Personal : Communication, Communication, Communication

Communication, Communication, Communication

Since 1994, intranets have dominated many businesses internal communications. In theory, an internal database which can only be accessed by team members within a company is exactly what every business needs. However, in practise, the traditional intranet is not living up to it's potential; with the usership declining after the first two weeks. As the usership declines, the content becomes forgotten or outdated, essentially rendering it functionless.
So how do you keep up to date with your communication strategies?

The Challenge

First, we should start by saying some NHS Intranets are great, they are engaging, they are regularly updated yet they still suffer from declining usership - especially amongst non PC facing staff, who make up the majority of the NHS workforce. What is it that is causing usership to decline?

Even the most engaging of intranets struggle to get staff to return regularly One of the biggest barriers is the point of entry itself. In order to access the system in the first place, staff often have to log on to terminals within the premises. If access is required off-site, they must use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), which is something most employees would not have access to.

Internal communication should fit in easily with your staff's lifestyle. How do your staff communicate with one another or with other brands when they are out of the office? Do they sit down at their desk and draft an email to their mother to let her know that they will be coming over for dinner? Or do they text, whatsapp or call? How do they consume their news? Do they sit and read the paper every morning? Or do they use their news app or rely on their social media feed? While the decline of print media is a blow to the hearts of many, the fact remains that we have become a mobile-first society.

The Solution

Personal Group have recently aided Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust with the implementation of a new internal communications system, accessible to all employees, both in and out of work, whenever and wherever they are. All accessed from the employees own mobile phones. The system, as well as being an employee communications tool, provides a single point of access to their employee benefits and HR information. Please see below for a snapshot of our case study featuring their benefits system (full information here).

If you are looking to improve your internal communication system, consider placing everything into a mobile app; allowing for easy access, anytime, anywhere - with the infrastructure costs of a traditional comms infrastructure. With mobile apps comes the ability to use push notifications to announce new content, which have been shown to boost app engagement by 88%, with 65% of the users returning to the app once a month when they are enabled. And best of all, all of this in on the employees own mobile phone so there are no hardware costs to you!

With productivity improving by 20-25% in organisations with connected employees, can you afford to use outdated communications procedures?

If you'd like to find out more about our work with Sandwell and other NHS Trust's drop an email to hellohapi@personalgroup.com