The modern workplace has grown far beyond the traditional walls of bricks-and-mortar headquarters. Technology now allows employees to work not just from a desk at the home office, but from anywhere in the world, doing business as usual.
The demand to work remotely isn’t going away; it's growing. Many companies have moved to a “virtual office” model in which all employees work remotely, and the approach is proving to be successful. In the future, it’s likely that an increasing number of workers will conduct business outside the office, even if just part of the time.
While this flexibility and the ability to provide employees with a better work-life balance provides a great benefit, employers can encounter stumbling blocks when it comes to communication. The traditional, “all-hands-on-deck” weekly staff meetings and updates in a conference room are becoming a thing of the past.
And while on-site workers can easily stay in touch with what’s going on in the company because they’re physically present, there’s a good chance your remote team members feel disenfranchised at times. They might be physically isolated from the main office, but they still need to access the same tools to do their jobs. They also need to know what’s going on in the company. Out of sight shouldn’t mean out of mind.
Connecting Employees No Matter Where They Work
How do you just say no to remote worker FOMO (fear of missing out) and keep all workers in the loop so they don’t feel left out of the action?
It all comes down to centralization and the use of a cloud-based social collaborative intranet, a single place where workers can access integrated workplace productivity tools and company news — and even connect socially with coworkers.
This type of platform streamlines communication across teams and locations, reduces email clutter and allows teams to create communities with each other online, from project management efforts to company fun committee planning. It's not too late to embrace the social intranet.
By building a social intranet, the six efforts below will help to keep your workers in the loop by:
- Promoting a common corporate culture
- Creating a feeling of belonging for all employees
- Helping all workers stay informed
- Providing employees with a way to offer feedback
- Connecting teams with workplace productivity tools like Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)
- Helping workers find the information they need in a single space — with a single sign-on.
These are just a few of the ways you can transform how people in your organization work.
