It's one thing to try and attract and retain customers, but have you ever thought about the importance of employee retention and how your workers relate to your marketing efforts? Companies are starting to change and assess the ways in which they engage their employees. And now, there are some amazing platforms that help to amplify these recruiting and retention efforts.
As inbound marketers, the way we think about employee engagement is this: When you cultivate employee buy-in and enthusiasm, the resulting effects help to create organic momentum and energy behind all your marketing efforts. A more inspired workforce comes full circle leading to increased employee retention, morale, enhanced productivity, and increased customer satisfaction, improving bottom line results.
Overall, the components of these employee engagement platforms are very similar. Each includes some type of incentive or rewards program, real time feedback, and analytics on progress. Determining what will work best for your company depends on how many employees will be using the platform and what the long-term company goals are. But in today's age of social media and 2.0 lead generation, it's important to recognize that employees are your most vital marketing tool, and internal engagement isn't just the responsibility of HR; it's critical for marketing's success.
HighGround is a mobile friendly platform that focuses on real time peer-to-peer and top down recognition. It helps to capture the voice of employees allowing them to set and track quarterly goals that in turn align with company goals. This goal setting is transparent across the organization to help ensure that everyone is on the same page. Surveys, benchmarking and polling can help to get feedback from the entire organization more quickly creating a more collaborative environment. Aside from the advanced goal setting and communication efforts it easily integrates with other business systems so users won’t have to adjust their workflow.
PostBeyond helps to amplify your inbound engagement efforts by providing a user-friendly platform where your employees can log in and locate pre-approved articles to share. Administrators on the account create and manage the content they want users to share, and can even assign that content to be shared within specific groups. Some examples of content to share would include things like industry related articles, blog posts, pictures from company events and newly created content pieces. Once these articles are pulled together, internal employees have the ability to log in and review the preapproved streams of content for quick and easy sharing amongst their social networks with just one click. After the content is shared, PostBeyond has the ability to track reach, clicks, shares and more. There is even a leaderboard that reveals top performers and encourages engagement by making actionable results visible. The leaderboard shows which users are most active, who is generating results for your company and what content type is most effective. Similar to many social media tools users have the ability to post instantly or schedule for later posting.
WooBoard combines social interaction, internal conversation and a reward system called the Reward Store. As employees interact they gain points, which they can cash in for popular gift cards. Who wouldn’t love that? Another aspect of the software focuses on reports and analytics. These help to provide insights on engagement, culture adoption, while keeping tabs on internal talent.
Pomello focuses on determining what motivates employees within the workplace. Surveys are sent out frequently to better understand and predict where engagement hot spots are that can be improved upon. The analytics provided outline areas to improve employee experience detailing job satisfaction and pinpointing where there are gaps between personal and team values. The graphs provided also make it easy to match potential job candidates to the current team culture to determine if they are a fit.
TINYpulse is primarily an employee feedback system. It provides a mixture of management surveys and “cheers” authored by colleagues to encourage more frequent communication. Each week management can send out questions to encourage employees to rate items or respond with their opinion. Responses can be anonymously sent to management and they can respond without outing the employee. This allows employees to provide honest feedback on pain points preventing build up of team issues. The “cheers” aspect of the software provides an area where employees can recognize a job well done or improvement of key skills. This peer-to-peer recognition impacts work behaviors and is often found to be more impactful than management recognition.
Everwise is a mixed software that provides mentorship matching. The data in the software helps to select a mentor that fits the employee’s traits and aspirations. Content is curated around the employee’s specific focus areas. Interactive goal setting guides employees to identify and prioritize areas for improvement. Combined, all of these elements contribute to a well-rounded career development program.
Briq is a peer recognition tool that plugs directly into your team's communication app and enables easy and frequent peer recognition. Teammates can give each other virtual credits to say "thanks", or earn credits by performing actions that align with company goals. Because every team is unique, Briq lets you decide which actions to reward and how to reward them: an ecosystem of apps lets you tailor recognition to your needs, and customize rewards to align with your corporate culture. Through a combination of peer-to-peer and top-down recognition, Briq lets you spread a culture of "doing the right thing at the right time" and start building a unique workplace.
Selecting an employee engagement platform is no easy feat, but if you have more than 50 employees, it's almost surely worth the investment. When a business grows beyond a few team members, it's easy to lose sight of what employees experience everyday. And from a marketing perspective, that hurts the company's brand because it decreases employees' willingness to promote their company.
By showing your employees that their voices are heard you’re helping to turn them into advocates. Technology platforms are one important way to do this for larger organizations. However, only a true shift in company culture will actually generate natural and increased engagement. Improvement on internal efforts produces better overall external results: better qualified leads and stronger talent that will improve your productivity. For more information on a team-building and an inbound approach to company culture, check out our free hiring guide below.
Topics: Inbound Marketing
