The digital employee experience refers to the experience that an employee has of their online workplace tools and resources. These tools and resources are made available by employers to support employee productivity. A good digital employee experience allows employees to intuitively self-serve the tools and information they need. It provides easy connectivity between employees and a comprehensive search experience. Communications tools are part of the digital employee experience, allowing for communication of company values and strategy, helping to keep employees engaged. A bad digital employee experience is often described as being unintuitive, with poor findability of information. A lack of integration between tools is often a characteristic of a poor digital employee experience. Examples of good digital employee experiences can be found here.
The digital workplace encompasses all the technologies employees use to get work done in today’s work environment including collaboration tools, communication platforms, cloud-based services, and other digital resources.
The digital workplace often enables employees to work remotely, providing the flexibility to access essential information from any location at any time. This seamless connectivity allows for collaboration among colleagues who may be spread across different geographical locations.
Employee engagement software is designed to help organisations foster a more engaged and motivated workforce. This software provides a platform for companies to communicate with employees, recognise and reward their achievements, collect feedback, and promote a positive work environment. The primary goal is to enhance employee satisfaction and morale, improve productivity, and reduce employee churn by creating a strong sense of connection and commitment between employees and the organisation. Ultimately, employee engagement software is an essential tool for modern organisations looking to build an engaged and committed workforce, resulting in a positive work environment where employees feel valued and connected, driving business success.
Yes, SharePoint can be used as an intranet. It is a popular platform for building intranet sites due to its powerful features and capabilities. SharePoint serves as a centralised hub where employees can access personalised news capabilities, an AI driven search experience and customisation options to tailor the intranet to specific audience needs.
SharePoint is a popular intranet choice because it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Teams and document management capabilities already used in organisations. It also comes with a user-friendly mobile app and robust security features to control access to sensitive information.
SharePoint does not come with a ready-to-use user experience. A well-branded intranet and intuitive navigation requires UX expertise. Many leading companies that want to use SharePoint opt for third-party app packages that enhance SharePoint and provide intuitive navigation and branding.
Creating an intranet using SharePoint involves several steps. First, you need to plan and gather requirements by understanding the business objectives of your organisation and employees through surveys, interviews, and meetings. For example, if your organisation is focused on growth, product or service content might emerge as a requirement.
A functional assessment will then need to be undertaken against the requirements. Where much functionality is available out of the box e.g. news, search, events calendar, other functionality may be missing. This is why third-party app packages are available from vendors such as Addin365. You will need to understand if you need one of these app packages.
The next step is to design the site structure and navigation, before entering content and preparing communications for launch. Companies like Addin365 provide templates for different site types such as department, news, employee policies that you can purchase off the shelf.
Providing training and resources to help employees utilise the new intranet effectively is encouraged.
Finally, monitor the user journeys within the site and regularly update the content and navigation accordingly. You will need a third party analytics tool to do this.
By following these steps, you can create a useful intranet using SharePoint that meets your requirements.
SharePoint is a web-based platform that enables intranets and other publishing sites, collaboration, document management, and information sharing within organisations.
To create a site, go to the SharePoint home page, click “Create site,” choose the type, and configure the settings. To have a site that serves a specific purpose such as a department site or a news site you will need to create page layouts and a site navigation. If you need help doing this, Microsoft partners such as Addin365 provide ready to use templates.
To use SharePoint for document management, go to the document library on your site, click “Upload,” and select your files. Organise documents using folders, metadata, and version history. Share and co-author documents by selecting the document, clicking “Share,” and setting permissions.
SharePoint integrates with Microsoft Teams for enhanced collaboration. Create and manage lists for data and task tracking, and use document libraries to organise and manage documents efficiently. SharePoint offers advanced features like workflow automation using Power Automate and business intelligence with Power BI for dashboards and reports.
By understanding and utilising its features, SharePoint can transform information management and collaboration in your organisation.
SharePoint is a web-based platform that enables intranets and other publishing sites, collaboration, document management, and information sharing within organisations.
To create a site, go to the SharePoint home page, click “Create site,” choose the type, and configure the settings. To have a site that serves a specific purpose such as a department site or a news site you will need to create page layouts and a site navigation. If you need help doing this, Microsoft partners such as Addin365 provide ready to use templates.
To use SharePoint for document management, go to the document library on your site, click “Upload,” and select your files. Organise documents using folders, metadata, and version history. Share and co-author documents by selecting the document, clicking “Share,” and setting permissions.
SharePoint integrates with Microsoft Teams for enhanced collaboration. Create and manage lists for data and task tracking, and use document libraries to organise and manage documents efficiently. SharePoint offers advanced features like workflow automation using Power Automate and business intelligence with Power BI for dashboards and reports.
By understanding and utilising its features, SharePoint can transform information management and collaboration in your organisation.
An internal communication strategy aligns key organisational messages or messaging themes to the available communication channels.
Key message themes may be around your organisational goals, organisational changes and people recognition. Often an internal communications strategy supports the objectives of the CEO, CPO and CIO. Key messaging will not just be top down, but consider how to hear and amplify the employee perspective on key messages. An internal communications strategy will try to facilitate a conversation between leadership and employees with a view to supporting employee understanding of the organisations strategy. The end goal is to get buy-in to the organisation’s direction of travel.
