There’s a direct correlation between your employees feeling happy and engaged and their productivity. In fact, a study from economists at the University of Warwick found that happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity. The bad news? Only 13% of employees are engaged at work, according to Gallup, costing US companies roughly $500 billion annually.

Think the solution is just giving them more money? Think again — 36% of employees would give up $5,000 a year in salary to be happier at work.

One of the key pieces to boosting engagement and productivity among your employees is giving them the right tools. How do you encourage richer collaboration and innovation within your company without the right tools in place to foster these interactions? The solution: an Employee Community that gives all of your employees instant access to all of the experts, information, and apps they need to get the job done from anywhere. Your employees will book less meetings (31% decrease) and receive less emails (31% decrease). What could your employees do with more time to spend actually working and innovating, rather than just talking about working and innovating?  

Here are ten of the top steps to making your employees more productive with Employee Community.  

1. Get employees the right answers faster

With Employee Community your employees are just one step away from experts and information, no matter where in the world they are. You can use @mentions within the community to loop experts into key sales or service conversations. Each employee’s individual profile details their job title and responsibilities, so finding the right person is easier than ever. The most relevant articles and answers are instantly delivered based on specific search queries. Your salespeople and customer service reps won’t always have all the answers, but with Employee Community they’re just a click away.

2. Promote richer collaboration and innovation

Groups provide structure to discussion and activity across your organization. Create a group for your team, an upcoming event, a new account or campaign, or a new idea. Within the group employees can share files and account records, integrate video, as well as set unique privacy settings. Employees can also access all information about any subject, all in one place, with Topics. Auto-generated topic pages collect discussions, files, groups, and experts onto a single page so that all relevant information is conveniently organized and accessible.

3. Keep files in the flow of business

Salesforce Files places files where employees need them most — in project groups or attached to account records, marketing campaigns, or service cases. Employees are more productive in the way they sell, service, market, and innovate because they always have the files and information they need — including from third-party repositories. With Files Connect, employees can quickly connect files located in SharePoint to their business processes in Salesforce — and even search across all of these repositories with a single command. Enable employees to find the right file the first time — no digging required.

4. Get them real-time updates from anywhere

Within Employee Community you can follow high-value deals and collaborate with your team, all in the context of your opportunity and account records. Salesforce Files Sync ensures that employees stay in lockstep with their teams on all of their devices, no matter where they are. Everyone works off of the most recent, accurate information and makes decisions based on the right information.

5. Improve HR support for every employee

Treat employees like you would your best customers with a centralized self-service community. Deflect service calls by guiding employees to up-to-date knowledge articles and FAQs, which are instantly suggested based on each employee’s specific questions. Create a central hub to access and updates documents like benefits information, as well as a ticket management system where employees can create, track, and manage service tickets directly within the community.

6. Make sure they start off right with faster onboarding

By bringing all training documentations, content, and FAQs into a one-stop-shop Employee Community, new hires can focus on getting up to speed and productive quicker, not trying to hunt down the right answer to their basic questions. You can also integrate learning management systems or modules in Employee Community for consistent and effective training. Additionally, when new users join the community, Employee Community automatically suggests recommendations for people, groups, files, and records to follow so they can start using the community from day one.

7. Make giving and getting recognition easy

Give employees a sounding board to share their team’s accomplishments, identify, and endorse peers as experts and influencers, and give employees a space to display their certifications. Boost engagement within the community by introducing gamification that includes scoring systems and ranks for participation. Publicly recognize employees for a job well done by using fun customizable badges. Happy employees are productive employees, so make it easy to congratulate your workers on a job well done.

8. Access everything with one login

Provide a seamless launch point to all of your business apps (including third-party apps) with single sign-on, to increase productivity and streamline access to all the apps and resources employees use every day.

9. Keep it mobile-first

Your employees are exceedingly mobile-first, and your business systems, apps, and processes need to be, too. With a mobile-first community, your employees can collaborate anywhere, from any device. Access the community through the Salesforce1 Mobile App or from any mobile browser with a rich, device-responsive mobile experience.

10. Make trust a priority

Get even your most security-minded employees on board with a community by choosing a provider that prioritizes trust first. The Salesforce Lightning Platform is trusted by customers worldwide to keep their most critical data secure. That’s because Salesforce uses some of the most advanced technology for Internet security available today — including the technology we use to power Employee Community.

You’re constantly striving to provide a more engaging, integrated experience for your customers, why aren’t you doing the same for your employees? Employee Community enables your workforce to get more done with all of the realtime information they need in the palm of their hand. With more engaged, empowered employees, your company will move faster than ever before.

Check out a demo of Employee Community and how to increase employee engagement with a community. Watch the recording of the webinar!