We have worked with many businesses over the years, but one common goal seems to remain the same: 

How do we increase employee engagement within our digital workplace?  

With over 71% of employees stating that they’re willing to leave their current job role, employee engagement has been a new focal point for many businesses. 

But now that most of us are working remotely, increasing employee engagement seems a greater challenge. 

In this blog post, we have put together 8 employee engagement ideas that you can use in your digital workplace so that you can get the most out of your intranet.

 

 

1) Use your intranet to create a employee focused culture

 

Now that many of us have been forced to work from home, the balance between work and homelife has become much more difficult. 

According to recent research 22% of employees struggled with unplugging after work and 19% reported feeling lonely. 

All work and no play can have a damaging effect on your employees productivity levels and can leave them feeling less motivated and disengaged with your company. 

Utilise your intranet to create an employee focused culture by providing both professional and out of work activities. With its many social features and video calling options you can organise many after work socials for your employees to get involved with. 

Studies have found that employees are placing greater emphasis on wellbeing and team spirit when considering workplace culture. So if you want your staff to be more engaged with your company, you need to be offering them more than competitive pay and benefits. 

2) Encourage collaboration

One of the main driving forces behind any good intranet platform is collaboration. 

You don’t need to be an expert to know that social collaboration and working in teams have proven to significantly improve engagement among employees. 

Providing spaces on your intranet where your employees can collaborate is essential if you want to increase digital workplace engagement. 

Utilising intranet features such as Microsoft Teams will allow your employees to collaborate on group projects and help them to build stronger connections with one another both in and out of the workplace. 

3) Use video to increase engagement

A report by HubSpot states that 83% of consumers feel more engaged with brands that share content that are specific to their needs – and this should be the same if you’re marketing internally too. 

If you’re not using video as part of your internal marketing strategy then you’re missing out on tons of engagement opportunities. 

People love video, so much so that they’re spending more than 1 hour a week watching videos online.  

If you’re looking for a way to increase employee engagement, then producing a short video that can be found on your intranet homepage is the perfect way to get started.

4) Make your intranet a fun space

Your intranet doesn’t have to be a digital space that is just filled with corporate content.  

If you want better engagement, then you need to start including posts that your employees will enjoy reading. 

Why develop a social community if there is nothing socially appealing about it!? 

Create a space where people can socialise, post photos from work events and organise group activities afterwork. 

If people are having fun, then they are going to be more inclined to work harder, stay longer and care more about the organisation. 

 

5) Take advantage of your intranet analytics

If you want to improve digital workplace engagement then it’s good to know what is and isn’t working. 

Take advantage of your intranet analytics feature to measure key metrics regarding your employees intranet activity. 

If you can identify which areas of your intranet are getting the least engagement then you can look to improve those spaces. 

The more you know about your intranet usage, the more improvements you can make to enhance its performance.

6) Make use of your intranet homepage

Like most digital spaces, the homepage is the first aspect of your brand that anyone sees – it’s a ‘virtual’ storefront. 

Not using this space correctly can be costly to your business, both internally and customer facing.

When creating your intranet homepage, it’s important to include all of the key features that your employees will need. If important features are not accessible or easy to find, employees will soon become tired and waste time searching for documents and information they need to get the job done.

If you want to learn how to create an engaging intranet homepage read our blog post so that you can optimise your digital workplace. 

7) Conduct employee surveys

A good way to understand whether your intranet is performing well is by asking it’s audience. 

If you want to learn how you can improve user experience and create a more engaging digital platform, then conducting an employee survey is the perfect place to start! 

Asking employees to make recommendations and suggestions regarding your digital workplace will provide you with valuable insight into your employees needs and wants and will help you to make user focused improvements to your intranet platform. 

8) Keep it plain and simple

It’s tempting to try and include as many features as you possibly can onto one intranet homepage. But this can often leave your digital workplace looking messy, disorganised and less engaging.  

The key is to keep things simple. If you have utilised your intranet analytics and conducted employee surveys, then you will know exactly what to include on your intranet and what employees will engage with the most. 

Having a clear, structured and well branded intranet will be more engaging to your employees than one that is a disorganised chaos!

 

Introducing a digital workplace solution to increase employee engagement

We hope that this blog post provided you with insightful information to help you grow employee engagement within your digital workplace. 

To learn how Mercury can improve employee engagement within your workplace request your FREE mercury demo.

 

Enjoyed reading this blog post? We have another we think you might like.