A communicator’s guide to enhancing the digital employee experience

Even if you build the most state-of-the-art digital employee experience (EX) with videos, employee testimonials, gamification, Wordle, and sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, your employees will still not come.

As a fellow communications professional, I know you can appreciate there is a lot of thinking that goes into communicating the value of your employee experience long before your new site goes live. The software upon which you build your experience is only one piece of the puzzle.

To ensure the new employee experience you are creating is successful, you should consider these five key areas as you build out your platform.

1. 01

   Define the content experience you want to create for your EX and how you will measure success

   • Translate the vision for your site into the content experience by laying out the content journey – from navigational structure to the employer brand and into single sign-on access to your cloud-based HRIS and vendor tools.
   • Connect that content experience with your success measures and clearly outline which metrics you’ll track like user engagement and adoption. Because we know without measurement, you'll miss the ROI that you'll need to report back to the CFO.

2. 02

   Develop your content plan and put pen to paper (or website as the case may be)

   • Spend time eliminating duplicative content to maximize your advertising space for your total rewards and HR-related programs.
   • Apply best practices writing for the web and optimize user engagement using intuitive page layouts and functionality.

3. 03

   Outline your approach to change management

   • Develop a change plan grounded in key change management considerations and gather initial input on change impacts, audiences, and stakeholders.
   • Prepare a change impact assessment and complete a key stakeholder assessment and audience analysis.
   • Draft an initial engagement plan.

4. 04

   Establish governance for your EX platform

   • Understand the key governance areas needed for long-term success; then consider different models, roles and responsibilities, and ongoing content planning.
   • Empower others and make it easy to maintain.
   • Define your governance groups and their corresponding roles and responsibilities.

5. 05

   Decide how you will promote your EX platform and maintain momentum

   • Yes, the initial launch will be an event. However, to maximize the return on investment you need to use it as a tool in your ongoing communication arsenal. Remind employees about the platform and find ways to continue to drive traffic to the site.

Think about how you are going to manage these five areas before you implement your new employee experience platform. In the absence of including sharks with laser beams on your site, thoughtful and strategic planning of these keys areas is your only real chance for creating a truly engaging and impactful user experience.

Because sharks with lasers would be cool. Really cool. Maybe too cool for HR.

Author

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Michael Tyukodi

Senior Director, Employee Experience

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