Every relationship thrives on good communication. This also applies to the relationship between employers and employees. Modern companies today should rely on more than just newsletters and emails for employee communication. How does your HR department communicate with your workforce? Are you still emailing or are you already using "push notifications"?
Why Emails Are Not Enough – And What Other Channels You Should Use
In recent years, the channels through which HR departments reach their target group — namely, all employees in the company — have fundamentally changed. With email alone, you not only miss about 80 percent of employees who don't work in a traditional desk environment but your messages also can get lost in a sheer flood of messages:
According to Statista, around 350 billion emails were sent worldwide per day in 2023. This number is expected to rise to almost 400 billion per day by 2026. In Germany, for instance, more than two billion emails are sent and received daily. With 80 percent of the German population using emails, this amounts to nearly 30 emails per person every day.
In addition, other communication tools like Slack or Teams are used in everyday professional life. A monthly email newsletter from the HR department quickly gets lost in the crowd, especially since most HR departments still lack professional communication tools. What choice do they have but to revert to a traditional email sent out to the whole company?
Did you know that 85 percent of employees use more than one device for their professional communication? Or that 44 percent of employees would like more tools for internal communication?
With the right HR communication technology, you can not only convey your key messages but also meet the expectations and needs of your employees. A central employee platform like Benify, including an employee app, opens up two additional channels for your HR teams to use alongside emails:
- Push notifications via the app on smartphones
- Messages via a mailbox on the employee platform
You can flexibly use these depending on the message and target group, and they can be effectively combined by, for example, informing traditionally via email and sending a friendly reminder via platform or push notification shortly thereafter. The decision is entirely up to you.
Successful Communication is Relevant and Personal
Besides the right channels, relevance also plays a significant role in communication. If your message is interesting to the people you send it to, it will not get lost in the flood of other messages that they are bombarded by. For this reason, your HR personnel should be able to send personalised messages.
This personalisation is only possible with a suitable communication tool, like the kind Benify provides. With it, you can segment your workforce — meaning you can divide them into target groups with similar interests, avoiding a scattered approach where all messages go to all employees (as in, whole company distribution).
With Benify's Communication Tool, you have the option to send important updates only to the people affected. Here are three examples of such segmentation and the associated targeted communication:
Example 1:
Send information about additional childcare services to parents and guardians, via a platform message.
Example 2:
Communicate new benefits for executives to all employees in leadership positions, via email.
Example 3:
Inform only the workforce in Switzerland about an offer that is exclusively for production employees in Switzerland, via push notifications.
By personalising your messages, you increase their relevance and boost employee engagement — not just with your messages, but also in general work life. Effective employee communication makes your workforce:
- More productive
- More motivated
- More engaged
- More loyal
All these factors will make your company more successful in the end.
Learn more about personalising your communication on our blog, where you can also read about how to optimise the engagement of your employees through communication.
Show Appreciation and Recognition Through Targeted Benefits Communication
Another important advantage of Benify's Communication Tool is that it allows you to show your employees how much you are actually investing in them. On the employee platform, you can inform employees about their compensation components and benefits, communicated in a targeted way. Remember: the greatest benefits are worthless if no one knows about and uses them.
Targeted communication of your compensation packages and benefits increases awareness of your investments and ensures that your employees know and appreciate your additional services. In this way, you show your employees the appreciation that we all wish for in everyday life.
With Benify's Communication Tool, you can communicate your benefits:
- Traditionally, via email.
- Broadly, via push notifications.
- Discreetly, via platform messages (that pop up as soon as employees log in).
Steer Your Communication Actively and Measure Your Success
In addition to compensation packages and benefits, you can also use a communication tool to keep your employees informed about the functionalities of the employee platform itself. Show employees how to book benefits, where to find relevant HR tools and services, and what makes their company unique. Furthermore, you have the opportunity to accompany your employees throughout the entire employee journey with targeted and automated messages.
You can then measure the success of your communication efforts with Benify's analysis tool, 'Employee Insights'. With it, you can check the click rates of your push notifications or the opening rates of your emails to get a better understanding of engagement among your employees.
Benify's Communication Tool is part of your employee platform from day one, so you can inform your workforce about the many advantages they enjoy thanks to their employer, even before the platform launch!
Learn more about the features and advantages of our Communication Tool and employee app and let our experienced expert team advise you on how to make your employee communication future-proof.
