If you are an HR or an Internal communication executive, you may wish to learn from the experience of professionals in other companies. We gathered examples of best practices from leading companies in the market to help you identify what can be relevant for your company - check it out!

When it comes to communication and engagement, common use cases often leverage a combination of multiple capabilities to best address the organizational needs. Below are some of the key tools and concrete examples on how they are being used in the organizational context:

  1. News, Updates and Announcements

  2. Wellness and benefits

  3. In-App chat

  4. Surveys and polls

  5. Suggestion box

  6. Direct channels to HR / Senior leadership

  7. Employee Directory

  8. Employee Referrals

  9. Events announcement and registration

  10. FAQ

1. News, Updates and Announcements:

The #1 feature when it comes to communication and engagement, is the use of 'Updates'. Updates is a way to distribute information with push notifications, to all or part of the team. It can contain any media and is fully trackable so we'll know how far our message came across.

Characteristics and Capabilities

  1. Targeted communication: allowing you to choose the exact target audience Whether it is an individual or a group. Providing each employee with a personalized experience - showing them only what they are meant to see.

  2. Measurable communication: You sent out an update, now it's time to understand exactly who saw it and who didn't, who liked it, who commented on it and how many times. 

  3. Specific follow ups: You can easily point out the team members that are yet to see the update and follow up just with them, as opposed to sending once again a company-wide email, spamming all those who already got the information.

  4. Schedule for later: Prepare now and schedule for later, this allows you to be more effective in the way you work, and to better target High Attention Time (HAT)  of your users, which is usually around early morning, or just before launch when they are more tuned to their mobiles.

  5. Automatic reminders: got an important message? pre-set an automated follow up. That way a user will automatically get a follow up notification if they didn't review your update.

  6. Engaging content: Use videos, images, gifs, pdfs. file attachments, locations and everything you need to make your communication engaging. You can choose if you wish to allow people to like/comment or not - so to differentiate between more 'formal communication' and 'non-formal communication'.

Common use cases:

  1. News and Newsletters: teams use the updates feature to send out company newsletters, sharing of company news, relevant media coverage links and more.

  2. Executive communication: Often senior executives utilize the ability to personally address each and everyone of the company employees. This is mostly common among CEOs when sharing their executive letter with the team.

  3. Company announcements: some examples for such announcements may include announcing on an opening of a new location /campus, winning a new customer, reaching a key milestone, upcoming company event etc.

  4.  Celebrating success: Celebrating success allows the team to like comment, engage and be part of the success. Some examples includes sharing of a great feedback letter on a doctor's performance, an employee that provided an outstanding level of service, a positive media coverage the company got and more.

  5. Employee recognition: One of the most common practices for companies looking to improve employee engagement, is to put the employee in the center through employee recognition. Just to name a few examples:
    - Employee spotlights releases
    - Employee of the month recognition
    - Celebration of employee anniversaries
    - Birthdays and newborns wishes
    - Welcoming new team members to the team
    - Announcing promotions
    Worth mentioning that this is done on the company level, but also locally by mid-managers to their teams.

  6. Operational communication: depending on your industry, you can easily share operational related updates, such as a drastic weather alert, a new collection promotion, a road that is closed, a regulation change and much more. Once again, benefiting from the targeted measurable communication.

2. Wellness and Benefits

Many companies invest a lot of resources into facilitating robust wellness and benefits programs for their teams. Often, HR professionals leverage Connecteam to raise awareness of the current programs, benefits and more. This may include:

  1.  Providing background about the existing programs and plans

  2. In-app links serving as an easy gateway to your wellness program login page.

  3. Registration forms and RSVPs for upcoming plans and related events

  4. Announcement of new benefits / wellness plans 

  5. Uploading of the employee wellness/ benefits book making it accessible for the teams in a click.

3. In-App Chat

In today's world, a chat is a common and important means of communication. In most organizations, employees end up using their private chat for work related issues, such as Whatsapp or facebook's Messanger.

Companies prefer to use Connecteam's in-App chat feature for a few key reasons:

  1. Work-Life separation: with the in-app chat, there is no longer need to utilize the 'private chat' for work purposes, creating a full separation between work and life channels reduces stress and improves the employee experience. 

  2. Self maintaining groups: You set up a chat group for your New York team - all team members are automatically assigned to it.  If someone leaves the New York team or joins it, the system will automatically add/remove them from the group so you no longer need to maintain those groups.

