by Crew, on September 27, 2018
Human resources professionals are busy people, and rightfully so. They can often be found juggling several projects, each of which can have a profound impact on employees’ lives — whether it is managing W-2 information, open enrollment, employee scholarship programs, rewards and recognition, or career opportunities. Each of these programs are critical in driving employee retention and job satisfaction, but it can often be a struggle to get that information into the hands of the very employees it will benefit. This is especially true of frontline workers who don’t have ready access to effective communication technology on the job.
A few communications techniques commonly used by today’s HR professionals include:
- Sending emails to area coaches or district managers, and hoping the details will trickle down to frontline employees. Often, whichever manager happens to open the store’s email that day becomes a gatekeeper to the information you want to pass along.
- Posting to intranets or employee portals, where people can individually access content. The problem with this is that deskless workers tend to check their intranet only when they’re clocking in or out (at which point, they’re moving as quickly as possible to start or finish their shift).
- Printing out memos for the manager on duty to put on a bulletin board or in employees’ lockers. This relies heavily on people being in the store when the printout is posted since another may replace it soon.
These methods rely too heavily on managers to follow instructions and communicate effectively, and on employees to be on site when information is shared. Of course, we created Crew to solve that problem and keep everyone on the same page. And it’s working. The average average Crew user opens the app six times per day, and teams use Crew to send over 10M communications each week. Many of these communications relate to learning and development, policy or procedural changes, contests, payroll, benefits and much more.
Here are a few ways smart HR leaders use Crew to disseminate this valuable information:
1. Sharing PDFs (i.e. newsletters, flyers, etc.) in Crew for team members to view whenever it’s convenient for them.
Broadcast in the Crew Command Center lets you instantly share important announcements and files to frontline employees across all of the stores in your district.
2. Uploading training videos, commercials, or recorded video messages. By providing multimedia HR content via Crew, you’ll grab employees’ attention with more visual, memorable explanations.
Training videos and other multimedia content can be sent directly—and securely—to team members’ phones for quick and easy consumption.
3. Sharing clickable links to send the team to important websites, like your payroll portal, an open enrollment site or job posting.
There are a few ways you can distribute this kind of information on Crew – most notably via our Team Files feature, as Announcements, or as targeted group messages. When you upload a Team File, everyone in the organization receives a message (e.g. “[Admin] uploaded “Vacation Policy”) on their chats tab, letting them know something new is available to view. When you post an Announcement, Crew sends out a notice to every team member and it is automatically pinned to the top of their notification screens, which ensures special visibility for your most important communications.
What’s great about these capabilities is that they’re all trackable in Crew’s message receipt details, announcement reports and Command Center dashboard (for Crew Enterprise users). You’ll know instantly who has received your content and who has not. In addition, by sharing your HR information through the very same app your employees are already using to check schedules, pick up shifts and contact coworkers, you’re much more likely to get the visibility and timely responses you need.
