Finding the balance between attraction strategy and ongoing employee engagement
The answer to this (apart from realistic and robust discovery processes at the outset) is to work hard to build internal channels of communication; to hold company-wide conversations that are all-inclusive and to share values and identities business-wide – not just top down, but across peers, business units and colleagues.
As a unique ‘attraction agency’ we must walk our talk, as the first thing clients do to substantiate our advice is to look at what we are doing! We were Yammer users for five years – and used that internal engagement platform as part of our Office 365 set up. Yammer is a great tool for communicating internally in place of email, but we felt it less intuitive for socialising and two-way engagement – so more a broadcast platform for our internal audience. With a clear goal to ramp up our internal communications strategy, we needed to find an alternative solution.
We knew it would be more effective to launch something new and exciting rather than change behaviours on an existing platform – so we decided to implement a new one. We needed a platform for internal communications that our employees would happily engage with, that connects everyone in the business in real-time and encourages collaboration. For us, and that of a handful of clients, the answer was Workplace by Facebook.
It’s predicted that by 2020, over half of the workforce will be millennials – at HainesAttract this is already our reality with over 50% of our own workforce under the age of 30. Our company is mostly made up of a generation that are more tied to their technology than their desks and expect instant access and transparency. Workplace allowed us to adapt to a different relationship with technology, meet expectations about using digital tools in the workplace and connect our employees in a new way.
With Workplace everyone is connected in real-time and can share business updates in the moment
We have offices across the country, so we need a tool that is going to connect everyone, wherever they are - office based, in an Uber following a client meeting or on a location video shoot. With Workplace everyone is connected in real-time and can share business updates in the moment; encouraging collaboration across the business no matter where they might be.
We pride ourselves on our collaboration; designers sit next to recruiters having conversations with clients, developers work side by side with candidate managers talking to global talent – we need a platform that shares our way of thinking. Workplace acts as a place for our people to brainstorm, share, and work smarter with colleagues and clients.
Workplace has transformed how we communicate internally... and has given the market a solution that we can recommend confidently
Workplace is an out of the box, easy to deploy, cost-effective and intuitive internal engagement platform that everyone can, and does, use with the minimum of coaching. Workplace has transformed how we communicate internally as an agency and has given the market a solution that we can recommend confidently - providing both an internal business communications and social sharing platform.
For business leaders it gives you a channel to the whole organisation in a collaborative and approachable way; for the team it gives them a voice and a wider knowledge of their business, regardless of scale.