13 Effective Ways to Create a More Connected Workplace
Mary Davis Kaplan
The word “workplace” typically conjures images of a traditional office setting, complete with cubicles and conference rooms. But in reality, that’s not the workplace that most employees are experiencing today. Thanks to the pandemic and work from home mandates, many of us have gotten used to, and now prefer, working remote and/or working in a hybrid fashion, returning to the office maybe once or twice a week.
And while many of us are enjoying our hybrid and remote work situations, leaders across many companies are worried about corporate culture, employee engagement, and a connected and collaborative workplace. Many company leaders have a more traditional mindset of “If I can’t see it, it isn’t there”. If employees aren’t physically in the office, they must not be connecting and collaborating with each other. This may or may not be true depending on your company. But, what is true, is that every leader is focused on creating a more connected workplace.
Many people think that higher salary and perks – like paid lunches – are directly associated with workplace satisfaction. In reality, it’s meaningful connections that are an important predictor of whether someone will be happy, healthy, and successful in their job. Employee connection is in direct correlation to employee engagement and experience.
Feeling connected in the workplace is an important part of business success today. Leadership, managers, and peers can all play a role in creating a more connected workplace, which drives numerous benefits across the organization.
What is a Connected Workforce and Connected Employees?
A connected workplace is a set of technology and tools where employees (no matter where they are located) can access business services in one centralized platform. This includes all the components necessary for an organization to organize, implement, and manage the services offered to customers and employees. Ideally, a connected workplace should help businesses increase productivity among employees and processes.
A connected workplace goes beyond the constraints of physical boundaries by seamlessly integrating all assets, business operations, and technology tools. It empowers employees – no matter if they work remote, hybrid, or in an office – to communicate and collaborate with efficiency. This unified system not only streamlines employee management but also fosters a culture of fairness, transparency, and profound connectivity within the organization.
What Does a Connected Workspace Look Like?
A study conducted by HR advisory and research firm Future Workplace and the technology solutions company Virgin Pulse found that 45% of the 2,000 managers and employees surveyed rely on email to communicate with teammates. Of these respondents, more than 40% said they feel lonely either “always” or “very often,” are not engaged in their work and have a “high need” for social connection.
Feeling connected in the workplace is an important part of business success today. Managers must encourage employees to become engaged with their work and their peers in order to create positive results.
Flexibility is key to creating a connected workspace. Employees appreciate having multiple options when choosing where they will work, how they will work, and even when they will work. Whether an employee is in an office, at their home office, traveling for work, or away from their desk, a connected workspace means employees have their digital headquarters in their hands. A centralized tool that provides a connected experience for opportunities of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and engaging with colleagues.
Benefits of Having a Connected Workplace
A connected workplace offers multiple benefits for employees and their managers.
- Flexibility: Employees are CRAVING flexibility in their work life and workplace. When leadership and management honors employee’s needs for flexibility, employees are empowered to do their best work. Ensuring employees have ample quiet time, with limited meetings, so they can do heads down, productive work. Not creating rigid schedules, so that allows employees to take care of their family, home, and health engagements. Creating a flexible workplace is truly creating an employee first workplace. How can you create a positive company culture when you aren’t listening to your employees and forcing them to be in certain places at certain times?
- Accessibility: Look around you, at work and in your personal life, everyone wants to be seen and honored for who they are and what makes them unique. A connected workplace that’s flexible and inclusive, ensures every employee has better access to resources, information, training, and collaboration that they need.
- Cost efficiency: A connected workplace will help your business improve their bottom line. A connected workplace improves productivity, knowledge management, and time management, which in turn drives better company performance.
In fact, a Forrester study of 6 companies found that after implementing a LumApps intranet to enhance their connected workplace, these companies saw $7.4 million savings in employee productivity and $320k reduced costs in IT consolidation.
- Employee experience and engagement: Ultimately, a better connected workplace will improve employee experience and engagement, which will be a huge benefit to any organization. Every company wants to retain top performing employees and help them grow. It’s time to provide employees with the tools that help them do just that.
