Connected, committed and collaborative- How an engaged workforce drives success
                     Connected, committed and collaborative: 
How an engaged workforce drives success
Transform your business with HCL Connections 
1.  Employee engagement 
2. Focus on productivity 
3. Promote participation 
4. Strengthen the power of people
5. Engage to grow your business 
Are your employees truly 
engaged with their work?
In the United States, only 33 percent of can span all of the different departments, 
employees are engaged in their job.1 types of workers and preferences 
Engagement is essential for attaining major involved? And with the massive scale and 
organizational goals and for achieving the rapidly changing nature of content today, 
thousands of daily successes that add up how do you keep track of it and make it 
to positive business outcomes for your accessible to employees? 
company. Engaged employees are absent Technolgy is becoming very sophisticated, 
less often, make fewer mistakes and have but often business productivity levels 
lower turnover rates. All of that leads to aren’t keeping up. As organizations, 
higher productivity, improved safety and we don’t always adapt our processes 
greater customer satisfaction. — including internal communication 
However, increasing the level of processes — to take advantage of  
engagement and collaboration in an new technologies, resulting in a 
organization is no trivial matter. How do productivity lag and lost opportunities  
you create an employee environment for to improve efficiency. 
engagement, productivity and growth that 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 2
What’s more, existing employee communication 
and collaboration solutions often miss the mark, 
creating a variety of problems. 
Disconnected information: Employees time unnecessarily creating new materials Time-consuming implementation: 
must navigate to too many places to find because they don’t know that it has already Deploying new platforms for intranet 
news and important information. New HR been created and shared by someone else. communication can be complex and costly. 
policies, changes in strategic direction, sales Complicated processes: Authoring content Time-consuming setup and customization 
numbers, updates from local teams—all are can involve complex, multistep processes, processes discourage employees from 
created and shared in different ways and in requiring that anyone who wants to author adopting new tools, sending them back 
multiple places. content be trained on the systems involved. to their “old ways” of email, unsupported 
Generic, irrelevant or duplicate content: Sharing information and participating messaging apps or siloed content stores. 
Good content can become buried under in conversations take place on separate Without a solid understanding of how to 
inaccurate or outdated content. Employees systems, and mobile workers are often left use the available features, workers will fail 
often end up with competing versions of out, unable to access or update information to see the value of the platform — or why 
information and don’t know which to trust, quickly or while in the field. they should use it. 
or they find out-of-date content and don’t 
realize there is updated information posted Do any of these sound familiar? 
elsewhere. And when workers can’t find 
the content they need, they may waste 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 3
It’s time to operate  If you have these types of barriers in your organization, you need to rethink your internal information-distribution processes. It’s 
by the new rules time to operate by the new rules, not the old ones. And the new rules have a key element in common: engaged employees. 
Old way: Company is a hierarchy, with hierarchical Old way: Employees become “leaders”  Old way: Organizational structure based  
decision rights, structure and leadership progression. through promotion. on business role with functional leaders  
New way: Company is an agile network, New way: Employees gain and nurture  and global task groups. 
empowered by team leaders and fueled  followers to grow networks and influence. New way: Organizational structure based on  
by collaboration and knowledge-sharing. work and projects, with teams focused on 
products, customers and services. 
Old way: Employee “self-service” tools consist  
Old way: Managers lead by direction and  of piecemeal technologies focused mostly on  
employees advance through defined tiers. HR transactions and basic reports. Old way: Culture is mentioned on the company 
New way: Managers lead by orchestrating  New way: The employee engagement platform website, but not defined, pervasive or measured  
people, knowledge and tools; employees  is strategically designed; mobile-friendly; and for success. 
advance through multifunctional experiences  includes applications, role-based content and New way: Company uses tools and behaviors 
and leadership opportunities. ongoing communications to support, inform  to align and improve organizational culture by 
and inspire workers in all roles and locations. making information and management access  
easily available during changes, M&A activities 
and other major initiatives. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 4
Everything employees  
need to be productive —  
all in one place
Companies are aware that improved What does it take to be successful in  
employee engagement is an urgent your employee engagement efforts?  
requirement, but acting on that  You need an all-inclusive, highly 
requirement isn’t always easy. functional, easily customized solution that 
In a recent study, 79 percent combines information-sharing capabilities 
with rich collaboration tools on a single 
of executives surveyed named 
platform. You should be able to extend 
“employee experience” as very 
those capabilities to core business 
important or important, but only processes using open application 
22 percent reported that their programming interfaces (APIs). And the 
companies were excellent at  solution should provide a full complement 
building a differentiated  of features without requiring additional 
employee experience.2 software or hardware. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 5
Employee engagement:  
What is it? 
