Chatters, team messengers, office talk-walls or whatever you call them. Enterprise social networks are not only communication tools. They play a huge role in constructing and developing organization culture – the foundation of employee experience (EX)*.
Related: 4 Tips for More Effective Performance Management
During one of wine-Friday nights, a friend told me that since her employer changed the current messenger to a new one (that provides more functionality), one of the requirements in case she was potentially looking for a new job, would be the good chat solution in the company. Of course, this is an exaggerated situation, and my friend said that with a pinch of salt and a touch of self-mockery, however, it should be admitted – something is going on with those chatters…
The fact is that people love to talk to each other. They enjoy sharing what they do, eat, what places they’ve visited. Boast, congratulate, and celebrate together. Humans are designed to interact! Keeping that in mind, it’s easy to deduce, that posts on the shared wall about the birth of a child or public group gathering for joint blood donation easily integrate employees. Seems trivial and meaningless? It shouldn’t. Especially if we want to build real bonds between employees, and between people and the organization.
Individuality – a key to coworking
When people can bring more of their world to work, they tend to be more involved. Employees are more engaged with the organization where they can be themselves. Not just the positions. People are way more than achieved career stages or completed training courses. They have their individual hobbies, passions, and interests. Chat platforms support sharing their uniqueness. And yes – it’s all thanks to the possibility of posting funny photos, occasional wishes or celebrating project successes.
Let’s meet each other!
Social platforms can easily connect people who work on the same project or have similar interests by allowing conversation in themed rooms. Employees can talk with others within the organization about their passions and share them outside of the office. Me and my boss love knitting? Who’d have thought… side of him I never knew! Chatrooms provide a great opportunity to meet colleagues from the informal side and make friendships. What’s more engaging than people around you? People you have something in common with – not just business cases.
Spreading innovations and knowledge
Of course, office chats offer way more than social aspects. They provide a great foundation for organization’s intranet – new, simple and transparent. A tool that does not only exists but also is used by people! And has the base full of updated document templates. And everyone knows where to find them. Really.
Last, but not least, and my favorite one – social communicators are forum to share insights or suggest new ideas. Fledgling projects can be commented, improved by feedback, or boosted to be developed. Such posting can meet ideas with experts or gather a group of people that want to work together on that very project. Often regardless of employees role or location.
There are a lot of positive aspects of employees instant communication. Find a way to make it work in your favor and boost your employee engagement efforts.
* The employee experience issue is broad and wide, however, to shortly clarify it to those who have not yet met this term, it’s worth to know, that:
- employee experience includes all the touchpoints between employee and employer – from the first contact as a potential candidate – to the exit interview;
- the essence of building an employee experience is the care for each stage of employee participation in the life of the company;
- everything that the employee receives from the company sums up into his experience and opinion about his employer.
A Point of View by:
Sylwia Golas – Product Marketing Specialist at Enxoo, passionate about HR, smart tech, and creating amazing experiences for employee, user and customer.
Looking for an employee-friendly tool that will support you in building an engaging bond and help you stay in touch company-wide? Contact our experts to get to know Skilo – a comprehensive solution and tips on how to start creating effective employee experience in your company.
Skilo is a Salesforce native app which provides a ready to use talent management solution. It streamlines, simplifies, and unifies the end-to-end process of talent acquisition, development, and retention. Skilo provides performance management, competency frameworks, along with skills development, career planning, training management, feedback, reviews, and social employee engagement. For more information, please visit www.skilohr.com