How to foster employee well-being using an intranet

Richard Branson once famously said, “Take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business.”

Your employees are your business, and they are THE key to your business success.

Following this principle, today’s organizations are shifting their focus on their people, striving to make them more engaged and happier at work.

Executives in HR, Communication, and all departments in the organization are joining forces to create a positive workplace culture and increase employee happiness.

In fact, in almost every industry, in recent years and even more so now, employee health and well-being have increasingly become one of the top organizational priorities.

According to many studies, there is a positive correlation between employee well-being and employee productivity, organizational profitability, customer satisfaction and employee retention.

In other words, employees are more likely to perform their best work and stay longer at a job when they are healthier and happier.

Higher employee well-being and satisfaction scores result in positive business impact   

Source: Global Happiness Council (Deloitte)

The following statistics emphasize the need to make your employees’ health and well-being a top priority for your organization.

• 89% of workers at companies that support well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work (American Psychological Association)
• 87% of employees expect their employer to support them in balancing work and personal commitments (Glassdoor)
• 96% of employees believe showing empathy is an important way to increase employee retention (State of the Workplace Empathy)
• “Improving worker well-being” is in the top 3 most important outcomes employees hope to achieve in the workplace transformation efforts in the next one to three years. (Forbes)
• 56.4% of employees suffer work-related stress (Britain’s Healthiest Workplace)
• 77% of employees found wellness programs to impact the culture at work positively. (Virgin HealthMiles/Workforce management)

Your organization will need a holistic employee well-being strategy that addresses psychological, physical and financial well-being.

Many organizations start with building and maintaining a positive workplace culture. It’s vital to make employees feel being cared for, especially in challenging times as we experienced with the global pandemic.

It’s also essential to review and update the existing health programs if they’re no longer relevant or useful to employees. Many HR teams roll out new wellness initiatives to keep up with the post-pandemic situation and the scaling up of remote working.

Surprisingly it’s not the gym but the basics above that employees want from their workplace.

Source: Future Workplace (HBR)

To support new employee well-being strategies, a growing number of organizations are exploring technology solutions with the goal of improving individual performance, productivity, mental and physical health, and job satisfaction.

By helping people to communicate and collaborate more effectively, an intranet is playing a greater role than ever in improving employee experience and engagement.

Here are seven ways an intranet helps support employee health and well-being at your workplace.

It has been well-documented that workplace flexibility and autonomy have positive effects on well-being and job satisfaction. For example, Cornell University found that the companies that gave employees more autonomy grew four times faster than traditionally managed companies, while also experiencing 1/3 less staff turnover. Researchers at Chicago University found the work schedule flexibility was a contributor to employee happiness.

An intranet is essential for enabling workplace flexibility and autonomy as it helps employees to:

• Receive and access key information from anywhere, from any device
• Connect and work effectively with colleagues, regardless of location
• Share documents and files easily and securely
• Integrate into their new job and the organization through remote onboarding and enrolling

According to the SHRM‘s report, relationships with colleagues was deemed the number one contributor to employee engagement, with 77% of respondents listing workplace connections as a priority. This means we are happier, more engaged and productive when we have good relationships.

Your intranet provides a shared online space for everyone to go to not only for information but also for the connection with the workplace. For example, through the intranet:

• Employees can quickly find and contact any colleague through the people directory
• Everyone can get to know more about colleagues on a business and personal level through rich user profiles
• Employees can keep track of upcoming birthdays of colleagues and new hires
• Like-minded employees can create their own community spaces

Did you know that information overload has quite a negative impact on employee health? A research study found:

• 25% of workers experienced significant stress due to the volume of information they’re required to process.
• 36% of managers reported poor health due to the excessive information they were required to process in the workplace.
• 68% of those managers felt information overload has hurt their personal and professional relationships.

The intranet helps combat information overload as it gives employees a central place to keep up with all the information they need and only the information that is relevant to them. This way, your intranet also frees employees from the reliance on email, reducing email overload.

Your intranet is an effective channel to inform and encourage employee wellness. It is a place for the HR team to launch wellbeing initiatives, promote the benefits and motivate employees to join.

Other ways to leverage your intranet to keep wellbeing on top of your employees’ minds:

• Post a seasonal wellness announcement with helpful videos
• Organize and host online wellbeing events across different channels such as Teams or Viva Engage
• Share employee wellness stories and experiences
• Promote wellbeing activities and practices
• Deliver free resources and other interesting relevant content

Unsurprisingly, employees who receive recognition and feel appreciated are more satisfied, work better and are more likely to stick to the organization, in good and bad times. In a recent survey 69% of employees said they’d work harder if they were better appreciated (Hubspot).

Your intranet facilitates recognition by providing a shared platform for managers to publicly praise employees for a job well done, or for colleagues to show appreciation to each other. It’s also a great channel to celebrate small success and early achievements.

Everyone wants to be respected and listened to. Your intranet provides a tool for employees to enter two-way communication. It allows everyone to express their feelings, share their opinions and share feedback when reading company news, having a discussion with colleagues, or engaging in conversions on social platforms.

Using features like Polls, Forms, Workflows and an ideation tool, HR and Internal communication teams can easily run employee polls and surveys to collect employee feedback and thoughts.

Workplace health and safety is extremely important in many sectors such as manufacturing, construction and infrastructure, engineering, transportation, energy and healthcare. To prevent injuries and protect employees and customers, safety policies and work procedures must be strictly followed.

Your intranet is an effective communication channel, allowing employees, no matter where they work to access updated policies and procedures, to search and find answers easily via FAQs, to quickly connect with the right people when needed.

When something happens, organizations can quickly publish incidents or emergency messages to all or targeted employees with push notifications to any device. A mandatory readfunction leaves nothing to chance. Anyone who has to read your communication will see it and can tick it off to confirm they’ve read it.

With employee burnout continuing to rise, organizations step up to improve workplace well-being and create a happier workforce. It has never been more important to take care of your employees, physically and mentally.

We truly believe your intranet is a useful element in helping your employee well-being strategy to succeed.  Especially in the hybrid workplaces we see today.

If you want to learn more about Involv intranet and how other companies are using their intranet to create a happier workplace, feel free to get in touch!