Top tip
In the digital age, engagement means internal 
collaboration, digital/social empowerment and 
advocacy by employees. Look for a solution that creates a single point 
of truth for the entire company, so employees 
Employees share best practices and develop 
relationships across departments and geographies. don’t have to spend time and energy moving 
among platforms to communicate and 
The company works to reduce the communications 
distance between leaders and employees. collaborate. No more searching multiple 
websites, posting redundant updates or 
Individuals are empowered to use digital and  questioning which site has the most accurate 
social channels as part of their existing job. 
information. The goal is to enable confident 
Employees amplify company initiatives such as decisions with a single digital workplace 
sustainability, innovation or new products on their that helps data stay authentic, relevant and 
social media accounts. referable whenever needed. 
Workers are more likely to endorse the company  
as a great place to work and refer job opportunities. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 6
Must-haves for a 
successful employee 
engagement solution Top tip
Today’s workforce is more digital, automation-
savvy and social media–proficient than ever. At 
A single destination for both internal communications and enterprise collaboration 
the same time, business expectations, needs 
One content store for all: no content fragmentation across multiple sites and demands are evolving at light speed. While 
Open APIs to extend capabilities to core business processes some view this as a daunting challenge, you 
can turn it into an opportunity by deploying a 
Mobile access and rich media support 
powerful, employee-focused communications 
Simple to personalize and collaboration platform with tools that will 
Content authoring and sharing features integrated into activity streams sustain their value over time. 
 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 7
Promote participation with HCL 
Connections Engagement Center
Get the engagement your organization and Connections then extends these capabilities It provides a single source of truth for 
employees need with HCL Connections, a with open APIs so you can easily and content, documents and news, which 
leading enterprise social software platform, quickly integrate them directly with other facilitates user adoption and helps take 
and HCL Connections Engagement Center, business applications, including Java the pain out of effective information 
a simple add-on for your Connections applications. sharing and communication. 
implementation. 3 differences that set HCL Connections Learn more at:  
HCL Connections starts with end-to-end Engagement Center apart from other hcltechsw.com/products/connections
social capabilities such as communities, information-sharing solutions 
rich profiles, audio and video chat, file It combines an intranet and extranet 
sharing, blogs, wikis, forums and activities. designed for ease of use on top of 
Furthermore, it integrates online  a collaborative engagement and 
document collaboration and social  communication platform. 
content management with essential 
It is an extremely customizable solution 
everyday collaboration tools: email, 
that can be tailored to industry- and 
calendars and contacts. 
company- specific needs. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 8
Connected, committed 
and collaborative: How 
an engaged workforce 
drives success 
Connections Engagement Center makes With a familiar interface and no steep 
all of these capabilities accessible and learning curve to hamper their use, 
available to your entire workforce. Use employees can quickly find what 
it to create landing pages that assemble they need, act on that information, 
content from Connections and elsewhere in communicate with upper-level 
a simplified, web-like user experience. management and help their team  
build forward momentum. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 9
Keeping  Unlike many content management systems, HCL Connections 
it simple Engagement Center is simple for even occasional content creators. 
Any employee can create a blog post or edit a wiki page “After just 90 minutes of training 
without special training. with our department managers, 
they had all the skills they 
Line-of-business (LOB) managers can set up a needed to use HCL Connections 
departmental web page with minimal training. Engagement Center to create 
and maintain landing pages — 
Users can easily create both internal and external pages. even those who didn’t have a 
background in IT!” 
A mobile interface supports employees on the go. 
Alexander Ramseger,  
Head of business applications and collaboration  
Berge & Meer
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 10
Engage
Setup is simple: just point to your 
existing HCL Connections installation 
and construct company-wide or 
departmental home pages with drag-
and-drop ease. Attractive pages quickly 
entice users by drawing attention to 
important or new content. Social features 
and employee profiles are associated 
directly with articles and posts to 
encourage comments, sharing and 
further conversation. Anyone can author 
content and then automatically publish 
and promote it through HCL Connections 
Engagement Center. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 11
Connect
Personalized content 
A personalized interface enables 
employees to get connected and 
stay involved by aggregating all the 
tailored content they need. The solution 
enables department heads, internal 
communication teams and executives 
to deliver relevant information to each 
employee by business unit, location, 
region, role and other factors. Remote Targeted content
workers have the same access to the 
latest news and updates as everyone else, 
making them feel like part of the team. 