  3.  Profanity controls: to meet your organizational needs and unlike with private messaging apps, you can limit one on one chats, or even delete in appropriate messages if needed.  

  4. Data storage: Using the in-App chat gives you control over the information exchanged over the chat. So if someone leaves the company, all data shared on chat is not stored on the employee's phone, like in the case of private messaging apps where it is  impossible to deny the employee from accessing the data.

Best practices of utilizing the in-App chat include:

  1. One on one chats: allowing team members to easily and quickly communicate with each other.

  2. Team Channels: one side communication from group admins to the channel members. Mostly relevant for very big groups when only few individuals can send updates to the rest of the team

  3. Team groups: Team groups are the most common groups used on chat. Whether it is for managers and their teams, for a specific facility or a cross company group, team groups are very popular.

  4. Peer groups: Many teams create groups that cross the organization to allow pier to pier communication. Some common examples include "senior management", "HR", "Finance", "Production team", "Store X" and many others.

  5. Subject groups: Whether it is to share safety updates, debating preparations for  the upcoming party, or for car-sharing arrangements, teams like to create groups that are related to their projects, events etc.

4. Surveys and Polls

Most organizations utilize surveys one way or another. When using the surveys tool in the App, not only it makes it easy to conduct the traditional surveys, but it makes it easy to create “micro surveys”, simple quick surveys to get quick feedback with little efforts from our employees. Had an onboarding trainer and want to know how they did? Send a single question survey ranking the instructor on a scale of 1-5

Characteristics and Capabilities

  1. Send targeted surveys to specific groups or individuals

  2. Conduct anonymous surveys

  3. Get insights into the overall rankings and statistics of the survey results

  4. Review each individual entry

  5. Export the results for further processing or documentation

In some cases companies wish to leverage their already existing surveys such as 'Survey Monkey', in such case you can easily distribute this as embedded link in the app that looks and feels natural to the user.

5. Suggestion Box

A common practice used by many companies, is the use of a virtual 'Suggestion Box'. User can easily share ideas and thoughts, and once they post an idea it is automatically delivered to predefined email address(es) and is logged in the platform, making it easy to consume the data and to look back at ideas suggested over time.

6. Direct channel to HR / Executives

Companies with an 'Open Door' policy or companies looking to let employees a channel to address HR and senior managers,  often create a direct channel box, allowing the employee to submit a query / thought which goes as a pdf summary directly to the email of the designated person whether that is the CEO of the company or an HR professional.

7. Employee Directory

Having your team's contact information at hand is very useful. Companies utilize the employee directory to make contact information available and searchable with ease, so team members can find the contacts they need quickly and easily.

Few things worth bearing in mind when using the employee directory:

  1. Quick actions: easily call, chat, text or email your team members in a click, without the need to store their phone number.

  2. Automatically populated: setting up your employee directory happens at the click of a button. You don't need to input data, as it is already part of your app.

  3. Fully searchable: whether you are looking someone using their title, name or location, all the information in the directory is searchable making it easy to find the person you need.

  4. Customized for privacy: for organizations with specific privacy needs, you can choose what information to show, to hide specific individuals, or to hide specific information of individuals. So you can easily choose if to present mobile numbers or not and what info you want to make available about the CEO.

  5. Additional work contacts: on top of your employees, you can add relevant working contacts such as office numbers, cafeteria or third parties you often work with - making it easy for your teams to find the information they need.

8. Employee Referrals

Recruiting employees is always a big investment for the company. Your employee App is a very powerful tool when it comes to getting referrals for potential candidates from your already existing workforce. A common best practice for getting employee referrals include:

  1. Sharing information on the referral incentive program

  2. Publishing an 'Employee Recommendation' form that employees can feel recommending on family and friends

  3. Posting links / info about open positions spreading the word across the organization.

9. Events announcement and registration

When it comes to events, with your employee App you can notify people about upcoming events, and let them pre subscribe so you'll know who's expected to attend.

10. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The use of FAQ is nothing new, but the ability to make it available for your teams in a click, is powerful tool. That way much of the frustration and ongoing communication can be addressed quickly and efficiently. Many times companies choose to create an FAQ section in the App, to address questions around vacation and sick leave, protocols, wellness and benefits and much more.

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