3 Reasons to Invest in an Employee Intranet

Why Invest in an Intranet?

Business leaders should expect a corporate intranet to deliver tangible value to their financial institution. One of the key areas of value that a corporate intranet can deliver on is employee engagement. How does employee engagement translate into a return on investment for financial institutions? By improving employee retention, and alignment, and recruitment.

Here are 3 reasons to invest in a company intranet:

Improved employee retention
Employee turnover is expensive.

• Almost 70% of organizations indicate staff turnover has a negative impact on their bottom line. 
• A Deloitte report found that the average cost to replace an employee is around $7,000.  Some SHRM models show that it can cost anywhere between 6 and 9 months of that employee’s salary, on average.
• The cost of lost productivity, which is estimated around $120,000 per employee.
• According to the most recent annual Emerging Workforce Study by Spherion Staffing, 21% of employees plan to leave their jobs in the next 3 months. And 29% plan to do so in the next 12 months.

If organizations can improve employee retention, they would naturally spend less on turnover costs such as employee recruitment, onboarding and training. If employees readily understood and were aligned with a company’s values, mission, strategy and objectives, they would be more focused, productive and engaged. And this could lead to increased operational efficiency, more effective teamwork and collaboration, and higher revenue and profit margins.

Cohesive employee alignment
Employee alignment with an organization’s goals and objectives connects them to your mission. When employees understand your FI’s long-term goals, they gain clarity on what to prioritize and how to make a difference. This sense of mission helps them perform their jobs better and feel more invested, committed, and accountable to their teammates.

Employee alignment supports and improves the employee experience.

• A Bersin by Deloitte study found organizations are 4 times more likely to rank in the top quartile of business outcomes when they make it easy for employees to set clear goals. Companies with aligned, high-performing employees are 2.2 times more likely to be top performers compared with the competition.
• An older SHRM article stated “Employee alignment is essential to effective performance and profitability. Alignment is the bridge between strategy and execution.” How profitably your organization performs depends greatly on how well aligned all your business elements are - from leadership to the organization, its jobs and the people.
• A Gallup Workplace Insights report recently cited that only 33% of global employees strongly agreed with the statement, “The mission and purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important."

By moving that ratio to 80% of employees, business units have realized a 51% reduction in absenteeism, a 64% drop in safety incidents and a 29% improvement in quality.

Stronger, more effective recruitment
It’s easy to push a company intranet program down on the priority list, thinking that there are bigger problems to tackle. Before you decide to settle for the status quo in this arena, let’s take a moment to discuss the risks of doing nothing. Think of it as an iceberg. You’re only seeing or addressing part of the problem. What lies beneath the surface may have a greater, more negative impact.

If your FI does nothing to improve employee retention, alignment, and communication, you stand the chance of losing your competitive edge. Making a concerted effort to build an authentic culture to attract, engage and retain your employees also translates into gains for recruitment.

According to a recent article , “Strong company cultures are magnets for employees, both prospective and current.” Therefore, any tool that helps support and sustain your company culture and its values can provide your company with a significant rcompetitive advantage. And in an increasingly cutthroat talent market, your financial institution needs all the advantage it can get.

Conclusion

By focusing your business strategy on employee engagement and aligning your intranet objectives with your business strategy, you should be able to measure the success of your intranet by how well you achieve your business objectives.

When we look at the successful outcomes an intranet has on businesses and organizations, it is easy to see how employee productivity, employee retention, and customer satisfaction can all be positively impacted by the tools an intranet can provide.