Communication and employee engagement have always been an important part of work, but now more than ever, they are a top concern. According to SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, employee engagement can affect employee retention, productivity, and loyalty significantly and have a key link to customer satisfaction, company reputation, and overall stakeholder value. None of these are things you can risk losing during the pandemic, so keeping up with your employees is crucial. But how do you keep your employees informed and engaged despite new safety regulations and physical distancing during the pandemic?
You don’t have to figure it out alone. We reached out to a few of our favorite experts and asked them to share their best practices and tips for communicating with their deskless workforces so we can all benefit. And they came back to us with some great advice!
Wellness Calls for Distributed Workforce Onboarding
Anyone we recently hired gets a phone call within ten days of their start date these days. When COVID first started, we called these "wellness calls" to genuinely check in on employees’ health and happiness, their family, and how they feel. We also used these calls as an opportunity to inform them about the programs we rolled out to combat the impact of COVID (EAP help program reminders, emergency wages, supplemental pay for every hour worked, etc.). These COVID Wellness Calls quickly turned to onboarding calls where we ask how their onboarding experience was between online paperwork, benefits conversations, who their trainers were and how they felt and rated them, and overall happiness too. More importantly, how they feel about the job and whether it was portrayed properly.
These conversations have already turned around some sites of ours that had some bad practices for day 1, and address several concerns we never knew of before. Our CEO has taken a great interest in these, and it's part of our normal recruiting process now!
- Elias Anosov, Regional Recruiter at Waste Connections
Digital Group Socializing and One-on-One Texting
We’ve had two big—and very different—wins for keeping our frontline employees informed and engaged throughout the pandemic. Our private employee Facebook group has been a great place to post fun items and things for company morale. It gives everyone a place to have that “watercooler” chat that we’re all missing right now. The second is what I call our "HR Number" which is the Team Engine Employee Portal. It's been an excellent tool for us to communicate with the guys through texting and provide them with a private and secure line to communicate with us.
- Liz Foreback, Office Manager at Ambler Industries, LLC
Consistent Messaging
The Team Engine text message announcements feature has enabled me to provide consistent messaging (e.g. information, fact-checking, instruction, encouragement) to all the employees at once, which has been crucial during the pandemic. I have 100% participation from the employees, and can't imagine a better way to keep everyone on the same page than sending a text to their mobile phone, which they always have with them, whether on or off duty.
- Ken Smithson, General Manager of Santa Maria Area Transit
Virtual Meetings
With multiple locations throughout Colorado, we knew right away that being able to interact with our employees regularly was a priority. Before COVID, getting all of our employees together at a specific time for mandatory meetings was a real challenge. Exploring our options for implementing video meetings was a priority for us and has been an enormous success. Since implementing video meetings, our attendance rate rose from around 50% pre-COVID to 100%.
Our virtual meetings have proven to be a super-efficient way to get the message out. Our meeting agendas are presented via screen share so everyone can follow along. Our employees are more engaged, informed, and I believe they feel a bit more valued. Our workers now having feelings of inclusiveness through video meetings, have shown real results with production.
The key was in keeping it consistent and simple. Our driver meetings are held every Tuesday at 7 pm, and we use the same link each time. I have found that using only one link per meeting type allows our employees to only need to keep track of one piece of information and makes things less confusing.
- Sean Perry, Vice President of Wyatts Towing
Break It Down
You can read these quotes all day long, but what’s the plan? What can you do tomorrow to increase engagement with your deskless workforce?
- Consistently Check in with Your Employees: Pick up the phone and give your employees a call. See how they are doing at work and outside of work. People are struggling during these times, so it’s good to ask about everything. If you can’t get on the phone, text your employees; they’ll appreciate that you tried to reach out.
- Do Something Fun: As Liz from Ambler Industries mentioned, they have a Facebook page where they can post fun things and stories for company morale. According to bizfluent, “If an organization is going through a crisis, employees [with high moral] will work harder to help it survive.” At Team Engine, we try to keep our employee morale up by hosting weekly competitions on everything from who has the cutest baby picture or the worst date story to elbow coin-flipping!
- Keep Everyone Informed with Changes in The Business: With quarantine rules constantly changing depending on where you live, it’s hard for everyone to keep track of what the latest policy is. It’s essential to communicate with all of your employees each day to make sure they know the new rules. Santa Maria Area Transit is a bus company, so Ken is always needing to let the drivers know about the city ordinances around wearing masks for themselves and their riders. Ken uses Team Engine to send an Announcement that is texted out to each driver every day about what they need to do and what they can expect for the day.
- Get Creative, But Keep It Simple: Video conferencing may seem like a hassle, but if you can build it into the schedule, make sure your employees know exactly when, where, and what they'll be expected to do, then you may be surprised by how much you like it. Video conferencing has increased the attendance rate for Wyatt’s Towing by 50%! Using the same link and texting it out keeps everyone on the same page and organized.
We know things are tough, and managing all of these changes at work can be difficult. But taking a few simple steps each day to connect and engage with your deskless workforce will pay dividends in the future.
Team Engine wants to make your life easier; that’s why we ask the experts for you. We’re also focusing on helping blue-collar businesses continue to keep their employees engaged if you’re interested in sending out your own text-message announcement like Ken, try our platform at no cost today.
