Why a Digital Workplace is Good for Employee Retention

Thanks to the digital workplace, your team members are able to work remotely with relatively little disruption to their day-to-day tasks.

As it stands, employees are increasingly coming to expect remote and flexible working to come as standard with most jobs that can allow it. If you’re not able to offer this to your staff, then you’re going to struggle to hang on to them when someone comes along and offers them a role with a more flexible work environment. 

To avoid this problem, here are some tips on improving your employee retention using intranet software tools – the cornerstone of digital workplaces:

 

3 ways to improve employee retention with a digital workplace

1. Allow remote working wherever possible

There are certainly social and cultural advantages to teams working together in an office, and we wouldn’t necessarily advise shutting your HQ quite yet. However, by creating a digital workplace and giving staff the autonomy to manage their own work-life balance, you’ll quickly uncover one of the biggest digital workplace benefits: a reduction in staff absences.

For example, if an employee needs to stay at home to look after an ill child or wait for the plumber to come, they can continue to work around their schedule, be productive, and collaborate with their colleagues who are based elsewhere.

A digital workplace gives your staff the freedom to work remotely

Of course, there will be some occasions when you need people to be physically present in the office, but once your digital workplace is up and running, try to make as much use of it as you can. 

These days, remote working should be treated as the norm, and not secondary to office-based work. Otherwise, employee retention will swiftly decline as people look to organisations who are more generous with their flexibility. 

 

2. Break down barriers between people and departments

No matter what you do to try and avoid it, many businesses can end up with a silo mentality where different teams and even different groups within teams don’t communicate with each other in order to get work done. This can be incredibly frustrating for staff who are unable to be effective in their roles and, ultimately, can lead to poor employee engagement and a lacking employee experience.

By breaking down these barriers and encouraging collaboration between people and departments using a suite of digital tools, such as corporate social networking, you can create a fast-paced and efficient workplace that allows people to focus on the job that they came to do rather than navigating their way around office politics. This is the kind of workplace that employees want to join, and which tends to hold on to its most effective staff with ease.

Digital workplace tools like corporate social networking (above) help to break down departmental silos

3. Allows for easy growth

If your company isn’t growing, then eventually some of your best staff are likely to start looking for the door when they begin to feel like they aren’t going to progress in their role. An outdated setup and poor communication can make it hard for companies to take on more staff if antiquated processes mean that there isn’t the opportunity to scale. 

Carrying out digital workplace transformation before you’re in the middle of a growth spurt will make the entire process far easier for everyone involved. This will make it simpler for you to bring people with you as the company grows and to introduce new policies and procedures without overwhelming and alienating some of your key employees.

Use your digital workplace to drive business growth

The flexible working elements of a digital approach also make expansion easier since you won’t need as much physical office space to house all employees. This could be a great basis for building a business case for the digital services and tech that your company needs to take the next step in its growth journey.

Implementing the right digital workplace tech in your business could make it far easier to hold on to the staff who are driving its growth and success. Offer them the type of workplace that they feel involved in and that they believe respects their time and you’re far more likely to end up with a happy and buzzing environment.