Meaningfully engaging employees and driving productivity - especially when so many are working remotely or are deskless – are two of the greatest workplace challenges of our time.
Today, leaders are searching for a competitive advantage to recruit, retain, and engage employees. Why?
Employee turnover remains an organisation’s number one cost.
Employee health and wellbeing is now a top strategic priority.
When employees are effectively informed and engaged in two-way conversations each day, they contribute at their full potential – generating real business results.
The Productivity Challenge
Productivity is another significant hurdle. With inflation rising and the cost of doing business escalating, the only way to drive profit is to become more efficient. Few organisations have cracked this yet, but our observations show that technology is the key to unlocking productivity.
If organisations can remove time spent on non-value-add activities and enable employees to focus on meaningful, customer-centric work, profits accelerate.
The Tech Transforming Engagement and Productivity
The digital employee experience evolved rapidly during the pandemic, with organisations adopting solutions that were most accessible – based on cost, delivery time, and functionality – to keep employees connected.
Since then, the market for employee experience platforms has expanded dramatically, with new entrants, mergers, and enhanced product capabilities.
In the employee communication app space, leading organisations such as Aldi, Adidas, Nike, Bupa, Bunnings, Kmart Group, Officeworks, Country Road, NAB, and TWE have all procured platforms as part of their tech stack.
What These Platforms Offer
The employee communication app market includes vendors delivering:
Intranet solutions
Frontline employee applications
Workforce experience platforms
Social and community applications
Comprehensive omni-channel solutions enabling Corporate Communication leaders to plan, create, coordinate, and distribute internal communications across the workforce – or target specific audiences.
Although Communication leaders are key users, we consistently see Marketing, HR, and Operations leaders advocating for these apps to reach frontline workers faster, build engagement, drive culture, and unlock productivity. Their needs typically include:
Operational communication: shift management, process updates, safety alerts, merchandising rollouts, and best-practice sharing.
Organisational communication: culture-building, EVP, recognition programs, and brand alignment.
Training: onboarding, customer service, professional development, certifications.
Personal benefits: viewing payslips, requesting leave, accessing perks.
What Makes a Platform In-Demand?
The most sought-after platforms are:
Consumer-grade for ease of use
Extensible through integrations
Scalable to meet organisational needs
Governance-ready with appropriate access controls
Analytics-driven for actionable insights
Designed to foster meaningful connections, creating a happier, more productive workplace.
