Every business owner must work hard to build a strong internal community to foster employee cohesion. A strong sense of belonging plays an important part in boosting productivity and reducing employee turnover.
There are a variety of ways to achieve this. One of the simplest and most cost-effective options to build a community culture is to create a company intranet. An intranet is a private network designed to help employees communicate and collaborate better internally. This operational system is intended to create a secure space to share company information.
What are the benefits of using intranet software? How can internal corporate communications best practices strengthen the company community and culture? Here are some benefits to consider.
Restricting external communications
Companies are still trying to navigate the murky waters of internal social media policies. There are clearly both positive and negative effects of allowing employees to engage with their followers on social media. One of the downsides is that employees may spend time interacting with people outside the organization, at the expense of bonding with their coworkers.
Companies that create their own Intranet networks can encourage employees to engage with each other more. They don't necessarily need to sever their connection to the World Wide Web altogether, but developing an intranet will provide an incentive for employees to spend more time on the internal network engaging with their employees. This helps create a more tribal culture where employees feel more engaged with each other.
Furthermore, employee engagement is crucial to the bottom line. According to one company, a disengaged employee costs a business around $3,400 for every $10,000 of their salary. When you make it easy for employees to be engaged with one another, you can save plenty of money by providing the necessary resources.
Minimizing the consequences of external criticism
Organizations to not try to stifle criticism altogether. Some constructive criticism could help companies make important changes to the internal culture.
However, a lot of criticism does a little more than alienate employees from their own workplace. A lot of negative feedback about organizations comes from third-party individuals with little firsthand knowledge about the issues at hand. This kind of criticism doesn't help the company move forward, but can still weigh negatively on employee perceptions about their workplace.
An intranet can help isolate companies from negative feedback. They can spend their time engaging with their coworkers about issues that they have more control over, which helps them feel more unified as they develop real solutions.
Better social space for employees
One of the most effective ways to foster strong relationships between employees is encouraging them to socialize outside of work. Some employees are more introverted and have difficulty forming friendships that transcend the workplace.
Companies that create an Intranet service make this easier for them. They have a single, central community for employees to share ideas for events and social ideas, which makes it easier for them to build deeper friendships. As a result, they will have better morale and greater unity during working hours.
Encourage subgroups for employee discussions
One of the great things about intranets is that they enable companies to create a variety of internal communities. These communities can be segmented based on similarities between employees and teams that they are part of. This makes it easier for individual teams to create their own culture, which gives them a heightened sense of camaraderie. This will also help organize communication better.
Better security which minimizes anxiety
Security is a major concern for all organizations. They need to develop strong security protocols to minimize the damage of cybercrime. After all, there are 230,000 malware samples (software designed to cause harm to a system or server, such as viruses and ransomware) being launched each day. These digital threats are more prevalent than ever before, and business owners should take it seriously.
Most of the consequences of cybercrime are well understood. However, industry experts rarely assess the impact security breaches have on employee morale and their sense of community. Employees tend to feel anxious when they know that internal communications could be breached. This could discourage them from having more open discussions with their employees.
Intranets have better security, so employees don't have to worry nearly as much about the threat of a data breach. They can communicate more freely with their employees and have fewer concerns about external threats to their workplace.
Building strong company cultures
Every company needs to take all reasonable measures to create a strong sense of belonging among their employees. A Columbia University study found that companies with strong workplace cultures had an employee turnover of 13.9%, compared low culture environments at 48.4%. Intranet services can be a great way to accomplish this. They have a number of benefits and are relatively easy to set up. Simply put, making it easy to engage and build better internal communication will help boost your company culture. An intranet creates a special place for your team to congregate. As previously mentioned, this system helps bridge any communications and centralize information. In this space, every staff member has a voice, and the ability to be heard and offer input can do wonders for company culture.
Another benefit in the company culture realm is that intranets streamline the onboarding process and the employee experience. When you have an intranet, all the information you need to successfully transition into a new organization live in that system. Rather than sorting through your inbox to reference onboarding materials from the past, you can quickly pull any information you need. And it's not just about onboarding materials-any documents pertinent to the business are housed on the intranet. Whether you're looking for the company travel policy or branding documents, you'll be able to quickly pull any data you need.