A connected workplace is designed with flexibility in mind. Employees can collaborate with their team members and work independently as required. The corporate culture is one of increased cooperation. Workers are more likely to be engaged when they feel they have more control over how they spend their time at work, starting with where they sit while performing tasks.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
13 Ideas to Create a More Connected Workplace
If the goal is to become more connected with others at work, how does a company go about achieving it? Implement the following strategies – as time and budget considerations allow – to make the entire workplace more connected.
1. Embrace, share, and embody your company's mission, vision, and values
Begin by ensuring that every employee has the opportunity, and is encouraged to thoroughly comprehend your company's mission (its purpose and reason for existence), vision (long-term aspirations), and values (core principles and beliefs). Use the onboarding process to take full advantage of creating personalized journeys for each employee that highlight your company's vision and values.
Make sure leaders are setting examples and reinforcing the company's mission. Create office events and initiatives that put your mission and values on display. Use your internal communications platform to continuously educate all employees on how they can be a part of your company's success and vision.
2. Take steps to get to know employees
Managers and Human Resources department personnel walk a fine line in the workplace. They are often seen as being on the side of the company, but also need to work very closely with employees to ensure they are providing employees with the support they need to succeed.
People working in these roles should make an effort to get to know employees working for the company in various capacities. It is the only way employees will be able to trust them with questions and concerns later.
3. Set up communities of practice and encourage employees to share
Communities of practice exist to take advantage of the expertise within the company. They give employees and teams opportunities to share their knowledge, brainstorm, and collaborate across multiple locations.
Employees involved in communities of practice have opportunities to develop their current areas of expertise and grow their knowledge by solving problems with their colleagues. They also gain the advantage of feedback and support from experts.
Documents related to the communities of practice are stored in a library accessible to employees. The work performed by these key players benefits others later.
4. Create peer mentorship programs
Peer mentorship programs can be used as part of a leadership development program. They can also be offered during the onboarding process when a new employee joins the company. In either case, mentorship programs send a message that knowledge and personal growth are in many ways dependent on social connections.
These programs are very popular among employers who want to offer their employees valuable perks but don’t necessarily have the budget for higher salaries. Instead, they can take steps to increase valuable human connections to provide valuable knowledge and contacts.
5. Ensure that all employees feel comfortable
The workplace should be a space where everyone feels safe and free from bullying and harassment. Some companies promote a “family like” atmosphere. This can be perceived as negative if the employee comes from a family environment where they do not feel safe. Encourage employees to treat everyone with dignity and respect.
Workers need to feel confident their concerns will be taken seriously. Have specific policies in place where complaints that run counter to company policy are investigated promptly and fairly. If employees don’t feel comfortable, and aren’t encouraged to express their concerns, they won’t feel a sense of connection nor belonging.
6. Introduce an Employee Recognition Center
An intranet is not just for sharing work documents. It can also be used as an important vehicle to help employees stay connected. Use it to feature specific employees and teams, along with specific content that reflects the company’s campaigns or the time of year.
This strategy also allows different communities within the company to recognize their peers for excellent performance, which will enhance the company culture.
LumApps is an intranet solution that includes an employee recognition center directly in their platform. This feature allows you to create a virtual employee recognition system that is more visible across the company than a 1-1 exchange. For example, employees can send peer-to-peer recognition to highlight how their teammates are helping others across business functions. This is a great way to promote employee achievements and the virtual “badges” can persist on the employee’s profile for all colleagues to see.
7. Keep information and communication flowing throughout the company
Always ensure information is moving through the company. The information should be flowing from the top-down, from bottom-up, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion. Employees should be encouraged to ask questions and offer feedback to managers. There will always be cases when it is appropriate for the information to flow from management to employees.
Make sure you have the right communication tools in place to make it easy for management to send the right information to the right employee at the right time. A modern intranet platform like LumApps will include tools that help with communication, like the ability to send communication campaigns, the ability to push important company announcements, and will include the ability for employees to leave comments, which is a great way to gather feedback and for employees to seek help.
8. Set up communities of interest
Allow employees to get to know each other and their interests outside of work. Employees with similar interests can join the relevant community of interest to discuss their interest with colleagues. They can post images, videos, or links to interesting online content.
