9 employee communication tools for empowering your workforce

As an HR leader in a fast-paced industry, you know that communication is a pillar of company growth: How can you scale if employees waste 15% of their work time on poor communication?

If you want to encourage better employee engagement and team collaboration, several different types of employee communication tools can help. Below, we'll outline nine employee communication tools for empowering your workforce and cover some of the best internal communication tools in each category.

Why your workforce needs tools to enhance communications

Without effective communication, employees cannot collaborate or build genuine connections with one another. This often leads to frustration and poor business outcomes because quality work can't occur without communication.

Top employee communication tools help employees go from "just okay" communication to "great" communication. 

In the "just okay" category, organizations can communicate clearly but fail to engage with feedback and active listening. With great communication enabled by using the right employee communication tools, organizations can communicate proactively, collect and provide feedback, and deliver personalized, timely communications.

1) Employee experience and recognition tool

According to a Gartner survey, only 13% of employees are fully satisfied with their workplace experience. While a lot goes into creating the type of company culture required for an optimum employee experience, utilizing an employee experience/recognition tool is a great place to start.

With an employee experience platform like Pyn, you can map out the employee journey from pre-onboarding communication to the end of an employee's time with your company. 

This allows you to support employees every step of the way with automated, personalized messaging, crafting experiences for them designed to boost employee engagement and satisfaction. It also helps you communicate during moments of transition, guiding employees through transitional phases such as promotions, returning to work after parental leave, and offboarding.

Crisis and disaster response are also moments where timely communication is key, and Pyn helps by guiding your leadership and management teams on what to say during tough times through our Open Library. 

Pyn also helps encourage better one-on-one communication by reminding managers about important opportunities for one-on-one support. Or, you can use Pyn to facilitate company-wide meetings by sending reminders before the meeting — or a recap of important talking points after the meeting.

The right employee experience platform can also double as an employee recognition tool. With Pyn, you'll be able to recognize key milestones and accomplishments in an employee's journey via personal messages of gratitude and congratulations. And when it comes to keeping your workforce satisfied, engaged, and motivated, few things are more powerful than timely recognition.

Uses and benefits

Employee experience and recondition tools enable companies to provide employees with personalized messaging and support at scale, leveraging automation to make employee communication far more efficient. 

From celebrating the moments that matter (such as birthdays and work anniversaries) to supporting employees as they take on new roles and responsibilities, these tools provide a range of uses and benefits.

Pyn is the top employee experience tool on the market, enabling companies to map out the employee journey from start to finish and craft messages that are sent out automatically at key moments along the way. If you want to boost the employee experience at your company, Pyn's industry-leading internal communication software is an excellent choice.

2) Project management and collaboration tool

Most projects require a lot of ongoing collaboration, and this collaboration is made easier with the right project management tool. 

Project management tools allow you to assign tasks to team members and track their progress while also providing a platform for file sharing, communication, and project collaboration. 

If your teams need a little help keeping their projects organized and on schedule, they will benefit from a high-quality project management platform.

Uses and benefits

Project management platforms help teams break down projects into individual tasks and make it easier to track the progress of those tasks. They also provide tools for streamlined communication and collaboration. 

Examples: Trello, Monday.com, ClickUp, Asana

3) Instant messaging platform

Enabling employees to communicate quickly and efficiently with their colleagues and managers is a vital prerequisite for effective internal communication. To this end, email and SMS alone are often not enough. 

Instead, employees need a centralized instant messaging platform where they can swiftly and easily communicate with anyone in the company in real time. These platforms help reduce the inefficiencies associated with internal comms so that employees can spend more time collaborating and less time looking up email addresses and phone numbers.

Uses and benefits

A good instant messaging tool makes it a lot easier for employees to communicate with one another, improving efficiency while also ensuring that employees can get help quickly when they need it. 

Examples: Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp

4) Intranet

A company intranet is a private portal where employees can access internal news, updates, and information. You can think of it as an internal-facing company website only your employees can access.

Building a company intranet allows you to publish information to your entire workforce while keeping that information private and secure from unauthorized access. While personalized, one-on-one communication is still key to crafting a great employee experience, this ability to publish information to your entire company can still provide a lot of advantages when it comes to business communication.

Uses and benefits

A company intranet can serve as a knowledge base where employees can easily find the information they need on demand. It can also serve as a platform for publishing company news so that all of your employees can stay in the loop. 

In short, any information that you want to share with your entire workforce can be easily distributed via intranet websites. 

