The idea of having a team dedicated to communicating with a company’s workforce isn’t new. Still, the last three years have intensified the need for an internal comms team as the workplace morphed from a single location to distributed locations, with employees spanning different cities, workplaces, and time zones.

Here are five EX trends based on the insight we’ve captured when listening to our customers, researching, and analyzing data, combined with a smidge of crystal-ball gazing.

A pause for reflection allows us so much room for growth. We get to celebrate wins, grieve the losses, and be intentional in our path forward. It’s no secret that the past few years have wreaked havoc on both our personal and professional lives. We’ve had worldwide crises back to back, seen or experienced an onslaught of layoffs, and weathered our way through difficulties beyond our wildest imaginations.

The best collaboration tools automate menial tasks and put everything teams need in one place. That improves the employee experience and collaboration in the workplace, helping teams feel empowered and engaged. That’s why the collaboration tools we’ve compiled here: They’ve also been widely adopted across many industries and locations, so you can be confident that they’ve proven themselves in the real world. Here are the best collaboration tools that made the cut.

One of the five key challenges that internal comms teams have to manage is a lack of employee engagement. When employees aren’t engaged, they don’t read company communications. If they don’t read your comms, you can’t reach them to improve employee engagement. It’s a vicious cycle that plays out again and again. How can dedicated comms teams break the cycle and improve internal communications?

As Boston Consulting Group (BCG) notes, because the deskless workforce must be physically present at a job during specific times, they often don’t have the benefits of flexible work hours and certainly aren’t offered remote options.

Savvy organizations know that this process starts with keeping the lines of communication open. And this is a two-way street. Oftentimes, communication is a top-down process where employees aren’t comfortable asking questions. However, with the right internal communications and employee experience strategy in place post-merger, companies can create a space where employees feel seen and heard. And this keeps employee burnout at bay, frustrations low, and contributes to a cohesive company culture.

Before we explore those options, here are some stats which reveal the true state of things as it relates to employee retention. Additionally, Workforce Institute’s 2021 Retention Report found that around two-thirds of employee departures could have been prevented. And in response to this employee exit, companies are switching up how they approach the workplace and work spaces, growing and enriching their employee experience.

The workplace looks different these days and so does the employee experience. Since 2019, we’ve seen remote work grow. In fact, between 2019 and 2021 the number of remote workers tripled. With workers at home, in the office, and on the road companies need to have targeted communication options that accommodate these diverse engagement needs. Technology is supposed to enhance communications, but sometimes it becomes its own monster.

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.