When some employees work from home or a satellite office, participating in a community of interest is a good way to get to know coworkers in a more social and casual setting. Participants in communities of interest do not have to be experts in the topic being discussed. They just need to have an interest to establish a connection with their peers.
Communities of interest might be related to company health and wellbeing initiatives, like a recipe swap community, a runners meetup, or they might be more social like a pet corner where pictures of pets are shared, and a fun Friday challenge where you encourage to post on a different Friday topic like favorite movies, post a photo in your favorite hat, or favorite trip you’ve taken.
9. Host regular social events for employees
If the goal is to create a connected workplace that functions more like a community, then the relationships between employees must extend beyond traditional working hours. Schedule regular social events for employees. The type and themes of these events can vary, as long as they are meant to include people from different teams and departments. Competitions and games can be fun, as well as taking advantage of local events and volunteering opportunities.
It is a good idea to have at least one event where the company can celebrate individual employee and team contributions to its success. This would also be a good time to recognize employees who have gone above and beyond in giving back to the local community.
10. Establish an employee directory
Employee directories are usually thought of as a tool for large companies where employees may not know their coworkers very well, or how to get in touch with them. This option works for organizations of any size, since it provides workers with the information they need and doesn’t waste unnecessary time searching.
Once an employee locates a fellow worker who can answer a question or provide the information needed, the employee can reach out quickly to make contact. The person being contacted is a valuable link in the chain of knowledge and can share what they know as well as the name of another person who may be able to assist.
Employees can also fill out their profile with more information than strictly corporate information. For example, if your company is in the hospitality industry, encourage employees to fill out their favorite food that you serve, or location that they’ve visited. If your company is a healthcare org, encourage employees to share their healthcare passions. These open text fields can be as social as you want, with some companies listing favorite books, hobbies, and movie characters.
11. Encourage employees to try new things
One of the worst reasons for hanging onto old policies and processes is because “this is how we have always done things.” If something is no longer working, then it is time to try an alternative solution.
Many employees complain about meetings and how they are inefficient, and take far too much time out of the workday. If strategies like written agendas are not successful in cutting meeting time, then consider changing how they are conducted by enforcing the agenda and cutting pre-meeting discussions and introductions back.
And when these new processes are completed, encourage employees to share what they’ve learned! Everyone in your company can benefit from the success, or even failures, of new processes and systems.
12. Hire employees who will become passionate leaders
Find candidates who are coachable and who really care about the organization. They need to understand they have a key role in bringing teams together. Passionate leaders can (and should) have their own work styles. Some of them like to use videos to engage with their team members, while others prefer to use an internal blog. There is no “right way” to go about it, as long as they are engaging with their team and encouraging members to do the same.
13. Use integrations with collaboration suites
LumApps’ integrations give employees access to all the features available on collaborative suites like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. By integrating these tools into your intranet, employees can maximize productivity and get the best possible use out of the company’s investment in these collaborative suites. Integrating your collaboration suites help maximize productivity because employees can complete more work from one tool, rather than having to switch to a different platform. By implementing an intranet to help with workplace connectivity, companies in this Forrester study were able to save $7.5 million across three years in productivity simply because desktop workers saved 25 minutes per week on the new intranet.
Employees can access shared calendars and folders, collaborate on documents or presentations, exchange in team groups or chats and much more. LumApps’ intranet platform gives a company’s employees the capability to perform all of these functions from a single digital workplace.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
A connected workplace goes beyond the constraints of physical boundaries by seamlessly integrating all assets, business operations, and technology tools. It empowers individuals, irrespective of their location, to communicate and collaborate with utmost efficiency. This unified system not only streamlines employee management but also fosters a culture of fairness, transparency, and profound connectivity within the organization.
- Provide an all-in-one Digital Platform
- Improve Internal Communications and Collaborations
- Boost Employee Experience and Engagement
- Help Knowledge Sharing and Accessibility
- Take steps to get to know employees
- Create peer mentorship programs
- Set up communities of practice
- Ensure that all employees feel comfortable
