Employee Engagement Via Mobile Tech

Special thanks to Dave Asheim, CEO of Engage by Cell for this week’s post.

The other day, I was speaking to an HR manager who oversees 1,500 employees at a hospitality organization in Michigan. This hard-working, experienced, and (to be honest) slightly stressed professional shared some common workplace challenges I hear all the time:

“First of all, we’re struggling to recruit good workers. Applicants are not showing up for interviews. Next, employee turnover is at an all-time high. And when I need to share important information, we’re stuck posting flyers in the breakroom and sending snail mail, which falls flat. Why? Most of our employees aren’t even sitting at a desk to check email.”

Technology Solves Common HR Roadblocks

As Barbara and Cornelia share in the recent edition of The Big Book of HR, “If there was any winner in 2020, it was technology.” For many organizations, the shift to remote work has caused a huge digital transformation. 

Engaging with any workforce is a balancing act of three C’s:  communication, making connections, and creating a positive company culture. And luckily, every employee has a tool that can help set them up for success: mobile technology.

Tools for Instant Communication

For many years, text messaging was something that people only used between family and close friends. Not anymore. With a 95% open rate, the fastest, most effective way to reach your team is to send a text.

People receive text message reminders from their dentist, dry cleaner, and pharmacy, so why not HR?  The use cases are endless. Our HR clients send text alerts for open enrollment, severe weather, employee recognition, meeting reminders, job interview reminders, links to surveys and more. 

Frank Tecumseh, VP of HR at Firekeepers, recently shared this insight on text message communication,

“I can't sing enough praises of how beneficial text messaging is. We had to shut down due to COVID. Without [text messaging], I'm not sure how we were going to communicate with our team other than pick up the phone and call them ourselves. We'd often get calls from staff who may not have been signed up for our text messages saying ‘how can I get signed up?’ They wanted to know what's going on.”

Employee Engagement

Over 38 million workers quit their jobs last year and that number continues to climb. Studies show that 48% of employees are actively looking for a new position, and one in four will leave in the next six months. One of the best ways to improve retention is to create a connected workplace where employees have resources at their fingertips.

Once again mobile technology can play an important role in creating connections. Specifically, mobile web apps are a fantastic tool for onboarding, training, benefits—even performance support.

Banner Health, a large nonprofit health care organization headquartered in Arizona, onboards new physicians with a mobile web app. Through the Banner Physician Onboarding mobile web app, physicians have access to an entire suite of resources 24/7, at work or at home. The Physician Onboarding app includes links to employee programs, new hire survey forms, benefit information, links to the Banner Health intranet, contact directories, and much more.

A mobile web app is perfect for employees who don’t want to download another app to their phone. Mobile web apps live in the cloud and are accessible via text message, link, or QR code. Once accessed, employees simply bookmark the link for future reference.

HR professionals often prefer mobile web apps because they don’t require assistance from an IT department to set up or make changes. When asked if a small team could manage a mobile web app platform, Linda DiFiore, Manager of Plant Human Resources at Silgan Closures shared, 

“It is extremely easy. I can manage it from my own phone. I can do it from the computer. I can do it from home. I've done it in the middle of the night. So it is very, very easy to do.”

 Positive Company Culture

Barbara and Cornelia’s chapter on “Employee Retention,” contains many helpful insights on what makes employees stay and what makes them leave. Best-selling author Daniel Pink says that a strong company culture is a place where employees can “learn, be engaged, and contribute.”

You may be surprised to hear that mobile technology can play a role in building company culture.  Here’s an example:

Mary Kay, a global cosmetics organization uses mobile technology to create “culture moments.”  Senior Editor, TwylaBeth Lambert, explained their move to mobile:

“Originally we were looking for an extra channel that could put Mary Kay in the palm of your hand, to engage our employees particularly in our culture. It was great if we had something really timely that we needed to communicate to people, but mostly it was about a culture moment. We noticed that as the company got older, we were further away from our foundings. We struggled with culture and creating the right balance of who we are as we have new people coming in. So we were at that point where we wanted to make an impact. We were looking for a global communication solution.”

When organizations put inspiring video content, supportive training resources, messages from leadership–even selfie portals for employees to upload pet photos, on a mobile-friendly platform, culture can bloom and thrive.

 Use Tech to Make HR Easier

As new technologies emerge, HR professionals will find themselves using technology more and more throughout the employee lifecycle.

In a world of constant distractions, the fastest way to connect with any individual is through their mobile device.

HR professionals who embrace the many dynamic uses of mobile technology will discover higher efficiency, increases in productivity, and more effective communication in and out of the workplace.