Surviving the Great Resignation: It’s all About Unified Communications and Connection

Has your enterprise been feeling the dramatic effects of “The Great Resignation”? Across the world and in every industry – especially in tech and healthcare – employees with key skill sets are leaving their jobs. Why? Some employees say they feel like cogs in the corporate machine, rather than valued participants driving the success of the company. For some, work/life balance is too far removed from their actual living experience. Others claim that they have no connection to the workplace. 

With such high turnover – and the difficulty in filling positions – CEOs must gain visibility into the why. Why are people leaving? Why aren’t people interested in working for your company? Why can’t you attract the talent you need to thrive? 

And then ask your employees – the ones who are staying – why. Conduct stay interviews. Do they stay for the compensation? The perks? The fair performance metrics? Training opportunities? Upward mobility? Do they feel valued? Do they feel connected to their workplace and peers – despite the transition to remote or hybrid work? Do they have the resources available to succeed?

Creating a Strong Workplace Culture with the Cs of Unified Communications

Does a high employee retention rate mean that employees feel connected to their peers? Are there clear communication channels that facilitate deep listening and responsive engagement from the top of the organization? 

Does a low retention rate mean that you have a stagnant workplace culture, where ideation and innovation remain in isolation? 

So how can you create a workplace culture where employees feel engaged, valued, where their work aligns with their key interest areas, and their contributions to the company drive results?

Don’t you wish there was an app for that? Although Apple has trademarked that phrase, its popularity highlights that people are looking for easy solutions to a wide range of personal and professional issues. 

The key to creating a strong workplace culture is communication. While not a singular app, one solution to facilitate open communication, collaborative workspaces, and real time engagement across your hybrid workforce is Unified Communications (UC). 

UCaaS can help you to humanize the virtual workplace.

When you use Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), the hosted, cloud-based platform is secured and managed by a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and can support everything your business and work culture needs - from team building and advanced training, to customer service interactions and application integration. 

UC is a not just a business telephone or contact center system, it is a powerful communications model that facilitates email, chat, video conferencing, audio conferencing, file shares, contact management, instant messaging, voicemail, and screen sharing. UC is also an interface for the centralized management of your existing communication apps. And all you need is an internet connection.

UCaaS for Collaboration

As the leading collaboration and communication platform, UCaaS integrates multiple applications, technologies, and tools on a single platform that powers hybrid workforces and enables employees to experience seamless, virtual collaboration. The ease of virtual meetings, voice, video, chat, and document sharing lends to open sharing of ideas, familiarity with leadership, comradery with teammates, and the confidence to seek constructive feedback on active projects.

End users have the same video and data sharing experience, regardless of work location, and that can build efficiencies and trust into the work environment. Employees can enjoy social interactions and build relationships with peers, and CEOs can enjoy improved retention metrics. 

UCaaS also offers safe transfer of data with data security and encryption built into the platform. Data accessibility is controlled through access privileges, so you can ensure that the right groups are working on the right projects.

UCaaS for Communication

As a secure, flexible, and full-featured communication infrastructure, UCaaS can facilitate clear voice and video conferencing where end-users can build a personal repertoire with teammates and clients. UCaaS makes it easier to put a face with a name despite locational differences, understand body language cues, and work to solve issues in real-time. The video platform can even provide an enterprise-level interface for team-building activities like remote happy hours, cooking demonstrations and karaoke. 

The ‘grace period’ of communication difficulties related to remote work has ended. Employees, customers, and clients expect that communication kinks have been eliminated in favor of permanent solutions for hybrid workforces.

UCaaS for Convenience

The goal is to have your entire organization using the same version of the same tools, at the same time. Imagine how much time is saved when everyone is on the same virtual page – working together in real-time and seeing progress across projects. 

UCaaS may be integrated with your existing networks, systems, enterprise software and CRM – on a single platform - to improve daily operations, reduce voice and video frustrations, share content, and scale to address fluctuations in data storage, file shares, and messaging capacity. 

UCaaS for Connection

UC is a great way to promote personal connections and build a strong in-office culture across your remote or hybrid workforce. When advice, idea sharing, quality instruction, learning opportunities, support, and positive feedback is just an internet connection away, employees will feel more invested in the organization. Positive video interactions are strong trust-building opportunities. When employees get the opportunity to meet face to face, chances are there will be less awkwardness due to constant voice and video connections.

UCaaS for Continuity

The “as a Service” UC model is an important element of business continuity planning. When disaster strikes, it is comforting to know that using the redundancy available with a resilient, cloud-based communication infrastructure will get you up and running faster. The implementation of UCaaS endpoint security, encryption, and data accessibility is especially important for remote employees using various personal devices for work purposes. 

UCaaS for Capacity

Organizations choose UCaaS for scalability. Considering the difficulty in finding and retaining talent, you can’t afford to waste time onboarding employees. With UCaaS, capacity issues will not impact the stable user experience across multiple devices. New employees can get to work faster and more efficiently. 

The responsibility for licensing issues, server capacity, rerouting calls, and maintenance of the digital communication platform rests with the MSP—thus, you are free to focus on strategic business projects within your organization.

UCaaS for Competencies

Wondering how UC can contribute to increased employee competencies? The National Institutes of Health defines competencies as “the knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors that contribute to individual and organizational performance.” Familiarity with UC tools can facilitate a culture of comradery, upskilling, reskilling, sharing experiences, and teaching moments. When everyone is using the same tools, seasoned employees may more easily mentor newer members of the team to give them the confidence they need to deliver meaningful work. 

Managers may more easily align work with their employees’ key interest areas and expertise. When interesting work and a collaborative environment is part of the employee experience, workers tend to be happier, feel more invested in the company, and can build a road map to advance their careers.

UCaaS for Cost Savings

Doesn’t everyone want advanced functionality without additional hardware purchases? UCaaS can reduce the IT team’s task-based workload and keep them engaged in high-value projects instead because adding new users requires little time and virtually no technical know-how. 

Managers are no longer subject to licensing, auditing, and billing headaches. UCaaS enables a productive, flexible work environment without the downside of phone lines, VoIP, multiple disparate communication applications and security issues.

UCaaS for Cloud Capabilities

Because UCaaS is a virtual office solution, hosted in the cloud, it offers a single, centralized point of control. With the increased capabilities of a cloud-based platform, you can integrate your network, systems, and applications and manage your communication channels. A secure internet connection is all that is required to enable your employees to immediately and securely interact with peers, data, applications, and workflows.

Security updates, patches, and upgrades may all be managed remotely to ensure consistent and secure communication and work capabilities.

TBC’s UCaaS Solution for Supporting a Thriving Workplace Culture

TBConsulting, a Managed Service Provider headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, has firsthand experience in delivering Unified Communications (UC) solutions to enhance employee engagement and customer service satisfaction. With our UC solutions, TBC handles all the configuration, application integration, deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and security updates - so you can focus on revenue-building projects. Our UC team will shoulder the burden of your communication infrastructure and continuously support the needs of your collaborative workspace. TBC works directly with your internet provider to minimize implementation complexities.

If you want to prioritize employee performance and support company growth and workplace culture with UCaaS, give TBC a call today. We feel your pain in trying to positively engage remote employees, and we would love to share our employee retention tips with you. We’ll show you how easy it is to communicate over the digital divide.