Over the past year the world began to undertake a great evolutionary step. The daily commute quickly faded into memory as people were told to work from home. The daily routine of getting into the office and grabbing a coffee from the cute little shop around the corner vanished.

Some found themselves without jobs, whilst others were forced into new industries. Many would have to juggle looking after their children whilst on conference calls. Collaboration with colleagues became a new challenge and feelings of abandonment developed when leadership teams failed to focus on internal messaging. This led to a workforce gradually losing the positive emotional attachment they had with their work.

The result, 18 months down the line, is businesses are experiencing brain drain on a new level. Employees are now looking for new work at a rate unseen for decades, increasingly in completely different sectors.

Whilst the pandemic has fuelled innovation and growth in some areas and businesses, others have suffered. For surviving businesses the last thing they need is a workforce wanting to leave en masse.

With 70% of office workers still operating from home, organisations are looking at their employees digital experience to reinforce company values through powerful and rich branding. 

The New Normal

The issue with the new normal was the loss of human contact. For all of human history we have been social beings. That socially inclined behaviour has heavily influenced how businesses are run. Whilst technology allowed people to work remotely this was not widely adopted before the pandemic.

So what happens when everyone works from home. Aside from the everyday distractions, the lack of face-to-face contact can remove the emotional connection to a business. Working from home can lead to a more individual, and often lonely feeling, rather than that teamwork sensation we all know and understand.

This can then lead to poorer employee performance, which in turn will negatively affects the business. With seemingly ever-changing instructions from Government this isn’t an easily solvable issue to fix. Whilst we are seeing shoots of life spring up again in business districts and high streets, large offices may still take some time before they can open up effectively, if at all.

It does make sense that having an emotional connection to a brand will inspire employees’ creativity and zest for their work. So how do you spark that connection in 2021? We do know the answer, powerful internal branding.

Internal branding at its core is designed to visually describe the business, and its standing values and strategy to employees. When done well it ensures people working at a company can understand what a business stands for and how their role and efforts helps drive the company forward. It adds that layer of emotional connection that is needed to seal the employee-corporate bond.

Powerful and rich branding uniformly portrayed across your internal digital experience can improve retention, boost employee engagement, connect remote/hybrid workers emotionally to your organisation and reinforce company values.

Intranet

So how is it possible to bring back that brand connection when many are stuck at home, how can we recreate the excitement and buzz of working for your company? Well, the only medium most people currently have access to is the digital world, through a screen. It makes sense to focus here.

The most successful corporate intranets serve as centralised digital hubs for your employees. The ease of use and attention to design will serve to fuel engagement and increase that emotional connection to your company. Easily found content your employees need to do their work, rich visuals and powerful, fluid imagery to reinforce company brand, alongside functionality that supports the latest digital design trends – all inspires employee performance.

AddIn365’s Creative and Page Kit gives you an easy way to create a brand aligned platform which allows your employees to feel like they are in their digital home. It allows you to reinforce your brand’s message each time content or information is delivered. The Creative and Page Kit also allows for improved representation of your brand on any device by enhancing the look and feel of Microsoft Sharepoint Modern.

This all works together so that your native functionality is complimented by your corporate branding and is delivered with a bit more punch than ever before. AddIn365’s Creative and Page Kit also provides a far greater deal of customisation, ultimately bringing your content to life in a way exclusive to your organisation with a wide variety of truly unique capabilities.

Another way to look at this is to imagine a major game for a sports team you follow or a film franchise you enjoy. If you watch the game from the start, watching that winning goal is far more fun. The same with a movie, the final battle with the villain is mainly satisfying because of the 2hr long build up.

Reading the score on your phone or watching the last five minutes of a film means you lose all investment and are likely to walk away from that sports team or film franchise. Involvement and connection is just as key in business as it is in sports and film.

If you want to take a more in depth look at productivity, Microsoft has provided powerful research that looks at workplace productivity since the beginning of the pandemic.

Designed to stimulate the emotional connection between employee and organisation, AddIn365’s Creative and Page Kit amplifies your company’s voice with the latest digital design trends and improved functionality – on any device.

Becoming future proof

Remote working is here to stay, perhaps not in its pure form but in a hybrid mesh. This means adapting to the new terms the pandemic laid out for the business world is more important than ever. Keeping your employees connected emotionally to your brand, wherever they are working and whatever device they use, will be key to improved business performance.

Ultimately, the digital workplace will rival the traditional office as the corporate home for your employees, ensure it’s an exciting, creative and performance inspiring place to be.

Discover how to re-spark that emotional connection between your employees and your brand by booking a free demo with a AddIn365 Microsoft MVP by clicking the button below.