Boost HR Communication in the Workplace with SMS

Effective communication for human resources means getting your employees engaged and keeping important information in the forefront of their minds. With modern technology, such as SMS messaging, you can send communications that have a bigger impact on employees and result in less administration work for you.

Make Messages Easy to Process

Emails, meetings and phone calls all typically result in a wealth of information that employees will find hard to retain. Too wordy and employees will likely skim read, leading to a lot of missed content.

Texts are a lot shorter and force you to communicate in a much more direct way. You want to be clear and concise in order to help get your employees on board quickly with information they will retain. You can always include a link in your text to provide more detailed information.

Get Employees Engaged

A trick to really getting your employees’ attention will be in making them a part of the process. Engage your employees by allowing them to ask questions and participate in surveys.

You can establish automated responses for FAQs that your department regularly answers, such as when will payroll occur during the holidays or when is the open enrollment deadline. You can even set up your system to answer personalized questions, like how many vacation days an individual has left in their annual benefits package.

Use surveys to gain valuable feedback from your team and help them feel a sense of ownership of the company.

Impart Information Quickly

Texting is typically far faster than emailing, calling or meeting with employees. It won’t require you to set up a specific time for communicating because texting isn’t interruptive. A text takes just a few seconds to get from the sender into the hands (or pocket) of the recipients.

With over 98% of text messages being read, texting is the answer for last minute announcements that need to be made. You can let employees know about emergency closings, weather alert warnings, office power outages, date changes, policy changes, PSAs and more.

As an HR department, you will benefit from being able to quickly communicate with employees if the need arises.

Utilize Current Technology

Finally, it’s important to realize that text messaging isn’t a new technology that will fade away any time soon. Like email, texting has become a staple in the world for communicating on a personal and professional level.

Many businesses haven’t been fast to incorporate texting into the workplace because they were afraid phones may cause a distraction or that not all professionals would even have text messaging.

However, PEW Research Center has found that 95% of American adults have a cell phone. Not only does virtually everyone have access to texts, but professionals are using SMS to connect with peers, clients, customers and bosses regularly. Rather than be a distraction, cell phones have allowed professionals to shift their habits to a work/life integration that allows them to be available at nearly any time or place.

Integrating SMS into the workplace is a vital step in keeping with the communication expectations of upcoming generations. The sooner you get your workplace on board, the sooner your office will be able to communicate in a modern and effective way.

Author: Ken Rhie is the CEO of Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases. Mr. Rhie holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. He has over 30 years of experience in the software, internet, and mobile communications industries.