In the year 1800, in a revolutionary move away from corporal punishment in the workplace, Robert Owen introduced the ‘Silent Monitor,’ a wooden block with a different color on each of its four sides that could indicate employee behavior on a scale from bad to excellent. The field of performance management continues to evolve by degrees since, far from the miserable work conditions of the industrial revolution, but not yet attaining an enlightened age of business.

Like it or not, employee opinions of your company culture are on public display and they matter. If your EX and general workplace culture earn high ratings, that’s great news. But if there are trouble spots showing average ratings (or worse), it will give top talent pause. And this is true even if your job posting is amazing. In fact, some 55% of workers say that negative reviews stop them from applying for a job entirely. They won’t even give you a chance to provide perspective.

I started to think about why I’m such a fan of hers. And how, for some reason, she truly adds to my life with her words, her music, and her voice. I think as employee experience leaders we actually have a lot to learn from T. Swift.

Does your intranet have everything but the kitchen sink? There’s usually lots of extra baggage weighing down many internal communications (IC) teams and their intranets, complicating processes and making relevant information impossible to find. A purpose-built, custom intranet streamlines these processes by deconstructing exhaustive platforms, leaving behind only what’s essential for employees to flourish. And it all starts with identifying needs.

Siloed systems are, by nature, isolated from other departments, resulting in mass miscommunication. Some of the issues that arise include: For example, if your marketing team can’t access your sales information, then they’re only getting part of the picture–and this incomplete data leads to lost time and money. And then, that same marketing team may formulate data differently than the sales team, and that’s where errors occur.

Although an intranet should make your job easier, many intranets become a dumping ground for outdated content––one that employees loathe navigating. Let’s explore intranet challenges and offer some innovative and practical tools that will have your internal communications (IC) team acting like air traffic control and your intranet a hub of activity where all intel is timely, useful and intuitive to navigate.

Whether you’re on the receiving end or have the unenviable task of delivering bad news to employees, the stress and emotions surrounding it can be overwhelming. Word of large-scale layoffs in the tech sector filled our social media and newsfeeds this week.

Carolyn Clark, VP of Employee Experience and Transformation, described how she had implemented an intranet for 20,000 employees at Yahoo that was, to say the least, not easy. She left the company in 2018, looking for a change. And as though on cue, she received a message on LinkedIn from Dhiraj Sharma, the CEO of Simpplr.

In the past 18 months, we’ve gone through a major transformation and growth, evolving from an intranet software company to a unified AI-powered employee experience platform company. We’ve focused on building a platform where employees can flourish, and feel connected, supported, and included. Today, we’re introducing our first brand evolution since our beginning. Our new brand reflects the heart of why we do what we do every day — people.

According to Gartner, a staggering “91% of HR Leaders are concerned about employee turnover in the immediate future.” With recent changes to the labor market — we’re looking at you Covid-19 and The Great Resignation — this statistic isn’t surprising. What’s more surprising is that employee retention isn’t as tough to improve as you might think.