No matter the size or the industry, organizations are simply a collection of people. And people have the innate ability to communicate what they care about, where their passions reside, how they want to see the future realized, and why they care about the issues of the day. So how does an organization convey these same things to their people?
With good intentions, companies create articles, blog posts, policies and other content, all designed to act as the voice of the company to guide decisions and help employees and stakeholders navigate their experience. The trouble starts when the organization loses sight of what’s most important.
Stroll through almost any intranet site, and you’ll find data on a variety of topics. But dig deeper and things become more challenging. Need to see your company’s software product release notes? Good luck. Need to retrace a senior purchasing manager’s buying decision, who, by the way, retired last week? Slim chance.
If this feels more than a bit disjointed, with as many dead ends as there are improvements in productivity and employee experience, that’s because it is. The importance and value to the individual asking the question or looking for the information is missing. There’s no helping hand to guide the way, no one there to answer the question quickly or after hours.
Employees need a way to get credible answers specific to their needs, from their employer, effectively and efficiently.
So, how can we leverage the promise of the digital transformation to accurately reflect the voice of the company and enhance the employee experience?
Getting started on the journey
We know that digital conversations can answer important questions in moments that matter while avoiding the hours of lost time, lost productivity and heightened frustration – and it is possible to achieve digital transformation and allow employees to have frustration-free exchanges. But that doesn’t make the process easy.
What is your point of entry, and what challenges and pitfalls do you need to avoid? Start by aligning policies and information with the organization’s core values and culture.
Here’s how to begin:
- Take inventory: Any idea of how many documents have been published by HR, IT, Finance, Purchasing, Sales, etc.? How about the variety of topics covered and, just as important, the topics on which no content is published?
- Cleanse your content: Now that you have a handle on your inventory of documents, you will want to identify the content that is duplicated, contradicted or downright expired.
- Plug the gaps: Use your inventory and content cleansing efforts to prioritize the authorship of net-new content. By the way, what’s most frequently missing is not content that broadly describes a rule, a procedure or a guiding philosophy. It’s the content that answers a particular question about how to interpret and apply a rule, a procedure or guiding philosophy based on an employee’s specific circumstances.
- Install a virtual assistant: A solution like Simpplr’s Virtual Assistant can give employees a single point-of-contact for their questions, perform routine HR or IT tasks, and learn more about company culture and its view on important issues. This Virtual Assistant can allow employees to interact with it through various channels, including SMS, browser window widget, Microsoft Teams and Slack, to name a few, while also being available 24/7/365.
- Create governance: You want a routine that ensures the inventory you worked so hard to create is kept current and that the once-cleansed content does not fall back into disrepair. Although it may sound intimidating, with a virtual assistant, governance has never been easier. You can ask a question and check the answer or submit a whole list of questions and let the VA check the answers for you.
Explore best practices for intranet governance
Meeting the moments of truth
In your company’s digital transformation journey, your make-or-break moment of truth is represented in the question, “Can an employee not only find information that is relevant to their situation but can they hear the voice of the company as it clearly explains, ‘Here is how this applies to you in this situation’?”
At Simpplr, we call the answers that satisfy these moments of truth “verified” content. Verified answers provide information that is laser-focused on the individual and their circumstances. While it is a tremendous challenge to fill gaps in broad, generic content, a digital transformation journey is not complete for an organization until it can offer easily consumable, personalized answers each employee needs for each moment of truth.
For the majority of organizations today, subject matter experts from HR, IT, Finance, Purchasing and other functions stand in the breach as they answer the phone, reply to emails and respond to helpdesk tickets. Is that, however, sustainable? And what about the moments of truth that happen after 5pm or on weekends when HR is home with their families?
How Simpplr can help
By unifying employee engagement, enablement and services using cutting-edge AI, Simpplr’s vision is to deliver a seamless and personalized work journey for every employee, no matter where or how they work. Request a demo to see how Simpplr’s Virtual Assistant can help you revolutionize employee self-service with AI-powered workflows and assistance.
