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Segmented Communications to Drive Employee Engagement and Wellness Tops the List of What Companies Must Prepare for in 2021
CHICAGO, Dec. 15, 2020 – Evive, the leader in digital engagement and communication technology, today released its list of top trends businesses must prepare for around employee communication in 2021.
“Today’s remote workforce is changing the way human resource leaders communicate across organizations, accelerating digital transformation to automate personalized, relevant messaging,” said Prashant Srivastava, president and CEO of Evive. “Remote work requires mobile communication delivery at an unprecedented level. Many employers still cannot efficiently communicate if they are not in an office setting, but that will change with the right automated technologies to fill those gaps.”
The insights and predictions from Evive’s leadership team include:
Reaching specific employee populations
With the current and potential organizational disruptions, it is more critical than ever to send targeted and relevant messages. COVID-19 shed new light that sending an email to “all employees” is no longer good enough. There’s a need for more granular, data-driven communications that is personalized and meaningful.
More and more employers will need to use data to identify and target individuals with specific calls to action. Examples of segmented communications include employees of different geographies, cultures, age groups, medical histories, familial make-ups, genders and more.
Keeping employees up-to-date with evolving information
The pandemic has helped HR leaders identify the importance of regular communication. As the world moves into the next stage of the pandemic—vaccine execution— employers need to devise a data-driven messaging strategy to keep employees grounded and informed. They can alert segmented groups when a vaccine might be available in their area. They will also need to keep those communication lines open as they look toward workplace reopenings and ensuring employer safety. Companies will need to utilize email, SMS, applications, video conferencing and text messaging to communicate the right information at the right time.
Supporting mental and physical wellness
Employee’s well-being and health remain of the utmost importance in 2021. With workforces spread out and meaningful peer interaction significantly decreased, the need to connect with others has highlighted the increased instances of anxiety, depression and stress globally. A recent Evive study found that 60% of respondents were concerned about stress, loneliness, anxiety, and/or depression.
A platform that utilizes data to drive rapid, personalized communication to individuals in vulnerable moments could drive people to an employer-sponsored Employee Assistance Program (EAP), mental health treatment, or physical wellness program to gain the help or advice they need.
Understanding the state in which you’re reaching employees
In the wake of the pandemic, employees are stressed out, anxious, and need to feel a sense of community, making the right messaging key to success. Using data-driven communications to reach employees with what they need to hear in the right moments make employees feel engaged, informed, and aligned. Communication today may be more challenging, but with automated employee engagement technology, communicating directly with employees feeling workplace anxiety, stress, and burnout has a beneficial impact on the entire organization.
Boosting benefits utilization
Guiding certain segments of employees to the most useful benefits is still one of the critical outcomes of personalized communications. As employers realize their employee programs and resources are not always utilized, the need for the right people to engage with those benefits becomes evident. A personalized platform that segments the right audience for the right services helps HR leaders drive more benefits utilization. For example, a likely higher telemedicine investment in 2021 will mean HR leaders need to communicate how to engage with those services with employees who visited ERs in 2020 for non-emergent care.
Re-Examining the HR Tech Stack
The current economy forces companies to evaluate their software spend and effectiveness. Employers will continue to invest in programs deemed necessary, not nice-to-haves. Managing the employee journey and the right messaging through a platform no longer falls in the nice-to-have bucket.
HR leaders need to reevaluate their view on the employee journey. While the core stages of the employee journey remain the same, using data to communicate to team members at each stage must drive that messaging. In addition, supporting remote workforce, onboarding, and career growth for distinct employee groups no longer means an office meeting in a conference room. HR leaders need to leverage communications in an automated way to the right employee segments.
Overcoming Zoom fatigue for better employee engagement
2020 has proven the over-reliance on virtual meetings. Initially, companies and their employees were eager to shift their culture to these video calls. But the extended use of this approach has led people to Zoom fatigue.
Companies will need to invest in more useful ways to engage people and reach targeted populations. Data-driven messaging reaches people quickly and simply, meaning everything does not require video time. The faster employers can adapt to this, the better it will be for overall employee well-being.
“COVID-19 exposed a gap in employer-employee communications. It’s critical that leaders reshape and rethink how they communicate to employees,” says Srivastava. “The process is largely broken and fragmented, creating a void of understanding employees’ situations and an inability to communicate with them on a personal level. Employers that act to automate their digital engagement and communication technologies will see greater employee satisfaction and health, and increased profitability.”
Is your company prepared to embrace these trends in 2021? To learn more about the importance of personalized communication, visit 10 Features Your Communications Platform Needs to be Effective.
About Evive
Evive changes the way companies communicate. As the market leader in data-driven, personalized engagement, Evive has extensive experience helping large and midsize companies optimize the employee experience across their diverse populations. Starting with rich healthcare and HR data sources, Evive uses proprietary predictive analytics and behavioral science expertise to deliver highly segmented, multi-modal messaging that connects the right person to the right resource at the right time: driving individual action and delivering measurable outcomes across the spectrum of employee experiences. To learn more about Evive, visit https://goevive.com/ or LinkedIn. Contact press@goevive.com to learn more.
Media Contact
Michelle Genser, Evive Vice President of Marketing
847.452.2723
