Your employees are planning their exit interview. Right now.
You know it’s true. At this very moment someone on your staff is withdrawing from the team, asking a manager for an unexplained schedule change, or exhibiting some other ominous sign that greener pastures are in sight. Recruiting is not only a headache, it’s also expensive. Lost productivity, recruitment ads, training expenses – it all adds up, and while there’s no magic formula that keeps quality workers in their seats, you can slow the exodus by giving employees a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction in their jobs. A SharePoint intranet can help you do that.
SharePoint is an internal collaboration and content management platform used by enterprise subscribers of Microsoft Office 365. The global standard for intranet development, SharePoint offers several benefits that help employees improve while also increasing on-the-job satisfaction.
Empowering People To Solve Problems
Micromanagement is one of the worst offenders when it comes to losing good workers. A 2015 study from TINYpulse indicated that people who lacked freedom to make decisions in their jobs were likely to look for work elsewhere.
Micromanagement is a supervisory issue of course, and you should nip it in the bud, but you can also hand some control back to workers with an intranet implementation. From the first stage of the planning process, a deployment should stay focused on the end user. It’s not a virtual meeting space where you stand on a soapbox, dictating company directives and policies to people. Instead, your platform should be a hub of innovation and activity. Staff members should be working on shared projects with one another and inventing their own solutions under your supervision.
Maintaining a People-Focused Culture
While a company culture is difficult to define, it’s hard to overestimate its importance to workers. And no, your foosball table and espresso machine does not make or break corporate culture. It’s the relationships that matter – the ones workers have with each other and those they have with their bosses. Large enterprises struggle with this more than others because, after a point, an organization gets too large for people in different departments to bond with each other.
An intranet connects people with a variety of customization options, including social networking apps that can mirror the experience people love about platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. For the first time, employees in distant locations will be able to easily work and socialize with people they would normally only see at the holiday party. Side benefit – the “Secret Santa” gifts vastly improve when people actually know something about you.
Keep Training Focused On Desired Outcomes
Many organizations fail at their attempt at establishing an intranet because they introduce it like any other piece of software. They roll it out without any input from end-users, give them one training session and tell them to run with it. SharePoint does not work that way.
After deployment, your intranet should be a living, breathing entity. A successful implementation requires ongoing training that stays focused on meeting specific objectives, not completing course objectives. When people understand why they are learning something new – when they see how a different way of accomplishing tasks makes their jobs easier – they will retain what they learn. We often say SharePoint is about the “why,” not just the “how.”
As employees learn to use the portal, they will discover new ways to use it. As you add features, people become immersed in their work, developing valuable skills that will make them easier to promote to higher positions.
Retention problems are more emotional than economic. Wages are important, but more people leave jobs because of personal dissatisfaction. Organizations grow and evolve only when the people inside them grow and evolve. SharePoint will help you pave the way. It’s just a matter of deciding when you’ve had enough of the revolving door.
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