The benefits of a simple internal company communication app

Lately, various digital solutions have been appearing at breakneck speed, including tools for digitalising internal company communication. We're slowly becoming unable to keep up with technological progress. Quickly mastering the use of new apps is a huge challenge for everyone, which is exactly why you need to make sure that the app you use to communicate with employees is a simple internal company communication app. Especially if the majority of your employees are blue-collar or belong to the older generation.

This is the problem with complex communication apps

Regardless of how hard or easy a new tool is to use, introducing it always means change for employees. By that alone we force the majority of employees to step out of their comfort zone. That's exactly why many will instinctively oppose the introduction of such tools. They're afraid of any change they can't confidently handle. According to information published in 2019, 23% of the Hungarian population are digitally illiterate, while 27% are digitally low-skilled. So for half the population, using a complex digital tool is a huge challenge. They're afraid they'll have to learn new skills. And what if they can't learn to use the new tool? Will the others laugh at them and think them stupid? Might they even lose their jobs over it?

The more complex the technological tool you want to introduce — especially in a mostly blue-collar work environment — the greater the resistance you'll run into. It may even happen that in the end you'd rather give up, because almost no one is willing to actively use the gadget you introduced. But in doing so you sacrifice the well-thought-out and necessary business goals that could serve the very security of the workplace and the well-being of employees.

Keep complex digital solutions for senior managers and the group of technologically highly skilled employees instead. Don't try to “force” them on every employee. Otherwise you'd better reckon with failure, and with the app paying off never — or at least only after a very long time.

The greatness of a simple internal company communication app

You and members of management may think that if a tool is simple, it can't be used for much. But that's far from always the case. Sometimes it's simplicity that leads to achieving our goals. If, for example, your goal is to reach every colleague and involve them in company discourse, then you need a tool that everyone can use confidently and easily. And you can achieve this with the help of a simple communication platform. You need a tool like CHEQ. One employee at Gyermelyi Zrt. said of it that it's so easy to use that even a 6-year-old could manage it.

If you put a simple tool in employees' hands, then:

• there will be lower resistance to change
• more people will actively use it, which
  • can give the company a competitive advantage — everyone concerned is informed of the news accurately and on time, so work can be organised accordingly
  • speeds up handling HR and other company administrative matters — issuing encrypted payslips, drawing up certificates, digitally signing declarations 
  • makes organising company events, such as the family day, simpler and faster
  • makes it possible to complete and process pulse surveys and other satisfaction questionnaires in a few hours instead of days
  • also supports strengthening company culture, involving employees and training them, which has a favourable effect on both the employer brand (employer branding) and turnover
  • saves the HR department and the company both time and money, so the amount spent on introducing a simple internal company communication app is sure to pay off — in fact, in certain cases with CHEQ this is possible within just 3–6 months

By introducing an app that can be grasped at a glance, you can achieve your goals and easily measure your HR metrics. You can also present these to management. All of this gives a huge sense of achievement to you personally, and of course to the community too. But how is this possible?

Less is sometimes more — simplicity is really about being clean and clear

Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered.

Giorgio Armani

With simple food, clothes and packaging — just like with simple internal communication apps — you can't dazzle people in an instant. The wow effect is missing at first sight. With complex things, by contrast, we're amazed. It's not uncommon for multifaceted solutions to be overcrowded with all sorts of features, perhaps with cute touches, so that we find them even more impressive at first glance. But we pay the price for this.

The danger of overly sprawling tools

1. Mostly only those who are highly digitally skilled can use it. — Such tools primarily target office workers. However, if the goal is to involve the blue-collar workforce, the “no-frills” solution is the better choice.

2. Employees have to learn to grasp the platform's logical structure so they know what's where.  This means that patience and strong interest are needed for users to invest time and energy in getting to know the tool and using it confidently and actively.

3. The countless tiny icons and menu buttons are hard to tell apart. Let alone tapping the right one while you're being jolted around on the bus or any other form of public transport. As time goes on, like it or not, most people's eyesight gets worse. So it becomes increasingly hard to spot what you're looking for among the mini icons crammed in to bursting. Not to mention that even when we do find it, it's not certain we'll manage to touch our fingertip to exactly that spot on the phone screen. — At least it often happens to me that something other than what I wanted opens, because the screen senses I pressed a different menu. It's terribly frustrating when it takes a third attempt to finally open the thing I wanted. Sometimes the menu buttons/icons are so small and so close together that even a 1–2 mm slip makes a big difference.

