Can a SharePoint Intranet Increase Employee Engagement?

SharePoint Online is here to revolutionize the way you interact with your employees – and the way they interact with each other.  Studies show that when employees have a quick, reliable way of communicating with each other, they are more productive and tend to be better informed of the latest trends in their fields.  Let Agile IT show you what SharePoint can do for your organization – contact us today.

Employee engagement is about employees giving extra effort above and beyond regular job duties. But how many companies use technology to drive the engagement they so badly want and need?

Consider this. Technology can help you:

• Get the most out of your employees.
• Encourage collaboration and social interaction.
• Connect disconnected workers.
• Measure employee engagement.

Think about the lack of collaboration within the healthcare industry. Most providers have a mindset that if they aren’t right in front of a patient, they aren’t productive.

Imagine what nurses in one neurology unit could learn from those on the same unit in a sister hospital? Even the larger networks of facilities don’t facilitate this learning effectively.

Nurses increasingly use hand-held devices to communicate with each other, docs, and technicians. If you could provide them with mobile access to a community of nurses working in a similar discipline, what might they innovate? Would they like their jobs better?

Here are some more examples of how technology can help.

Employee Travel

Many probably already use online tools like TripAdvisor to make personal travel plans. What if they could share with fellow employees the tips and tricks that make business travel better? Let them post reviews of the contracted hotels in a city. Let them recommend places to eat. Get some champions to share key parts of the travel policy in the same community. You can also trend travel expenses. It may be possible to reduce travel expenses through this type of sharing.

Intranet News

For many years now intranet news has been a one-way push from the corporate communicators to employees. Making news a collaborative opportunity for any author opens the door to more interesting and meaningful content. Incorporating rating and sharing pushes it beyond the everyday network of users. The more value that employees gain, the more engaged they’ll be.

Innovation

Ask employees to submit suggestions and ideas. True engagement occurs when you enable them to vote on ideas and track the winning ideas through feasibility study and implementation. This encourages more and more idea submissions and voting. The ROI can spiral into millions of dollars of savings, new business and productivity.

The Role of SharePoint

SharePoint can serve all of these needs. If you make strategic choices that support business goals, you can get employees more engaged with each other, the organization, and their work through a great SharePoint intranet.

This article excerpt, by Stacy Wilson, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1nOp1rB