Effectively reaching and engaging employees is the key to success for a human resources department. Yet, most HR professionals struggle to deliver crucial messages because employees suffer from email overload or have more pressing concerns.
This past year has taught us the only certainty we can depend on, in communicating with the workforce, is uncertainty. Whether you’re dealing with fully remote office workers, a hybrid of in office and work from home, or frontline workers with no access to email, mass texting employees has quickly become the preferred and trusted method of communication.
Enter WorkforceTXT® — the next frontier of employee engagement.
Why HR Departments Need Workforce Text Messaging
Texting is the most effective way to reach employees. With text open rates averaging over 98% (versus 20% for emails), text messaging has finally broken the barriers into the world of acceptable employee communications. Utilizing text messaging for an organization gives HR the power to reach large groups of employees instantly with the assurance that 90% or more of text messages will get read in the first three minutes of sending, according to Adobe. This is particularly critical for important health and safety related information or other timely communication needs.
HR departments use text messaging for a wide array of employee communications. With texting, an organization can coordinate in a crisis and speed up everything during an emergency. They can drive retention by communicating with employees to create an open and connected company culture. Texting helps onboard new employees more efficiently. It makes finding top talent and hiring quicker with improved candidate response rates and interview scheduling. Text messaging can also help with workforce management, saving time and wasted efforts for HR departments.
Text Messaging Is More Effective for Employee Engagement
One major area where text messaging has emerged this year is with communicating medical and voluntary benefits. HR and benefits teams spend a great deal of time choosing benefits and creating content to explain those benefits. If employees aren’t engaging with that content, it’s just a waste of time, effort, and, ultimately, resources. Texting ensures employees receive and read critical benefits updates and offerings, engage and take action.
Beyond benefits, executing successful, year-round employee communication campaigns calls for channels that are targeted and convenient for employees. Whether the goal is to reach workers with onboarding materials, code-of-conduct training, rules and regulations, new policies, or COVID-19 safety protocols, texting is a seamless way to provide access to HR communications materials and decision-support tools.
Especially with more employees working from home than ever before, HR teams and benefits managers are embracing workforce texting as a must-have digital communication method to complement or replace traditional email.
Choosing the Best Workforce Text Messaging Platform
Text messaging with employees is possible and effective, but it’s more than just having the ability to text employees. HR leaders know to take careful consideration when choosing a texting platform because employee communication needs to be handled properly and legally. Plus, texting has little advantage without the right material—access to a mobile-responsive HR portal or other mobile-friendly content. They also need the ability to manage responses, monitor engagement, and track data to ensure communications are effective.
With Flimp’s WorkforceTXT platform, HR departments can send trackable, mobile-responsive videos, multimedia content, benefits guides, surveys, and decision-support tools. Messages can be simple texts (SMS) or multimedia (MMS) that include links to benefits details and explainer videos for increased engagement and response. HR and benefits administrators can track open rates, ensuring messages are received and read for maximum engagement using analytics that are built into our texting platform. This is the future of workforce communications, a breakthrough in how HR leaders communicate and reach employees in any environment.
To learn more about our WorkforceTXT solution, visit our product page or contact us to request a personal demo.