4. It makes you forget the real goal — to involve every colleague in internal company communication, from the operator, through the skilled blue-collar worker, all the way to the senior manager — and instead feeds our natural urge to be “better” than others. But we tend to forget that a company isn't better than its competitor because it uses some advanced technological gizmo that barely anyone within the company can use, but because information flows quickly and accurately between employees at every level. This also lets them respond faster to market challenges, through which they can gain a competitive advantage.

The advantage of a simple internal company communication app

1. It's immediately clear and contains only the features that are really needed - This is not a social network, where employees chat and make friends with each other. For that, there are the well-known social networks like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

2. Given that it contains only the necessary features, the menu buttons are also large enough for the user to open exactly what they want with a single tap. - No more getting annoyed because someone accidentally bumped you on the tram and your finger slid a few mm on the phone screen, so you opened a completely different feature from the one you wanted.

3. Its use can be picked up intuitively, so anyone can start using it within moments. This gives employees such confidence and a sense of achievement that they'll happily use the new communication channel. In fact, they'll encourage their colleagues to use it too.

4. Thanks to its ease of use, you really can involve every one of your colleagues in company communication. — Using a plain company communication tool quickly becomes as everyday an activity as using the TV. People already use the TV and its remote control automatically, without thinking. You can achieve the same with simple communication gadgets — you can give colleagues convenience and freedom in handling their affairs.

It enables easy administration for everyone

I've already hinted above that, despite its simplicity, the app does contain useful features — even several, as needed. Through these, administrative matters can also be handled, which, from both the HR and the employee point of view, is an advantage worth talking about specially.

From the employee's point of view

One of the biggest advantages of the simple CHEQ internal company communication app is that it lets employees handle their affairs in moments, without queuing. On the interface, with just a few taps, you can start:

• a data update (e.g. changing a bank account number, recording a new  address card or driving licence, etc.)
• requesting certificates (e.g. an employer's certificate, an income certificate) and other documents
• requesting days off
• reporting an absence due to illness and uploading the medical papers, etc.

Handling work matters is extremely convenient for employees when they use a simple internal company communication app. Not only because they can handle their affairs anywhere and any time (more complex communication apps almost certainly allow this too), but also because they don't have to search among the features. Thanks to the tool's clean design, the employee can see in moments which menu button lets them handle which matter. This encourages the employee to handle their administrative affairs on the digital interface.

By contrast, in a communication app overcrowded with all kinds of other options (as well), it can be hard to find what the employee needs at that particular moment. After all, if someone doesn't use the interface regularly, they can't immediately decide what's where. The harder it is for the employee to find something in the communication app, the more frustrated they become. That's exactly why it's so good to choose a more modest, clearer solution that reduces the sense of frustration in employees.

From the HR point of view

The more people use the digital channel to resolve administrative matters, the more efficiently HR can do its job and the more time it has for the high-value-added activities requiring personal contact, with which they can truly contribute to the organisation's success and employees' well-being.

1. Employees approaching in person doesn't interrupt HR's workflow, since they can deal with the requests received through the communication app during dedicated time.
2. The chance of some data being recorded incorrectly is close to zero, since employees enter the data themselves and can effortlessly share photos of their documents and other papers securely. 
3. It reaches everyone, so running pulse surveys and the annual employee satisfaction surveys is seamless.
4. Organising company events such as the family day, Christmas, etc. is smooth too.
5. Thanks to digital signing, the signed declarations, forms, attendance sheets, handover papers, contracts and so on can be collected from every employee in hours instead of days.

It enables a sure ROI

I've alluded to this earlier too, but the tool's financial return is such a sensitive and important topic that it needs fuller explanation when it comes to comparing two communication tools built on different principles. The reason is that, in our experience, when HR asks for a budget to introduce an internal company communication app, one of the first questions to come up is always whether there's money for it, and when and how this expense will pay off for the company. The good news is that this can partly be calculated and partly estimated quite well. This is just as true for a complicated communication tool as for a simple one.

However, theoretical calculations often don't meet reality. The reason is that if the company doesn't make using the communication app mandatory, you have to take employees' willingness into account — how willing they are to subscribe to this communication channel and how willing they are to handle their HR matters through it. This is where how complicated or easy the interface is to use matters a lot. The easier the channel is to use, the more people use it, and so the costs spent on introducing a simple internal company communication app are sure to pay off. What's more, with CHEQ this return can be realised within just 3–6 months. If you'd like to learn more about CHEQ, then request our FREE demo!