenges of the Highways England mega-project, Lower Thames Crossing. This joint venture commission required innovative thinking to connect not only the Highways England project team but also the partnering teams from Arcadis, COWI and Jacobs. To view the results see the case study and feedback by clicking the link above. You can read more about the Lower Thames Crossing programme here – Lower Thames Crossing – Highways England .
AddIn Intranet ensures multiple teams have access to personalised and relevant information to help them complete the task they are working on, empowering all parties to work together seamlessly in real time, not just report findings back to management. Content communications can be targeted and automated ensuring the right information is reaching the right people, saying goodbye to the generic messaging that can leave employees feeling undervalued. By implementing different AddIn Work Hub Skills, workers can have a direct line of communication to project or business leaders and remote working support staff. Individual collaboration spaces for mobile workers can also be created instantly ensuring even transient project teams are always informed of updates.
To discover how AddIn365’s Intranet and Work Hub solutions can improve your engagement and communications challenges you can book a free demo with a Microsoft MVP in the contact form below or email hello@addin365.com .
