Peer relationships at work impact significantly on the workplace experience, as well as opening up opportunities for learning and developing and creating a sense of belonging and workplace community, all of which are known to influence an employee’s tendency to remain loyal to an organisation.
Peers share a common experience that they can use in their work. Peer to peer engagement, as well as peer to peer learning and recognition, are all popular strategies that are used across a huge variety of businesses and industries.
The basis of any peer to peer strategy lies in engaging everyone in collaborative activities that stimulate a more comfortable, connected and productive working environment.
Supporting peer to peer engagement and learning is a very powerful tactic. Employees can teach, learn and feed off each other in all sorts of ways, whilst developing enhanced levels of communication that offer benefits organisation wide.
The importance of peer to peer engagement and creating a sense of workplace community
The way employees engage with each other on an everyday basis can directly influence the productivity of a company and the way it presents itself to its audiences.
An engaged workforce is a strong workforce. One that’s committed to upholding the values and growth goals of its employer.
But engagement isn’t just about management making an effort to get on and connect with its teams, or supervisors providing feedback to team members. Those teams need to be connected amongst themselves, because it is at ground level that the things that matter within a company actually happen.
It’s where experiences are shared. Where people support and understand each other, teach each other and spur each other on.
Peer to peer recognition matters a lot to employee engagement because it:
- Establishes a more collaborative and empathetic working environment
- Helps individuals feel more confident, because they can ask people on their own level for advice without feeling intimidated
- Helps everyone gain a sense of belonging
- Brings every team member together, including those who often feel out of the loop, such as reception staff and remote workers
- Enhances team morale by providing an accessible communication network
- Instils a positive team dynamic where everyday encouragement is part and parcel of workplace life
- Improves job satisfaction where people feel they have helped their co-workers meaningfully
- Boosts employee retention by providing more frequent feedback to help everyone better find their way around their regular tasks.
Peer to peer engagement programs can also increase profits and return on investment, according to Gallup research, which shows that an engaged workforce enjoys a 21% increase in profits.
How to create a sense of workplace community using an employee engagement app?
There are several ways in which employers can create a strong workplace community with the use of smart building technology.
Make desk bookings easier with a streamlined desk booking system
Peer to peer engagement is never going to work at its best unless peers can be seated near one another.
In workspaces that champion flexible working and hot desking with informal seating arrangements, it can be tricky and sometimes frustrating for workers to try to find workstations in optimum spaces, close to their colleagues so they’re able to feed off them and collaborate. Especially if they are relying on a manual desk booking system.
The good news is that smart building technology supports smart desk bookings. Designed to streamline space allocation, a smart desk booking system makes life so much easier for admin staff, as well as a lot less frustrating for the employees who need to book suitable space near to their peers.
An employee engagement app allows users to make their own desk bookings – and book meeting rooms too – via their personal smartphone. The app allows them to locate the colleagues they want to work with, as well as store desk and meeting space preferences to make future bookings more streamlined.
Boost the social factor with an employee engagement app
It’s not easy connecting on a social level when teams are split across different workspaces, which is something that is so commonplace now so many of us are engrossed in the concept of hybrid working. But peer to peer engagement remains important regardless of the working model.
There are various ways to create a sense of community at work, from organising events, to sharing local offers and rewards. The good thing is that we can now harness the power of smart building technology and the employee engagement app to make all of this possible.
Whilst smart building technologies will vary in their capabilities, there are a few smart building apps that have built-in smart office community features, such as social walls brimming with newsfeed style local events, special offers and workplace community chat forums, all available at the tap of a simple-to-use employee engagement app.
Some also feature in-app messaging and call tools, allowing you to access a directory of other members to build your peer network.
As well as connecting peers within an organisation, the great thing about an employee engagement app is that it can also bring people together from different companies housed within the same building. Peer to peer engagement can work both ways, learning from people within your own organisation, as well as branching out to gain insights from those outside of it with whom you share a building and local environment.
How does Smart Spaces help create a sense of workplace community?
Smart Spaces is a cloud-based platform that makes use of internet-connected sensors to manage and automate a host of workplace activities.
As well as functioning as a workplace engagement app where users can share latest news and community events and stay up to date with local and workplace life, Smart Spaces also features a desk booking system with the power to intelligently automate desk and meeting room bookings, so that peers can be brought together seamlessly.
To learn more about how Smart Spaces can help you create a sense of workplace community, you are welcome to request a free demo or get in touch.
