Putting people first is no longer a demand, it’s an expectation. So businesses need an employee experience strategy that makes sense. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

As we learned, your employee experience strategy must be based on paying attention to your employees - listening, observing and getting actionable insights that will inform what you need to do. Once you’ve got that in place, the next step is looking at the tools your organization uses. While solving EX pain points isn’t just about the tools you use, investing in the right technology is a good starting point.

Workplace is well positioned to help you solve your most critical EX pain points because we’ve always been focused on removing the barriers that prevent people from feeling connected, and creating a sense of belonging across organizations.

As a business communication tool built upon the same technology that connects 3 billion people worldwide, Workplace brings culture and technology together to create a future of work that works for everyone, everywhere. As BT CEO Philip Jansen put it:

“Workplace is enabling the culture we’re aiming for: One that is fast-paced, inclusive and empowering.”

Let’s take a closer look at how Workplace can help HR, Comms and IT leaders deliver on Employee Experience across their organizations.

Grant access to your entire company

Equal access starts with getting everybody on the same platform, so anybody can find the information, people or knowledge they’re looking for, regardless of their role type, location or seniority. At Workplace, that starts with integrations with identity providers like Azure AD and Google so it’s easy to roll out across the organization, even if the workforce is widely distributed. It also has specific features for frontline employees, like access codes and phone number invites for people who don’t have a corporate email address.

Once you’ve brought everybody together, the question is how do you share information so knowledge becomes widely available. With Workplace, you can automatically assign people to company-wide Groups so they never miss an update. And we created Knowledge Library, a mobile-friendly intranet with built-in engagement features, to make it easy for Comms teams to create and share key company documents.

What’s more, any employee can leave reactions or comments in either a Group or on Knowledge Library documents to make sure their voice can be heard.

Bridge the gap between consumer and enterprise technology

Workplace is from Meta, which means it benefits from over 15 years of experience building technology that over 3 billion people worldwide love to use - whether it’s on desktop, mobile or even virtual reality. Unlike other tools, that means IT teams can launch Workplace with little-to-no training, and expect to see adoption rates way above the industry average.

Create community at work

Our mission is to ‘bring the power of community to everyone at work.’ What does that mean? It’s about bringing people together in a way that helps them feel seen, heard and valued. A great example of how we do this is through events.

Our events tool makes it easy to schedule, set up and run a live event on Workplace, even if you want to host the broadcast on a different platform.

And to make sure events are as inclusive as possible, we also have features like live captions, live polls, Q&A and translations.

Help employees grow and develop

For too many employees, career growth has taken a backseat over the last couple of years, with companies now forced to play catch up. On Workplace, learning is continuous, whether that's in formal classes broadcast Live so anyone, anywhere can take part; or informally, through mentoring or peer-to-peer feedback in groups or chat threads.

When it comes to recognition, it’s often the little things that make a difference. That might mean leadership simply dropping a comment on a Workplace post to say ‘good job’. Or a project lead creating a specific Thanks post to call out the contributions of the team. It might even be a little more sophisticated, like using a Thanks Bot to automate the process and track recognition over time.

Lead with purpose

When all needs have been addressed, people want to feel like their work is meaningful. For companies, this means being able to communicate a clear purpose built on shared values and beliefs. We’ve seen organizations use features like Polls and Surveys to actually find out what employees expect of their mission and purpose. It has also provided a crucial tool in crowdsourcing the next best ideas, which in turn creates a meaningful feedback loop with leaders They then use Live Video to share that mission, take questions and respond to feedback. By setting up Groups, they can also manage ESG initiatives day-to-day and quickly build teams to deliver on company promises.

Of course, there’s another piece of identity - the ability to bring your authentic self to work. Workplace has always been focused on creating more inclusive cultures, whether it’s adding phonetic pronunciation and pronouns to Profiles, or the use of employee resource groups to help people share their passions, find their tribe or simply discover new perspectives.

How to take action today

If there’s one lesson to take away from the increased focus on employee experience it’s this: Ready or not, change has come.

For years now, we’ve looked at data that shows businesses struggle to motivate, engage and retain employees. As organizations race to catch on or catch up, they’ll look to HR for guidance, expertise, policies and leadership. To Comms for enabling a transparent community and encouraging two-way conversations. And to IT for partnership and a tech stack that can deliver EX plans and enable fundamental changes in culture.

The insights in this playbook are just a first step. If you’re ready to go deeper, we’d love to speak to you about it.

Head over to our employee experience hub and schedule a call with a member of our team today.