Employee Engagement is Key to Small Business Growth—and Software Can Help

Hiring a new employee can feel like a risk for a small business. When teams are small, each member plays a vital role with touchpoints across the entire organization. At the same time, it can be difficult to predict just how well an employee will perform, given how many variables are at play and how many small-business stressors are likely to present themselves.

Small businesses can hedge their bets on new employees by ramping up their employee engagement efforts—and the business benefits are sound. According to a Gallup survey titled “State of the Global Workplace,” teams with highly engaged employees see 78% lower absenteeism, 18% higher productivity, 23% higher profitability, and between 20%-50% lower turnover than their less-engaged counterparts.

When looking to increase employee engagement, small businesses are not on their own. Many of the important tasks can be accomplished by technology that has become more accessible and affordable to small businesses over the last few years. Here are some pieces of software worth considering:

Collaborative Efforts

Employee accountability represents a significant portion of engagement—when employees owe something to another person, they’re more likely to complete tasks than if they were left to their own devices. However, not every organization is set up to allow employees to become accountable to one another; this is particularly true if a small business’s processes and supporting infrastructure are still in nascent stages.

Small business tech stacks benefit greatly from software that facilitates collaboration among employees. This involves taking many of the basic functions of a workplace and centralizing them: chat, email, calendar, and task lists are great places to start. When employees know what each other is doing, they can better support those efforts without wasting time or causing unnecessary distractions.

But the collaboration doesn’t end there. A unified content hub ensures every employee remains up-to-date on the latest work being completed to ensure agreement on priorities and to guarantee no efforts become unnecessarily doubled. These software programs involve document-sharing functions that stretch across written pieces, spreadsheets, slideshow presentations, and more, and include the ability to live-edit or leave comments.

These programs are tools that work best when a small business has a process to follow. It’s important for small businesses to go through the work of determining which employees need information at which stage of the funnel, and figuring out ways for that information to be immediately available. Luckily, many modern document-sharing software programs come equipped with AI capable of automating much of these alerts, further alleviating workloads and encouraging communication.

Forging Intra-Connections

Employee engagement extends beyond the work itself, and it won’t require endless all-company meetings.

Small businesses looking to increase engagement can find software that includes robust intranet capabilities. Think of these like social media sites that involve only a company’s employees. These message boards can house all-company updates, accolades for great work, forums where questions can be answered, and more. In fact, not all of the content living on these platforms has to do with work; perhaps employees share a common interest, which can lead to bonding and, ultimately, more workplace collaboration.

The catch with intranet capabilities is that employees have to seek these updates out themselves, as opposed to a mandated town hall where updates are shared. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Often, virtual town halls can be held within a company’s intranet software to get employees in the habit of visiting these platforms, and these town halls can also call out specific posts for employees to peruse later. Every person on earth likes to have their work validated, so small businesses can get in the habit of tagging employees in flattering posts to encourage more visitors.

The trick here is for small business owners to show some restraint. Posting every single day on a company’s intranet is most likely overkill, while posting once a year is far too infrequent. Owners can consolidate information to capture a few important updates within a single post, particularly if the details shared are positive ones. For mission-critical updates that may not be well received by employees, a dedicated post may make the most sense. Employees want to know that communication channels are open without being fully mandated; and, the best part of a company’s intranet is that it can be checked at an employee’s leisure, when it works in their schedule. A reasonable posting schedule demonstrates respect for employees’ time.

Contracted Flexibility

One of the most important aspects of a software solution isn’t even the software itself, but rather how it’s financed. Too often, software vendors are eager for sales and lock companies into unnecessary contracts or upsell software programs no one needs. There’s also the danger that cheaper software programs will be more lenient with privacy-focused protocols, perhaps even including ads to make up for the lost revenue.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Software, in particular AI, is becoming cheaper and more accessible to small businesses, so affordable options are expanding. Small businesses should look for collaboration and engagement software that offers flexible contract terms, particularly those that allow for expanding and subtracting software as needed without incurring penalties. Additionally, small business growth may not happen on a linear timeline, so it’s worth considering what the user limits on software might be and how easily those can be adjusted.

Another means of achieving flexibility is to find software that allows for plug-ins to be installed. These can add functionality to a tech stack without requiring additional software to be purchased, and provides users with the option to build their own plug-ins as needs evolve. No piece of software is perfect, and vendors who allow for plug-ins are showing that it’s more important to meet customers where they are than to offer a finite number of cookie-cutter solutions.

The key here is interoperability—the software simply has to work, regardless of what the rest of the tech stack looks like. Only then can small businesses be confident they’ve found the right solution.

Conclusion

No two small businesses are alike, though they all have one important thing in common: employees are the most important contributor to the longevity of a company. As such, any software decisions made by a small business need to factor in its employees first and foremost. After all, what good is software that isn’t being used?

Within a company’s tech stack is also the best location from which to build out employee engagement strategies, particularly those small businesses who are hiring across the country, even the globe. Every single day, the employees of a small business open their laptops and get to work, but the goings-on at a small business are far from predictable. Employee engagement is what helps team members feel like they’re part of the greater whole, even when the company itself may feel disjointed, at times.

When a business supports its employees, they will, in turn, support the business itself.

This article, "Employee Engagement is Key to Small Business Growth—and Software Can Help" was first published on Small Business Trends