Available communication channels will include digital services such as the intranet, social channels, newsletters and vlog or podcast capabilities. Communication channels will also include in person events such as town halls and analogue media such as office screens and posters.
An internal communications strategy will use the best channel, or channel mix for the appropriate organisational messages.
By effectively managing internal communications, organisations can ensure that all employees are aligned with the company’s goals and values, thereby creating a more cohesive and engaged workforce.
Internal comms can be improved with an internal communication strategy that aligns key organisational messages or messaging themes to the available communication channels.
Key message themes may be around your organisational goals, organisational changes and people recognition. Often an internal communications strategy supports the objectives of the CEO, CPO and CIO. Key messaging will not just be top down, but consider how to hear and amplify the employee perspective on key messages. An internal communications strategy will try to facilitate a conversation between leadership and employees with a view to supporting employee understanding of the organisations strategy. The end goal is to get buy-in to the organisation’s direction of travel.
Available communication channels will include digital services such as the intranet, social channels, newsletters and vlog or podcast capabilities. Communication channels will also include in person events such as town halls and analogue media such as office screens and posters.
An internal communications strategy will use the best channel, or channel mix for the appropriate organisational messages.
Additionally, providing clear digital communication guidelines for operational communicators will ensure smooth communications. For assistance, contact our consultants who are ready to help.
Increasing employee engagement is crucial for fostering a productive and positive work environment. Here are some effective strategies:
Additionally, leveraging engagement analytics to monitor understanding and sentiment can help you to focus efforts in the areas that will best optimise employee engagement.
Employee engagement should be measured by considering content consumption, content understanding and sentiment. This is because engagement is a combination of reading and understanding content and having a (hopefully positive) emotional response to it. Employee engagement can be measured using Addin Analytics.
Addin Analytics helps you to measure content consumption by measuring audience engagement, engagement by location, journey tracking through the content and time and device hot spots.
Addin Analytics helps you to measure content understanding by measuring search terms in conjunction with content journeys, community participation, behavioural patterns by department, location or audience and rich media insights such as video completion rates.
Addin Analytics helps you to measure sentiment through community participation, likes and shares, keyword monitoring and qualitative surveying.
Good internal comms is strategic. An internal communication strategy aligns key organisational messages or messaging themes to the available communication channels.
Key message themes may be around your organisational goals, organisational changes and people recognition. Often an internal communications strategy supports the objectives of the CEO, CPO and CIO. Key messaging will not just be top down, but consider how to hear and amplify the employee perspective on key messages. An internal communications strategy will try to facilitate a conversation between leadership and employees with a view to supporting employee understanding of the organisations strategy. The end goal is to get buy-in to the organisation’s direction of travel.
Available communication channels will include digital services such as the intranet, social channels, newsletters and vlog or podcast capabilities. Communication channels will also include in person events such as town halls and analogue media such as office screens and posters.
Good internal comms starts from an internal communications strategy that will use the best channel, or channel mix for the appropriate organisational messages.
Improving employee engagement is crucial for fostering a productive and positive work environment. Here are some effective strategies:
Additionally, leveraging engagement analytics to monitor understanding and sentiment can help you to focus efforts in the areas that will best optimise employee engagement.
Targeted communication in the digital employee experience, or intranet, refers to the strategic delivery of content, that has been tailored to specific employee segments. These segments may be by location, seniority, role or need.
The purpose of targeted communication is to reduce irrelevant communications for employees and provide only communications that support their work or engagement. By using targeted communication, organisations can enhance the effectiveness of their internal messaging, reduce information overload, and foster a more connected and informed workforce.
In SharePoint, content targeting can work by using attributes that are associated to an employees Entra ID. Alternatively, groups can be created via a Microsoft Team or Viva Engage community. These can then be used to target content to.
Intuitive navigation refers to the design and organisation of digital content in a manner that allows employees to find information and tools quickly and effortlessly.
A task-based navigation is often the model that best delivers an intuitive output, as it reflects the way that employees work. Key elements of an intuitive navigation include a clean and uncluttered layout, logical grouping of functions, and the use of familiar icons and terminology.
When employees have easy access to the information and resources they need, they’re more likely to feel engaged in their work.
Improving employee engagement is crucial for fostering a productive and positive work environment. Here are some effective strategies:
Additionally, leveraging engagement analytics to monitor understanding and sentiment can help you to focus efforts in the areas that will best optimise employee engagement.
DEX stands for Digital Employee Experience. The digital employee experience refers to the experience that an employee has of their online workplace tools and resources. These tools and resources are made available by employers to support employee productivity. A good digital employee experience allows employees to intuitively self-serve the tools and information they need. It provides easy connectivity between employees and a comprehensive search experience. Communications tools are part of the digital employee experience, allowing for communication of company values and strategy, helping to keep employees engaged. A bad digital employee experience is often described as being unintuitive, with poor findability of information. A lack of integration between tools is often a characteristic of a poor digital employee experience. Examples of good digital employee experiences can be found here.
