Employee Communications ~ 5 min

Work from Home Best Practices: Microsoft’s Olivier Lanilis on Sociabble’s Role in Times of Crisis

Marketing Team, Experts in Employee Advocacy, Sociabble
Marketing Team Experts in Employee Advocacy

Work from home best practices are more relevant than ever. And Microsoft has been a close partner with Sociabble since the very beginning, which is why Sociabble is still the only Employee Communication platform fully based on Microsoft Azure technology, and a natural extension for Microsoft Teams.

In this guest article, Olivier Lanilis, the Director of Independent Software Vendors & Startups at Microsoft France, shares his thoughts on Employee Communication, now that remote work and home office scenarios are becoming the new normal.


work from home best practices

Work from Home Best Practices: Maintaining Employee Alignment & Motivation in Times of Crisis

By Olivier Lanilis, Director of Independent Software Vendors & Startups at Microsoft France I’d like to talk to you today about our longtime Microsoft partner Sociabble, a company that provides a web and mobile platform for Employee Communication and Employee Advocacy which, in these times of crisis, allows companies of all sizes and from all sectors to put employees at the heart of the communication process.

Teleworking during this recent confinement underlined the central role played by internal communication tools within companies: for example at Sociabble, they experienced a 25% increase in the use of their platform.

Sociabble has supported, among its many partners, La Française Group with its own internal communication during confinement, helping them to keep in touch with their employees who have been working remotely, and to utilize work from home best practices.


Effectively Inform All Employees

    • Sociabble enables communication departments to effectively inform all employees, in real time, even as the company adapts to the unprecedented situation we’re in. In an editorial space, Sociabble allows you to quickly disseminate important company messages, translated in real time into the employee’s language, thanks to Microsoft Azure’s cognitive services.
    • Communicators can create audiences and send them specific messages, including, notifications on the mobile application, especially via very visual (photos, infographics, videos, etc.) and interactive formats (quizzes, surveys).
    • Sociabble is a solution offering full integration with Microsoft 365 (Teams, Yammer, etc.)

Guarantee Motivation and Alignment of Employees Wherever They Are

While in the confinement phase of working remotely, Sociabble allows administrators to:

    • Schedule, broadcast, and promote live events with just a few clicks. Whichever streaming tool the company chooses.
    • Share engaging content: administrators can post photo carousels, videos, audio.
    • Send notifications to all employees’ mobiles, whether they have a professional email address or not.
    • Create surveys and quizzes to consult the teams, to find out their feelings and how well information is being assimilated.

Give a voice to employees, via photos or video (User Generated Content) Design campaigns allowing the promotion of specific and priority content that can be addressed to predefined audiences according to the company’s criteria (geography, level of access to information, etc.) Beyond collaboration around business projects, it is essential to communicate with all employees so that they have access to the information they need (managerial instructions, all-hands meetings, announcements of strategic change, etc.).

With Sociabble, employees find company information where they really need it (integrated into Microsoft Teams or Yammer, for example). In the deconfinement phase, while transitioning out of remote work scenarios, there is a risk of increased loss of alignment within companies, linked to the fact that part of the workforce will return to the workplace while others will continue to work from home. Sociabble will allow you to target messages based on audiences.


Internal Communication During Confinement at La Française Group

Sociabble supports its customers as closely as possible in their health crisis management procedures.

On their SB Heroes customer platform, bringing together more than 2,000 communication professionals, Sociabble shares work from home best practices as well as ready-to-use communication and administration support. Like many companies whose confined employees continue to work at home, La Française Group, an asset management company based in France and present internationally, is confronted with the distance and the challenges of communication between management and the various teams.

In order to inquire about the morale and working conditions of its hundreds of isolated employees, this brand has chosen in particular to use a feature native to Sociabble: the survey.

On a channel dedicated to confinement, this client has already published fifteen surveys with its remote employees, regarding everything from food habits, to their work attire, to their impressions of working remotely. Surveys are an effective tool for consulting with teams. They also make it possible to ensure that a priority message is understood and assimilated. They generate significant user engagement. They are a great way to keep in touch between the company and its workforce, and should be included among any company’s work from home best practices.


Employee Engagement During Times of Reconstruction

These key questions of employee ownership and engagement should continue to be addressed during the deconfinement period. Sociabble technology, fully scalable because it’s built with Microsoft technology, meets the needs of large accounts and guarantees consistent and fluid internal communication.

For example, an actor in the energy sector connected its 60,000 employees with personalized content thanks to Sociabble; the result is a 95% engagement rate. The solutions provided made the content accessible and understandable to employees in 65 countries through the launch of 42 local platforms and automatic translation.


To Learn More

If you’d like to see for yourself how Sociabble can help your company keep employees aligned and connected while working remotely, they offer a free demo.

Just click the link below: Request a free Sociabble demo

 
Article translated from French, please click here to find the original post.
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