Attribute-based content 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 12
Succeed
A single content repository simplifies 
content creation for all with easy access, 
authoring and sharing. Navigation with 
links to landing pages from business units, 
service units, teams and projects gives 
employees access to the information they 
need to excel at their jobs. And you can 
extend functionality by bringing in other 
existing content and apps. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 13
Strengthen the power 
of your people 
Working in teams is becoming the norm Senior managers know that to be effective, their 
in many organizations, and building and communications can’t look and feel like anonymous 
supporting teams is important for ongoing corporate announcements. HCL Connections Engagement 
success. Finding the right solution to help Center gives them the customization capabilities they need 
your company benefit from teaming is to get attention and communicate directly with authenticity. 
equally important. 
From executives communicating directly 
Internal communications specialists work to increase 
to their workforce, to LOB users enhancing 
awareness of the company’s internal capabilities and boost 
productivity among team members, to 
participation in programs and events. With HCL Connections 
mobile workers retrieving intranet content 
Engagement Center, they can effectively delegate content 
using their smartphones, Connections 
creation and maintenance to LOB contacts, curate content, 
Engagement Center can help everyone in 
and better listen to and engage employees. 
the organization work better and smarter. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 14
Strengthen the power Community and department managers want to create compelling landing pages that will keep employees up to 
of your people date on the latest news from both inside and outside of the organization. With HCL Connections Engagement Center, 
they can easily build, refresh and maintain pages for business 
divisions, service units and communities. 
Deskless workers need access to the intranet without Office staff and managers spend too much time and energy 
cumbersome authentication procedures. They benefit switching among platforms and sites to find the tools and 
from the automated authentication in HCL Connections for capabilities they need. They benefit from the one-stop ease 
accessing information services, drag-and-drop customization of integrated collaboration, content and apps enabled by HCL 
and integrated content. Remote support is also a plus. Connections Engagement Center. 
Customers and partners require an easy interface for Knowledge workers often have the most to gain from 
applications, content and collaboration. HCL Connections enhanced collaboration and knowledge- sharing, as well as 
Engagement Center makes it simple for parties in arms- the ability to find the right experts within the company at 
length transactions to access what they need, and you the right time. They benefit from increased company-wide 
can integrate HCL Connections with relevant business participation in content creation and collaboration generated 
applications such as M&A, loan securitization, insurance by HCL Connections Engagement Center, and greater attention 
claims processing, supply chain management, customer through curation of content. 
relationship management and even employee onboarding. 
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 15
Deliver important 
business benefits 
With HCL Connections Engagement Provide a trusted source of company 
Center, your organization can overcome news, views and processes 
disconnected information and complicated 
Deliver relevant content for every “With HCL Connections 
processes to create a vibrant online 
employee, helping people thrive in Engagement Center, we were 
community that contributes to your 
business success. The tailored experiences their changing roles while enabling able to create a user-friendly, 
enabled by the HCL platform deliver easy executive-to-employee organized and visually appealing 
important benefits that can ultimately communication platform for exchanging 
improve business processes and outcomes: Enable two-way communication information within the company.” 
 Build teamwork and communication  between employees and managers, 
with a central hub for employee fostering collaboration 
engagement Maike Schrieverhoff,  Cultivate a productive working 
Responsible for internal communication 
Encourage innovation by enabling environment that’s social, engaged 
employees from different departments and focused Ernsting’s 
to share ideas
Connected, committed and collaborative: How an engaged workforce drives success 16
Engage to grow 
your business 
If you’re looking to grow your organization in a highly competitive and disruptive 
environment, you need avenues for engaging and retaining the twenty-first- 
century workforce. A well-planned, fully functional employee engagement 
platform can help ensure that your workers feel included and informed. 
HCL Connections Engagement Center enables your organization  
to rise to the challenge: 
Save time and effort with content authoring and sharing  HCL Connections Engagement 
capabilities designed for ease of use Center is a simple add-on for your 
Reduce complexity and costs through streamlined  HCL Connections implementation. 
implementation without big, care-intensive integration projects Get Connections now: 
Streamline and improve your internal communications  hcltechsw.com/products/connections
with a single digital workplace hub
Deliver flexibility and future-readiness to keep up with rapid  
technological change 
© Copyright HCL Software 2020 17
References
1 Gallup,“StateoftheAmericanWorkplace,”2017, http://www. 
gallup.com/reports/199961/state-american-workplace- 
report-2017.aspx 
2 Bersin, Josh; Flynn, Jason; Mazor, Art; Melian, Veronica. “The 
employee experience: Culture, engagement, and beyond: 
Deloitte 2017 Global Human Capital Trends,” Deloitte University 
Press, Feb. 28, 2017, https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/
focus/ human-capital-trends/2017/improving-the-employee- 
experience-culture-engagement.html 
© Copyright HCL Software 2020 18