Gone are the days when the traditional workplace was occupied with employees during regular office hours due to the introduction and implementation of the Hybrid work model and remote working. Today’s working environment demands instantly connected and accessible platforms wherein employees can search the contact information of their peers to remotely connect and execute operational tasks despite geographies.
This is one of the reasons that makes the implementation of Employee directory software essential to a business. The main function of these tools is to store the names and contact information of all the employees within an establishment to facilitate cross-department collaboration and communication. Therefore, an employee directory that houses all employee information is essential to enable efficient communication and collaboration amongst employees when they are either working remotely or are following a hybrid work model.
However, if an employee directory tool isn’t integrated within the company’s technology stack, pulling up employee information by anyone within an organization becomes a hassle instead of a breeze. Let’s explore some challenges that an organization can face without the implementation of an Employee Directory software below.
Challenges of non-integration of employee directory software within a business:
Despite advancements in smartphone technology for a decade, mobile phones alone have not yet become an ideal solution for businesses for searching/accessing corporate contacts. Here are a few challenges:
- An employee contact needs to be added, removed, and updated manually every time someone joins, leaves, changes roles, or changes their phone numbers.
- Most employees don’t have all the pertinent information of other employees such as phone number, office number, or email address.
- There are times when employees need to search for a phone number on the company’s portal based on a job title since they don’t have access to the full name of the person for whom they are looking for.
- Even after leaving the company, ex-employees retain all the contact information of colleagues, which is sensitive information an organization would opt not to share.
- Any employee who newly joined the company should be able to start working towards their designated responsibility with its team members rather than manually spending time to save the contact information of the team, peers, and managers he/she will be working with.
Benefits of integrating employee directory software within a business:
At present, numerous companies try to address the employee directory concerns with outdated methods such as employees browsing the “Contact Pages/Team Page,” of the organization’s website or portals but these pages tend to be out-of-date most of the time.
Are there any solutions to the problems outlined above? The answer is yes. There are numerous employee directory software services available in the market such as the NuovoTeam walkie-talkie app, Bitrix24, Axero, LeaveBoard, etc., facilitating organizations with the ability to store/share employee contact information within an organization in real-time.
An employee directory software can provide several benefits to organizations, such as:
- Employees can access all their peer’s contact data quickly and easily from a comprehensive dashboard of the software.
- Information pertaining to all employees is always up-to-date in the Employee Directory Software since it is an automated tool for the Human Resource department (HR).
- Employees can quickly conduct advanced searches of their peers not just by name, but also by location, department, job title, or email address.
- Due to its high security, if an employee resigns/formally leaves an organization, his/her user credentials are removed from the employee directory portal and they lose access to all information contained in the corporate directory automatically.
What are the benefits for businesses to use business directory software?
1. Improve the process of finding employee contact information
According to Buffer’s 2021 State of Remote Work survey, 16% of respondents said they felt isolated in the digital workplace, and another 16% reported communication and collaboration issues.
This problem can be resolved by simplifying the procedure of how colleagues can get in touch with one another and collaborate. Implementing an Employee directory software can empower the employees to access the phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, and locations of their colleagues working in the establishment right at their fingertips. Today, employees won’t even need to email their colleagues anymore to get connected across departments; a searchable database gives them secure access to every colleague’s contact information.
2. Store all of your employee data in one location
Numerous advanced employee directory tools available in the market offer features over and above just simplifying the searching or storing of employee data within an organization. They also have tabs to create personal touchpoints between colleagues by sharing detailed employee profiles such as hobbies, social media accounts, birthdays, and milestones apart from just contact numbers and email ids.
Additionally, modern-day employee directory software also hosts several other information about an employee within an establishment, such as employee engagement metrics, learning and development statistics, demographics, skill proficiency data of individual employees, etc.
3. Advanced searching filters for new-joiners in an organization
With an Employee Directory software, an employee can also search for contact info about other employees by filtering out components such as name, office location, skillset, or organizational structure. New hires who may have been onboarded remotely and have not met their coworkers yet will find this feature especially helpful. There are even corporate directory software packages that offer the functionality of an org chart so that employees can see how connections within the organization are interconnected based on the hierarchy of designations too.
4. Mobile-friendly interfaces
In an estimate, employees in an organization with smartphones check their phones in the ballpark of 150 times per day. As a consequence, it is imperative to select a holistic solution that has both an app interface as well a desktop version that will make employee directory management as easy as possible for employees.
Luckily, most vendors provide in-depth mobile experiences in addition to their desktop experiences. By having access to an employee directory on their phones, remote or on-field workers can search and find on-site employee information with ease and wherever their job takes them. There are in-app texting capabilities as well in most apps that further streamline the internal communication process.
5. Heightened employee engagement
In addition to storing and managing the employee directories in an establishment, modern employee directory software also offers engagement features that foster a sense of belonging among employees. Considering that engaged employees generate 17 percent more productivity, it becomes imperative to have such functionality.
63% of employees who receive frequent recognition are unlikely to look for a new job in the next 3 to 6 months, according to a survey conducted by Surveymonkey and Bonus.ly. It costs businesses less and takes more effort to replace an employee when they stay with the organization for long, thereby making the smallest features as these become more significant.
In closing lines…
Organizations can boost their employee engagement and collaboration with the implementation of an employee directory solution whilst also creating an atmosphere of community and communication.
Instead of switching several applications for employee engagement and collaboration, organizations can choose to invest in a holistic solution like NuovoTeam Push-to-talk application that not only facilitates instant push-to-talk among employees across the organization but also provides the functionality of a unified corporate directory wherein the mobile industry verticals can store/manage unified employee contact information under a single directory.
Anyone associated with the organization can gain access to employee information to facilitate instant push-to-talk communication and collaborate as and when required. In addition, all the new business contacts are automatically synchronized into the unified corporate directory straight from the phonebook, which makes this solution even more useful to implement.
Author Bio:
Ayush Maskara is a Content Writer at NuovoTeam– a Push-to-Talk App. A media science graduate, a photographer, a fiction author, a storyteller, a fiction manuscript editor, and an avid self-help reader, Ayush has been penning the creative wisdom for six years and have stepped into the IT domain for further exploration and staying awake with technological trends across the globe.
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