Check Out These Effective Employee Communication Tools For 2021

May 24

Before the pandemic swept across the country in March 2020, only 5% of employees in the U.S. worked remotely. Wow! Then, the majority of the workforce shifted to remote or work-from-home set-ups during the pandemic.

One year later, in March 2021, almost 60% of employees were still working from home, at least part of the time. Of course, many of these employees will return to in-office hours, but the latest estimate predicts that 22% of the American labor force will remain remote by 2025 -- an 85% increase since 2019!

What hasn’t changed? The same employee engagement challenges that existed before the pandemic will reign supreme in the post-COVID world. Except now, business leaders will be tasked with creating a consistent employee experience that equally prioritizes on-site and virtual staff.

To bridge the divide, organizations across every industry need to re-think their internal communications strategy, starting with a fresh new stack of tools. Check out some of the most effective employee communication tools for remote, on-site, and hybrid workforces.

Effective Employee Communication Tools For 2021 And Beyond

You may have heard of some of these tools, while some tools could be completely brand-new to you! Let’s dive into each one that we recommend to enhance employee communication.

1. StaffBase: Employee Experience Intranet

Most employees can’t keep their eyes off of social media. Use their impulsivity to your company’s advantage by launching an intranet that offers a similar user experience. StaffBase is like a social media channel, but exclusively for members of the company. The software consistently scores between four and five stars on review sites and offers a bevy of unique employee communication tools, such as:

Built-in content management that makes creating internal communications faster and easier.
Custom branding to support a seamless employee experience offline and online.
A centralized “home” page where employees can get the latest company news, see upcoming events, and access important information and documents (hint, hint, like open enrollment deadlines and instructions).
Automated rules-based messaging to ensure that workers receive the right information at the right time throughout the employee lifecycle.
Comprehensive analytics that illustrate the impact your initiatives have on employee engagement.

2. TINYpulse: Employee Engagement Tool

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could read your employees’ thoughts? Well...maybe not all of their thoughts, but HR leaders agree that feedback is a vital part of improving employee engagement levels. With a greater share of the workforce going remote, keeping a pulse on what’s working for employees and what isn’t can be a challenge. That is, unless you have the right surveying tool at your disposal.

TINYpulse is an employee engagement survey tool that collects anonymous workforce feedback in real-time. Here are just some of the features you’ll find with this solution:

Customizable, mobile-friendly user interface and surveys.
Data and reporting dashboard for quick access to insights.
Employee segmentation for targeting and personalization.
Goals and challenges creation and tracking.
Negative feedback management.
Peer-to-peer & management-to-peer recognition.
Mention management.

3. Zoom: Video Conferencing

Video conferencing platforms waged a popularity war in the months following COVID-19 and quickly became one of the most effective employee communication tools available. Despite some security hiccups along the way, Zoom remains one of the highest-rated video chat tools across review sites.

The Texas attorney who accidentally attended a virtual court proceeding under the guise of an adorable kitty-cat filter might have helped make Zoom a viral sensation, but the platform also comes highly recommended because of these benefits:

Affordability.
Ease of use.
Seamless porting process.
Clear video & audio quality.
Screen sharing & remote control settings.

4. Slack: Channel-Based Messaging Tool

Slack is a communication platform that helps teams communicate more effectively and organize conversations, files, and information based on groups and projects. The platform scores an 8.9 out of 10 on TrustRadius and essentially replaces the need for email, text messaging, and instant messenger. More specifically, users appreciate that Slack:

Centralizes people, conversations, and documents.
Is intuitive and easy to adopt.
Provides the same experience to in-house and remote teams.
Offers a breadth of integrations and apps.
Features a workflow builder for automated communications.
Makes conversations searchable to easily retrieve information.

5. Monday.com: Project Management Software

If employees and managers feel like they’re battling a case of the Mondays every day, it may be time to change how work is assigned, managed, and delivered. Monday.com is a highly visual and intuitive way to create workflows in granular detail, set project milestones, and visualize progress in real-time.

Rather than a generic platform setup, Monday.com offers solutions that are specific to employee departments, such as HR, marketing, sales, software development and more. Other features include:

40+ Integrations with vital business tools.
Customizable automation.
Real-time dashboard analytics.
Kanban planning tool.
Gantt scheduling tool.
File storage.

6. brand28: Video Communications

Communicating important information in a consistent and compelling way across multiple generations was hard enough when employees worked together in the same building. Now that your employee population is spread out working remotely, the feat is harder than ever!

At brand28, we use targeted marketing strategies to create and deliver vibrant, engaging explainer videos for employee training, onboarding and benefits education. We help HR and business leaders break down complicated information into conversational, easy-to-understand conversations. Essentially, we help companies better communicate internal information to support your business objectives:

Ensure that information gets conveyed the same way every time.
Engage your employees through interactive elements.
Allow employees to absorb information at a time of convenience.
Appeal to multiple senses to improve information retention.
Humanize the connection between remote employees and leadership teams.
Produce viewer analytics for the management and iteration of messaging.

A Final Note About Employee Communication Tools

As future trends create new challenges for internal communication, virtual collaboration tools will become the lifeline that connects employees with managers, HR and each other. You can bet that there will be another Zoom-like software tool that meets the next big communication challenge that we can’t even fathom right now!

However, communication tools lose their value if they are not supported by the right strategy and/or if there is a lack of buy-in. Make sure your employees understand why you are introducing or utilizing these tools!

Help your employees see the value of the selected tools to create a better employee experience. This will increase adoption and, eventually, productivity. Ultimately, this is how you can achieve a positive ROI investing in these tools to support the changing workforce!

- To receive more helpful tips and guidance on how to support communication in your company, sign up for the brand28 email newsletter and become an exclusive b28 Insider!

Jessy Smulski