Employee Engagement with Marketing Cloud

Before the ball dropped on the new decade and a global pandemic inserted itself into our personal and professional lives, experts were predicting big changes for organizations in 2020. For most of 2020, employees have been working virtually, but now they are starting to re-enter their offices. And, just like our customers, employees are an audience that needs to be engaged with day in and day out. 

This is where the capabilities of Marketing Cloud can align Marketing, Human Resources, Recruitment, and Operations, while also creating a competitive advantage within the marketplace for the most important target market an organization can engage with: their own employees. Here are some things to consider when looking to increase employee engagement with Marketing Cloud.
 

Understand the Employee Experience

Much like mapping out the customer experience for those who interact with your brand, mapping the employee experience can be extremely helpful when working to increase employee engagement. Looking at the different stages such as recruiting, onboarding, communications, recognition, learning, and milestones can highlight where immediate impacts can be made to positively impact employee engagement. 

Recruitment and Onboarding

Potential employees are coming into the job search armed with more information than ever before about your organization and your competitors. According to a 2019 Harris Poll, 68 percent of employees believe their experience as a job candidate reflects how the company treats the people who work there. 

Recruitment is often the first interaction a potential employee has with the organization, so ensuring that HR technologies such as Workday and Peoplesoft are integrated can ensure it is an engaging one. Updates on candidates and notifications to applicants, hiring managers, and leadership can flow through Marketing Cloud in an automated fashion. Integrating an organization's website or candidate portal can also help solidify the employee experience.  

The onboarding experience can also be greatly impacted with Marketing Cloud. New employees can be nurtured the same way prospects are — with journeys focused around preparing new employees for their first day, educating them about the company, and helping them learn the ropes of their job. 

Milestones and Recognition

An organization's culture is what sets it apart within the market. It also determines the overall values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social environment of the company. Those organizational values should be tied to the behaviors that employees demonstrate day in and day out. That is why integrating employee recognition within Marketing Cloud can be highly effective.

Utilizing Cloud Pages as a place for employees to find and recognize fellow employees based on organizational values is a great way to maining high employee engagement. These notifications can be sent out to the respective employees and even alert their managers of recognition, allowing visibility into their team’s interactions. 

Acknowledging an employee’s length of service is also a great way to increase employee morale. With Marketing Cloud, data from multiple sources can be integrated, and campaigns to employees based on their hire date can be implemented through Journey Builder to recognize them. 

Omni-Channel Engagement

Much like customers, employees are engaging internally on multiple channels and devices. Utilizing Marketing Cloud for employee campaigns allows segmentation and enables employees to engage with messages via their preferred channel. From email, to internal applications, and even SMS, leveraging Marketing Cloud to handle communications across platforms helps drive engagement. Custom preference centers specific to the internal organization empowers employees to choose how they would like to be communicated to. This is not only important for communicating general information, but also for instances when emergencies or critical situations arise that require immediate awareness internally. Using Marketing Cloud to deliver these messages via preferred channels ensures the organization is informed if an unforeseen emergency arises. 

The workplace is evolving in many ways. By leveraging Marketing Cloud, companies can stay connected and engaged with their employees, which not only positively impacts them in numerous ways, but also creates a better culture and competitive advantage for the organization.