Examples: Microsoft Sharepoint, Yammer, Simpplr

5) Video conferencing

For teams that can meet in person on a regular basis, video conferencing software might not be necessary. In today's world, where remote work has become the norm, it's not often (or ever) that organizations can get their teams together under the same roof. While instant messaging apps and other communication channels can help fill the gap, there's no replacement for face-to-face communication. 

This is where video conferencing software becomes valuable, enabling teams to communicate in an environment that mimics in-person meetings regardless of their location.

Uses and benefits

Video conferencing software is a great way to host team meetings when some or all of the team works remotely. In addition to making it easier for remote teams to collaborate, video conferencing software can also promote team bonding in a way that other messaging apps simply can't match. 

You can even use video conferencing software to host virtual lunches, game nights, and other team-bonding activities to ensure that your remote workers feel engaged and form beneficial bonds with their co-workers. 

Examples: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting

6) Employee feedback or survey tool

Providing as well as encouraging feedback is vital to any internal communication strategy: Gallup reports that employees who strongly agree they received "meaningful feedback" in the past week are almost four times more likely to be engaged than other employees. 

Employee feedback/survey tools streamline the process of collecting and providing employee feedback, encouraging a culture of accountability where every employee feels heard.

Uses and benefits

Employee feedback tools can be used to request feedback from your employees via targeted employee surveys. Along with making your employees feel valued, the feedback collected via these tools can also serve as a valuable resource for uncovering business-boosting insights. Along with collecting feedback from your employees, employee feedback tools can be used to provide feedback as well. This makes it easier to recognize employees when they do great work and provide guidance when performance issues need to be addressed.

Examples: 15Five, Culture Amp, TINYpulse

7) Email

Email is the original employee communication tool, and though many other communication channels are available today, email is still a cornerstone of business comms. 

However, email might not be the most efficient way for you to communicate with your employees or for them to communicate with one another. It also shouldn't be the only communication tool that your company relies on. That said, it's still an essential tool and a convenient way for employees to reach out to anyone in the company.

Uses and benefits

Email enables either private or team-wide communications and is a channel your employees are likely already familiar with. Another benefit of email as an employee communication tool is its pricing. Email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail are all free to use — unlike most other communication tools that require paid subscriptions. 

While other communication tools may be better suited for targeted applications such as employee recognition and project management, email is like a communication multi-tool, acting as a serviceable communication channel for almost any application.

Examples: Gmail, Outlook, iCloud mail

8) Digital signage

Digital signage software enables organizations to broadcast video content to numerous screens. For example, you can use digital signage software to display a reel of company updates on every television in your office. This capability allows organizations to publish information and messages without bogging down employees' inboxes.

Digital signage isn't ideal for targeted communication or even communications that you need to make sure your employees receive. Rather, this method is best for passive communications like motivational messages, company news, and employee recognition.

Uses and benefits

There are plenty of ways to use digital signage to improve the employee experience at your company. You can use digital signage to publish company news and updates so that your employees feel connected to the bigger picture. Similarly, you can use digital signage to hammer home important reminders. 

Most importantly, you can leverage digital signage to boost the employee experience by publishing shout-outs to employees who deserve recognition, messages designed to motivate and inspire your employees, or even something as simple as reels of attractive artwork designed to create a relaxing work environment. 

Examples: OptiSigns, Yodeck, ScreenCloud Digital Signage

9) Forums and community channels

One key function of employee communication platforms is promoting team bonding and engagement between co-workers. For this purpose, few tools are more beneficial than forums and community channels. 

Employees can use company forums and social media pages as a resource for finding information and seeking support, but they can also use them as a platform for simply socializing and getting to know one another better.

Uses and benefits

Segmenting forums and social networking profiles into different threads or profiles based on their topic allows you to use these community channels for multiple purposes. 

For example, you can create a forum with separate threads for work and social conversations so that employees have a place to go whether they are looking for advice or just looking to socialize. You can do the same thing by creating private social media pages for different topics and purposes. 

Examples: phpBB, MyBB, Vanilla Forums 

Redefine how your employees communicate with Pyn

Internal communications are much more effective when you use the right tools. As an all-in-one employee communication platform, Pyn offers everything organizations need to provide employees with targeted, personalized messages at scale. 

This includes employee journey mapping software for mapping out critical phases of the employee journey, AI-powered software for sending automated (yet personalized) messages, and powerful integrations with a wide variety of other employee communication tools.

To get started using Pyn to redefine how your employees communicate, sign up for a free Pyn demo today!