10 ways People First Connect can help support your team when remote working

But now with 67% of workers continuing to work from home, creating a connected workforce has become more difficult. Organisations today need to ensure the wellbeing of employees and maintain their performance, especially as they are physically disconnected from their usual environment. David Zinger described the importance of connections for employees and organisations as:

“Create caring and robust connects between every employee and their work, customers, leaders, managers, and the organisation to achieve results that matter to everyone in this sentence.”

Creating a connected organisation is critical if a company wants to attract and retain the best talent. Instilling a sense of community and togetherness is important wherever your people are based and that employees feel connected to the organisation itself – its goals, mission, values, and news.

People First Connect has been designed to help employees connect with each other, and with the wider organisation. Below are 10 ways that People First Connect can help your team thrive when remote working.

1 . Company News

People First Connect is designed with an initial home page that allows organisations to post updates instantly to all employees. Keeping in touch with news across the organisation is vital to engage employees and ensure they continue to understand updates and progress of the business. Communication needs to move away from irregular big announcements to a constant flow of information and regular updates.

2. Check-ins

Ensuring employees and managers are regularly meeting and having open and transparent conversations allows them to remain connected. It provides constant and instant connection and feedback on progress, helping the employee to understand the wider picture of the team and the overall organisation. People First Connect has a way of arranging and recording these conversations in a simple and easy to use way, called a check-in.

3. Goals

Creating a connected and transparent matrix of goals helps employees to connect with their individual goals as they understand how their everyday tasks feed into the bigger picture, ensuring every employee understands the value their roles are adding. Goals in People First Connect allow organisations to share their Vision, Mission and Values and link these through the organisation to individual employee goals.

4. Recognitions

Creating a culture of recognising contributions is proven to enhance productivity, motivation and engagement. It helps employees remain connected to each other and that their colleagues are supporting them. Receiving a public recognition is much more effective than a “thank you” quickly typed at the bottom of a Microsoft Teams chat!  People First Connect allows employees to recognise each other and attribute those to the behaviours or values of the company.

5. Communities

Strong social connections are shown to make employees happier and more supported in the workplace. Employees cannot concentrate 100% of their working day and remain engaged in what they are doing, so it is important that they connect with their colleagues on a social level as well, allowing them to remain connected when working remotely. People First Connect allows employees to create social groups to ensure they remain connected with like minded employees, where they can share updates or stories on any interest of their choosing.

6. Custom Cards

Data is important to organisations and ensuring they are capturing vital information from remote employees means they operate effectively and efficiently. Custom Cards within People First Connect allows companies to collect any type of personal information needed. Take Covid screening which can be sent daily to employees via a push message or even capturing and recording employees that have received the jab.

7. Project Groups

Collaboration of team members is imperative to the successful delivery of projects. With employees working remotely the hub and collaborative working space of a project office is no longer available. People First Connect allows projects to be created and members assigned to the board, this is an area where people can share information, provide updates and attach relevant project related documents, thus creating that virtual project office.

8. Personal Profile

During remote working it is important that employees remember that colleagues are also people. This is particularly important for new starters who only meet colleagues during formal meetings. This helps them to understand who their colleagues are on a personal level and create closer relationships with them. People First Connect has an employee profile for each person, which provides an insight into what they are working on but also their interests outside of work.

9. Polls

Pulse surveys have become a tool used by organisations to capture immediate information from employees to increase engagement and create a positive working environment. People First Connect allows companies to create polls that can be easily completed, but it offers a lot more. Any employee in the organisation can create polls as talking points, this could be used in the context of a project.

10. Simplicity & Ease of Access

For the implementation of any business system to be successful then it must be adopted by the end users. People First Connect is available on both desktop and mobile devices, ensuring employees can access it using whatever method is best for them 24/7. The modern and easy to use design ensures that employees do not require long and complicated user guides, they simply sign in and start using!

People First Connect can truly help your organisation break down the silos and deliver a connected workforce that works towards the same goals. All the information is securely held so there are no security concerns about your organisational data.