In Part 1 of our mini-series on what constitutes Employee-Driven Design, we talked about the importance of systems unification and technology consolidation. Now that you’ve established a unified location for communicating information and accessing your entire Digital Workplace, it’s time to build trust. But, how? The easiest way is to create and publish engaging content.
The Importance of Content Distribution
To keep employees coming back and consistently using your Digital Workplace, you need captivating content to keep them engaged. But where is that content going to come from? The good news is that you probably have a ton of content already, it just wasn’t distributed in a way that made sense. In your new workplace environment, content distribution should be structured so that different levels of the organization can easily:
- Funnel their content up to the top central level location for anyone to find, and
- Push their content out to users who’ll find it the most relevant
Tools like Microsoft 365 makes it ridiculously simple to share and deliver content, as well as sort, funnel, and filter it.
So, What Types of Content Are Engaging?
Engaging content can come in all different forms — text, video, images, presentations; but there are two different types of content that we’ve seen really resonate with employees.
1. Content that Represents Your Organization’s Culture & Community
Content that focuses on your organization’s culture and community is some of the most engaging. Typically pushed out as central communications from corporate (or even top-level department heads), this content can be:
- Company news and announcements
- Company social events
- Community service involvement
Publishing this type of information brings people together, fosters a sense of community, shows the company’s commitment to their mission and values, and more. This can be especially important in an organization with many different offices, where visiting the intranet might be the only way to feel close to the company as a whole. At Withum, we have a page called Withum Way, and each week the Managing Partner talks about one of our key cultural elements and describes a new example that brings it to life.
2. Content Focused on Employee Recognition
Whether it’s birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, or awards, if you make your intranet the only place to find recognition-type content, then your employees will stop and look. Even though this content may feel more like traditional “watercooler” talk, people enjoy it because it makes them feel connected to one another. The content can even be set up to generate itself, based on information that the employee inputs themselves, or that HR submits.
Microsoft 365 Makes It Easy
If your workplace is built in the Microsoft 365 environment, you can use interest and industry tags, as well as metadata, to completely customize your workplace experience. The tags and metadata can be used for all sorts of things like:
- Sorting and filtering content across employee and department pages
- Automatically generating content, like birthday and anniversary announcements
We’ll dig more into how to personalize your content in part three of the series, so stay tuned!
If you have any questions about using Employee-Driven Design to develop your digital workplace, reach out to us online, or give us a call at 240-406-9960.
