Increasing Employee Engagement with Effective Internal Communications

Smart organizations know that good employee communications not only influence every aspect of a person's working life, they also lead to a healthier financial bottom line.

No wonder those organizations are investing in giving their people the best possible experience at work - it's a win-win situation every time.

Effective internal communications can provide points of connection for employees who don’t work at the company headquarters or report directly to a C-level executive. They can also provide a sense of unity and camaraderie for an increasingly remote team of employees.

Numerous studies have shown that engaged employees have a huge positive impact on a company, and effective internal communications are key to achieving this. A cohesive, clear, and targeted communications strategy can motivate employees to recommend the employer’s products and services, solve emerging customer needs, and be more creative and productive.

Copious research has proven time and again how organizations with effective employee communications significantly outperform those who don't on several metrics, financial, employee engagement and share performance.

A recent report from Amalgam Insights based on interviews with Poppulo clients shows how the employee communications and engagement market leader provides layers of value throughout organizations, benefitting employees and executives—and the bottom line.

Amalgam Insight’s CEO and Principal Analyst Hyoun Park revealed findings from their Business Value Analysis of employee engagement software to help organizations accurately build the case for investments in communications technology.

(This calculator simulates the potential Return On Investment (ROI) available to you by maximizing your employee communications with Poppulo).

Here we look at three additional benefits of increased employee engagement and discusses how internal communications can support each goal.

Increased productivity

Boosting employee engagement results in improved productivity. For example, a 2016 report found that highly engaged employees were 21% more productive and 20% more profitable than their less-engaged peers (Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis Report, 2016). Other sources have found that engaged employees generate a 15–22% increase in profit, due in part to increased productivity.

Poppulo can help organizations increase employee productivity in several ways.

• Automating and streamlining tasks to reduce the design costs associated with creating newsletters and the time needed to update and synchronize mailing lists
• Offering cross-channel analytics to improve management of the company intranet
• Providing centralized governance in managing email distribution lists, including regular synchronization and automatic updates
• Providing a drag-and-drop user interface and content compilation process, which simplifies and shortens the newsletter creation process by as much as several hours to three weeks

Newsletters and mailing lists offer many opportunities for automation to free up employee time, creating space for employees to tackle new projects that are potentially of much higher value. By shifting employees from working on tasks that can be easily streamlined or automated, such as data updates and email launches, to more strategic revenue-related tasks, a company can assign employees to much more profitable work—in some cases, work that is five or six times more valuable than the employee’s base compensation.

Meeting customer needs

Employee engagement is associated with a customer-centric perspective. Studies show that engaged employees are four times more likely than disengaged employees to understand how to meet customer needs. Over three-quarters (78%) of engaged employees recommend their employer’s services or products, compared to only 13% of disengaged employees (MacLeod Report, 2009). Thus, increasing employee engagement will translate into better customer service.

Internal communications can be an excellent tool for increasing employee engagement. They can help employees better understand the corporate strategy and give them a sense of shared mission and goals. In addition, this strategy of being customer-centric works in tandem with the increased productivity mentioned earlier; as employees begin to have more time available in their workday, they have more opportunities to provide enhanced customer service and to find creative solutions to emerging customer issues.

Avoid costly employee turnover

The true cost of replacing employees is unclear, and estimates vary widely within an industry. Employee Benefit News determined that it costs on average $15,000 to replace an employee who has a $45,000 annual salary. Work Institute estimated that companies based in the United States will spend $600 billion replacing 42 million employees in 2018.

In addition, according to a study by Allied Van Lines, it takes an average of eight months for a new employee to become fully productive. It has been reported that US-based businesses with annual revenues above $2.5 billion bring in more than $529,000 in annual receipts per employee. Lengthy gaps in filling key roles and getting new employees onboarded can make it challenging, if not impossible, for businesses to meet corporate revenue goals. Thus, even a marginal change in the turnover rate can significantly benefit a company’s bottom line.

Of course, engaged employees are less likely to leave the company. Poppulo can provide a targeted, cohesive, and compelling internal communications strategy to help you keep your employees engaged and invested in the company’s mission.

All of these employee engagement factors—increased productivity, customer-centricity, and employee retention—will benefit corporate revenue. Highly engaged employees can add $3,000 to $4,000 in additional annual value to a company compared to their less-engaged peers.

But to achieve the financial benefits discussed here, organizations must first build a culture, infrastructure, and technology environment that will maximize employee engagement, then develop internal communications that convey the company mission and key business goals.

Also crucial is that they employ analytics, design, communications workflows, and content changes to iteratively improve engagement over time. In all of these crucial endeavors, Poppulo is here to help.