Why Every Company Needs an Employee Communication App

Blog | May 11, 2022 | 5 minutes read

Many businesses mistakenly believe that communicating with their employees via old-school, one-way channels such as emails and noticeboards is sufficient.

As consumers, we’ve all come to depend on our mobile devices to interact with friends, family, and service providers. Now, mobile technology has made its way into the realm of employee experience.

Given that today, most workers have either their own or a company-issued mobile device, it makes sense to leverage more robust and reliable digital channels to deliver a better employee experience and drive greater levels of employee engagement.

However, with so many options available, which one is right for your organization and, perhaps more importantly, your people?

In this article, we’ll explore why you should consider investing in a mobile-friendly digital internal communications tool and what to consider when making your selection.

What Are Employee Communication Apps?

Digital employee communication apps allow employees to receive personalized, timely, and relevant information from their employer wherever they are via their smartphones.

These tools ensure that everyone stays informed about important company updates and can perform their jobs more efficiently.

The workplace technology tool marketplace is a crowded one, and there are several great solutions out there, all of them serving different purposes. Intranets are ideal for giving employees a place to find information when they need it. Internal collaboration and instant messaging solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams are popular options in the enterprise space. But while these tools are used and loved by many in professional roles (or those referred to as “knowledge workers”), they’re not the best option for all employees.

Internal Communications Apps for the Deskless Workforce

All too often, deskless workers are considered an afterthought by organizations that put a premium on empowering their knowledge workers.

However, given the prevailing shortage of skills in all job categories and roles following the Great Resignation, employers are recognizing the wisdom of investing in workforce management (WFM) applications or internal communication apps that address the unique needs of non-deskbound workers.

According to Gartner:

By 2025, 80% of large enterprises with hourly-paid workers will have invested in WFM to support employee experience and/or digital workplace initiatives

By 2025, 45% of large enterprises with hourly-paid workers and variable demand for labor will use automation to drive workforce scheduling decisions

Some are taking this a step further and enhancing their internal messaging features to reach deskless employees to communicate news and updates to the company in real-time, provide instructional content, survey workers to gauge satisfaction, and more.

Next, let’s consider some of the benefits that employers can look forward to by deploying the right employee internal communication app.

The Advantages of Mobile Employee Communication Apps

1. Improve the Employee Experience

A good employee communication app will enhance the employee experience, which is comprised of all the touchpoints people encounter when they work for an organization. It begins with their candidacy for a position in the company, through to the hiring process, onboarding, performance management, communications, compensation, learning and development, rewards, and continues all the way to their exit from the organization.

The consequences of not communicating effectively with your entire workforce are very real. Whether your business has 10 or 10,000 employees, employee engagement can make or break your success and have a significant, long-lasting impact on your bottom line.

The findings of a recent Economist survey overwhelmingly indicated that “Poor communications at work can lead to stressful work environments, stalled careers, missed performance goals, and lost sales.”

The best employee internal communication apps allow you to move beyond just talking to or “at” employees; they make it possible for you to listen to them and get meaningful feedback.

2. Use Internal Communications to Provide Relevant, Streamlined Content

Your employees are there because they have a job to do, and most of them have busy work schedules to juggle. Whether it’s dealing with customers, attending meetings, receiving phone calls, sending and receiving emails, or working towards project deadlines, there’s usually little time for distractions in the form of random or irrelevant work messages.

New research suggests that collaborative technologies can actually become anti-productivity tools because of the constant interruptions and how less-useful information somehow tends to creep into daily interpersonal or team exchanges (“What’s on the lunch menu today?”) If employees are unable to proactively tune out the company communication they don’t want or need, it can lead to feelings of stress and irritation.

A good employee communications app should allow you to filter out unwanted noise and offer a single source of relevant and streamlined content.

3. There’s Less Risk

The right employee experience app also reduces business risk. Should your employees feel they lack an effective mechanism to communicate with one another or access the information they need to perform their jobs, they’ll inevitably seek alternative solutions and channels.

This is a concept known as “shadow IT,” and it can introduce significant business risk from an information security and data compliance perspective.

With a secure, approved employee communication app in place, you can narrow your risk window as your people will be less inclined to turn to other apps.

4. You Can Share Today’s Important News – Instantly

We’re all familiar with receiving push notifications on our Smartphones through apps. But in the work context, the significance of this functionality becomes amplified when meaningful – or even urgent – information needs to be shared with the workforce.

The best employee communication apps allow you to send alerts in times of crisis when there are concerns about people’s health and safety. This helps you ensure that all your employees are accounted for and not in harm’s way.

5. Improve Your Customers’ Experience

One of the less-acknowledged benefits of connecting your workers in real-time is that they can provide feedback on operations from the frontline.

Think of factory, retail, or hospitality workers working face-to-face with customers or handling dangerous equipment. Wouldn’t you like to know sooner rather than later when serious issues arise? These workers can spotlight problems that executives sitting in corporate offices may not come across or even become aware of until it’s too late.

With the right employee communications app, frontline and other key workers will be empowered to deliver feedback and updates in real-time to improve your customers’ overall experience.

6. Embrace Workplace Flexibility

Another of the lesser-known benefits of advanced employee communication apps is that they can enable an employer’s efforts to provide greater workplace flexibility.

For example, Payactiv’s digital solution allows employees to access the company’s shift management system, so they can see their shifts and see who they might be able to swap shifts with if they find themselves in a tight spot at short notice.

Offering this option to your people shows that you’re empathetic to their personal circumstances without creating headaches for managers trying to keep tabs on their employees and manage their shifts.

Boost Internal Communication with Payactiv

Payactiv is the partner of choice for businesses seeking to help their employees participate fully in both work and life. Our all-in-one Livelihood benefits platform takes a holistic approach to improving financial wellness and increasing employee satisfaction. Our attractive, flexible workforce rewards and benefits cost nothing to your company but deliver immense value to your employees.

Our app allows you to address the common pain points associated with communicating with employees in all roles – including those that aren’t deskbound or don’t have access to a computer or a corporate email account.

With the Payactiv employee communication app, you can: