Product Deep Dive | Community

Imagine a typical day for your employees. The manager rushes in to open the restaurant on a Friday afternoon for a completely booked night. They head to the back with a fresh cup of coffee in hand to start to prepare for the day. As they are clocking in and looking to see who is scheduled, they receive a text from two workers calling out. Uh-oh. A completely booked night and down two people? They need to find coverage ASAP. The restaurant is already starting to get busy, so the manager heads to the floor to assist with the concern of finding coverage top of mind. They chat with the waitstaff about a plan, but don’t have a great way to reach out to their team. They need to find a way to quicky and efficiently reach all employees to see who can work last minute. But how can they do that?

With many companies navigating toward a hybrid work environment, including those that were historically in-person, employees are now spread across multiple locations and even around the world. The experiences that employees once had, like team meetings and human connection, need to be digital and can be hard to replicate. Paylocity’s Community, an online social collaboration hub that connects employees to each other, leadership, and their work, helps employees feel connected, even when they aren't face to face. With the ability to broadcast important announcements, chat and share files via groups, and more, you can easily bridge the gap between on-site and remote workers. Everyone will stay connected and informed of critical updates, but most importantly, they'll feel like part of the work community.

Unite Your Company to Drive Efficiency and Engagement

As an integrated part of the Paylocity platform, Community aims to strengthen communication, collaboration, and connection for your company. A core way Community helps you achieve this is through groups: Ask an Expert, discussion, team, and special interest.

Promote Efficiency

Discussion groups allow employees to stay up to date on initiatives across teams, levels, and locations. You can even create Ask an Expert Groups, where employees have a space to pose questions to designated subject matter experts. For example, if an employee is having computer issues or needs help signing up for their benefits enrollment, experts on each of these topics can view, manage, and answer questions from an intuitive dashboard. Other members of the group can see and comment on the posts and feel comfortable asking questions while learning from their peers.

Improve Team Productivity and Collaboration

Team groups are automatically created for supervisors and their teams to help them connect on important daily work updates, questions, and more. Make onboarding fun by welcoming new employees to the team with an automated icebreaker question!

Connect on Common Interests

Groups don’t always have to be work related. Create fun groups like “Dad Jokes” so employees can post their favorite one and have a little comedic relief on their breaks. You can also create professional groups such as “career growth and development” to unite similar minded people who want to learn about this topic. Diversity and inclusion are big topics right now – start a conversation! You can even view employees' social profiles. The two new hires that started on the sales floor enjoy reading just like you? Great! Create a group, introduce yourself, and possibly start a book club. Whether you’re working at your desk or from your phone via the mobile app – the opportunities for connection are endless.

Streamline Communication and Broadcasts to Keep Employees Informed

Improve culture and connection by enabling leaders to post company-wide announcements. Even lighten your daily workload and let Paylocity create a starting point for communication by using our pre-made announcement templates. Automate your communication process all while driving engagement with templates such as welcome announcements, tax season reminders, employee engagement polls, and more. Proactively schedule quarterly announcements like performance review reminders to post on a specific date. Moderate content by disabling comments and limit audiences and contributors on certain announcements if you choose. You can even make announcements more personal and efficient by uploading a file, image, or video to clearly get your message across. Create consistency, drive employee engagement, and keep employees informed, all while saving time in your day.

Accommodate The Busy Lives of On-The-Go Employees

With most companies moving into a hybrid work environment, it's important to keep up to date with the demands of your workers. Let’s say you have employees working in a warehouse who rely on their phones for work questions and updates. Community has mobile features that allow for post sharing and group creation making it simple to stay connected and engaged. Easily create a team group to share files and co-edit in real-time, simplifying collaboration on things such as team meeting agendas – regardless of your work location.

Getting Started Is Simple – for Employees and for You

Nervous about your employees using and adopting Community features? We’ve got that covered too. Between pre-made templates, automatically created groups, and more, taking the first step is easy. There’s even an employee walk through so when employees access Community for the first time, they’re shown key features to help get them started—without hand holding from HR or supervisors.

If you’re already a Paylocity client, visit the Product Training Catalog, or PEAK for more details.