Have you worked somewhere with an amazing company culture and employee experience? Ever wondered how to recreate it? We’ll uncover seven ways to create a great digital workplace experience in your organization. Read our top tips on how to build a happy work culture within your workplace.
Why does work “culture” matter?
A distinct workplace culture is a major component in creating a happy workplace, says research by Deloitte. In fact, of those surveyed, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe it’s vital to a businesses’ success. The report also found a solid link between happy and valued employees and strong work culture.
An article by Carolyn Dewar on the McKinsey blog uncovers four reasons why work “culture” matters so much:
- Culture correlates with performance
- Culture is inherently difficult to copy
- Healthy cultures enable organizations to adapt
- Unhealthy cultures lead to under-performance — or worse
A great culture motivates employees to do their best and builds a stronger, more dynamic workforce. So what are the driving factors that create it?
The Staffbase philosophy
The elements of a great digital workplace experience are about collaboration and branding:
- Collaboration: People need quick access to information, workspaces, and groups, as well as fast access to communication, especially in larger companies. This is one of the problems we seek to solve with our Staffbase intranet.
- Branding: Creating a feeling of “home” in the digital workspace is also important. Traditionally, IT would set the intranet as the homepage, almost forcing people to engage with it. At Staffbase, we believe there should be an incentive for people to WANT to access the intranet. This is why we include useful features, for example, such as an “Employee Directory” to help colleagues find each other faster; or personal bookmarking, where employees can store all the files and information they need in one place, as standard within our Staffbase Intranet product.
So how do you create a great digital workplace experience?
Here we’ve outlined our seven top tips:
1. Facilitate collaboration
A recent Harvard Business Review article acknowledges that facilitating collaboration in the workplace is increasingly important. It says this is because over the past two decades the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.
That’s a pretty big jump, right?
This is why businesses are now placing increasing importance on investing in technology that allows their employees to work more collaboratively together.
2. Be social
It’s never been more important to be social at work — in the office and online. With the increase in collaboration comes the need to work in a more social and “open” way.
For example, instead of sending several emails to multiple colleagues, employees should post a comment on a platform such as an employee app and ask for responses.
Taking risks like this is the key to successfully building a digital workplace culture.
3. Think mobile
Every organization should provide an efficient mobile offering. One where all employees have access to their digital workplace, regardless of where they are.
A study by Upwork reports that 40.7 million Americans are expected to be fully remote by 2026. This means no matter where your colleagues are working they should always have access to the intranet. Even when commuting or traveling overseas.
A mobile intranet has been shown to lead to an increase in productivity. This is because it allows people to work in “dead time,” for example, on their daily commute.
4. Gamify and reward
Using game design in the workplace is a useful technique when engaging employees, championing the community, and supporting team challenges.
The aim of using game design in a professional setting is to introduce team competition and fun to engage employees to actively solve problems together.
We designed Staffbase with this new trend in mind. With many ways to introduce gamification elements to you communications platform, Staffbase lets you reward employees who contribute new ideas and/or comments on other people’s suggestions with prizes or other forms of recognition.
Gamification can help to encourage teamwork, and gets your people working towards a common goal.
5. Allow for self-serve
Self-serve is a huge business trend right now and companies are developing personal online portals to help make doing routine tasks much easier. Having a one-stop system in which you can access everything you need: information, social groups, and team projects helps to cut down on increasing administration.
With so much to do in the workplace today, we can all benefit from a little digital assistance to help us get through our daily tasks quickly, boosting our motivation and sense of achievement. This is why many companies are introducing self-serve portals and are encouraging staff to become more independent.
6. Empower your staff
Over on Inc. Tanya Hall (CEO, Greenleaf Book Group) says that great company culture is rooted in the way employees see themselves, each other, and the work they produce. She believes that if your team isn’t invested in building a great culture, that you won’t be able to do it alone.
Tanya says, “Empowerment is critical” to building a great workplace culture. Many studies have shown that giving employees more responsibility improves their motivation and enables them to shine.
She says you can empower colleagues by allowing them to be part of the solution. Using an internal comms tool that encourages two-way dialogue between management and shop floor staff is a good way of inviting staff to participate.
7. Create a transformational digital workplace
The workplace is becoming more flexible and responsive, and the pace of work is speeding up says Microsoft’s research on “The New Future of Work.”
By using technology that maximizes our productivity and enhances our creativity, we can increase performance and inspire employees to think differently.
Staffbase has responded to these trends by designing effective digital workplace tools that make our customers’ working lives easier. Our solutions remove repetitive daily tasks, which frees up staff, giving them time to innovate.
Is a smart digital workplace the key to great company culture? We think so, and we’ve got you covered, with all the tools you need to forge ahead.
Find out what our Staffbase customers said about how we helped them create a happy workplace culture:
When we first heard about the Front-Door Intranet I was amazed at how mature it already was. With the ability to use it side-by-side with classic SharePoint, and the additions that modern Intranet brings on top of it, I am sure this is the last intranet we’ll ever need.”
Heikki Tauriainen, Development Manager, L&T
Why not book a demo and find out how Staffbase can help you to create an amazing digital workplace experience in your organization. We are more than happy to show you the way!
