7 Strategic Ways To Boost Communication With a Remote Workforce

The definitive guide to transforming your employee experience with a mobile-first intranet

7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Make content relevant through segmentation . . 2

Use mobile for video training and meetings . . . 3

Boost engagement through segmentation . . . . . 4

Alleviate worker isolation through mobile . . . . . 5

Reach your entire workforce with mobile . . . . . . 6

Maintain a mobile crisis playbook . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Create a single source of truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

It’s not a daily occurrence in the Netherlands, but every so often a backhoe operator digging a hole accidentally cuts a cable, denying internet service to half of a suburb .

That’s information VodafoneZiggo must get to field workers at once—but only to the relevant ones, says Moustapha Benhaddou, performance improvement manager . If the problem is in North Holland, why blanket the entire country with push notifications?

Using Staffbase as their employee experience intranet, VodafoneZiggo—one of the leading communication and entertainment service providers in the Netherlands—sends push notifications to those working in the area on their mobile phones, leaving the rest of the company undistracted by irrelevant news .

“In the old days, we told everybody about an outage,” regardless of their location or relevancy, Benhaddou says .

The importance of engagement with remote employees has only heightened during the coronavirus pandemic . Work-from-home orders have underlined the importance of reaching disparate audiences, and information burnout has caused employees to ignore irrelevant or non-targeted messaging .

“COVID-19, if anything, woke people up to what was broken,” says Fabian Liebig, Staffbase’s vice president of global marketing . “A lot of organizations have avoided investing in a strong digital strategy. This virus turned our world upside down. If your business finds out someone has tested positive with COVID 15 minutes before the workday starts, an email won’t cut it .”

Here are seven ways to bolster your communications with remote and self-isolating employees through a mobile-first intranet strategy, both in crises and in less fraught times:

Introduction

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

Versum Materials—a U.S. electronic materials company—set up different user groups to deal with both everyday messaging and crisis communications in its intranet app , says Tiffany Elle, who heads external and internal communications . This is particularly important during a

pandemic in which various geographies are subject to different stay-at-home orders, government mandates and other factors .

Versum, a subsidiary of the German company Merck KGaA, has 2,400 employees worldwide, 1,900 of which are in manufacturing and research and development . Versum segments information by country, worksite and other factors, so that the Tempe, Arizona, company doesn’t flood workers with irrelevant information .

“The U.S. has a different set of guidelines than China,” Elle says. “China’s back to work .”

Versum’s intranet automatically adds employees to the correct subgroups, so nobody has to manually enter changes if an employee relocates or gets promoted .

1. Make content relevant through segmentation.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

Versum’s leaders have been offering video briefings. “We can push that out through the app, pairing that with transcriptions,” Elle says.

Mobile communications has allowed Versum to eliminate face-to-face meetings in favor of video training. The Staffbase employee experience intranet app has an “acknowledge” button, so that it can track which managers or employees have read or viewed the material .

In place of the longer, in-person town halls of the past, the company has been holding shorter 30-minute sessions led by an executive team member . They make presentations of about 10-15 minutes, with the rest of the time left to answer questions . If the clock runs out before all questions are answered, the company ensures that an executive responds later, and Versum publishes the results internally .

2. Use mobile for video training and meetings.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

When employees are confident that messages will be relevant to them personally, far more will engage with them . At Versum, 70% of employees actively use their intranet app weekly . In contrast,when email was the primary communication tool, only 20% of employees even opened the messages .

The picture is similar at VodafoneZiggo . “The willingness of people to read that news is very high,” Benhaddou says, adding that their app engagement rate is always above 80% .

Benhaddou has established a dedicated channel within their intranet to ensure all information each employee needs is available in the application . This means they know what the regulations are, and how the company has adopted them . Policy revisions explain why something changed and what the takeaway is for the employee .

Comparing the current situation to when VodafoneZiggo didn’t have an intranet, “Now news travels fast,” Benhaddou says .

3. Boost engagement through segmentation.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

Employee isolation once tended to be limited to field workers. They were on their own all day and only saw their colleagues or team leader when they visited the warehouse to pick up equipment and cables .

Nowadays, with organizational lockdowns, office workers worldwide understand the problem of isolation . “This can give you a distance, a feeling that, ‘Hey, I’m not part of this company,’” Benhaddou says. “Engagement is not about people clicking on your app, it’s about receiving confidence from your employees and making them feel a part of something.”

A mobile-first intranet allows employees to pose questions, interact with colleagues and discuss policy . When the company posts an article, they can weigh in with comments or questions .

“Employees have the feeling that if they have something to say, they’re being heard,” Benhaddou says .

4. Alleviate worker isolation through mobile.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

Most large organizations have struggled with the problem of trying to reach remote employees, such as drivers, factory workers, on-the-road sales staff or doctors and nurses in a hospital. However, the demand for using mobile devices in the workplace is not exclusive to those who are not at a desk .

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been standing at my computer while also communicating with my team on my iPhone”” says Liebig . “Sharing thoughts and information isn’t something that is limited to a single device .”

Employees use mobile phones to access payroll, human resources policies, health benefits, shift schedules or messages from the CEO. The company can also ping employees—in-office and otherwise—with crisis information such as news about COVID-19 .

5. Reach your entire workforce with mobile.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

The company crisis plan is often held in a binder, or on work laptops that employees can forget to grab when they dash out the door in an emergency .

“I don’t know about you,” Liebig says, “but when I’m in crisis, the last thing I’m going to think of is a three-ring binder .”

Versum has made its entire crisis playbook mobile. Employees involved in the response may have access to information limited to their own area, but the app provides the specific information they need .

The mobile plan includes phone numbers for employees, hospitals, police and even schools that are near Versum manufacturing plants, so that the crisis team won’t have to frantically Google the information, Elle says. As for the pandemic, employees can find a COVID-19 hotline, and if they have questions, they can post them anonymously .

“We’re really relying on our intranet to make sure people have a repository of information,” Elle says.

Another advantage of mobile—both in a crisis and in ordinary times—is the higher level of engagement. Push notifications have a 75% chance of being read, versus just 30% for email. The company can request that its associates click on the app to acknowledge they are safe during an event such as a fire, Etter says. That way the safety team can know who’s working and who’s returned .

6. Maintain a mobile crisis playbook.

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7 Strategic Ways to Boost Communication with a Remote Workforce

The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer reported that employer communications is the most credible source of information about the coronavirus . Sixty-three percent of respondents said that they would believe information from their employer after one or two exposures, versus 58% from the government and 51% for traditional news media . “My employer” was the most trusted institution by 27 points over government and news outlets .

Furthermore, the month over month usage rates within the Staffbase platform increased exponentially from COVID-19 . News publication increased by 163%, and weekly readership rose by 74%. Weekend readership increased an additional 150%. Employees heavily depend on their intranet to serve as the single source of truth for news, information, community, policy, and action items . This need is heightened greatly during times of crisis .

“Staffbase’s mobile-first intranet goes well beyond a communication platform and brings together so many resources from communications, employee health management, HR or finance that we need to put in front of our employees,” says Elle.

By making information available to all employees, organizations can provide accurate information on health recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and others, rather than a tweet or Facebook post, Liebig says . This also allows communicators to stay on top of questions, quell rumors, prevent the spread of fake news and offer employees a relevant and personalized experience for feedback.

What is needed, then, is a single place where employees can access all the information they need for their jobs .

Says Benhaddou: “Because of Staffbase, we are prepared for whatever happens to us.”

7. Create a single source of truth.

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