What is Employee Connection?

What is employee connection?

Employee connection is the sense of belonging and engagement employees feel toward their peers, managers, and organization. It’s all about creating a supportive workplace culture where employees feel valued and connected, not just to their jobs but also to each other. A truly connected workplace inspires collaboration, drives innovation, and motivates employees to contribute meaningfully, thereby creating a stronger and more unified organization.

The connections can be broken down as follows:

• Employee-to-employee: When employees build friendships and support each other, it creates a positive work environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas and working together towards common goals. Strong employee-to-employee connections foster teamwork, collaboration, and camaraderie. 
• Employee-to-values: This approach focuses on how well an employee’s values align with the organization’s mission and culture. When employees resonate with the company’s values—such as integrity, innovation, or community—they are more likely to be committed to their work.
• Employee-to-work: Relates to how engaged an employee feels with their specific tasks and responsibilities. When employees find their work fulfilling and understand its importance to the organization, they are more likely to feel motivated and be productive.

Is there a link between employee engagement and employee connection?

Employee engagement and employee connection are interrelated concepts that significantly influence workplace dynamics. Employee engagement reflects an individual’s commitment, motivation, and involvement in their work, while employee connection focuses on the emotional and relational bonds employees have with their peers, leaders, and the organization as a whole.

When employees feel connected, valued by their team, and supported by their organization, they are more likely to be engaged in their work. Organizations with engaged employees report  21% more profitability and productivity. Conversely, when employees are disengaged or lack strong connections, they may feel isolated, undervalued, or disconnected from the organization’s mission, leading to decreased performance and higher turnover rates.

Therefore, stronger relationships lead to better employee communication, higher engagement, increased trust in the workplace between team members, and a more connected and united workforce.

Why is employee connection important?

A team where members are disengaged or dissatisfied—or actively working against each other has cost the economy $8.9 trillion, according to Gallup’s 2022 State of Workplace report. This data signifies the crucial need to foster employee connections across all levels of the organization.

Reasons to consider:

Boosts engagement and motivation

When employees feel connected, they are more likely to engage. This sense of belonging boosts employee motivation and encourages cross-functional team members to collaborate on tasks. As employees see the impact of their efforts within a connected community, their drive to perform and innovate is heightened, leading to increased engagement and morale.

Better communication and collaboration

Employee connection nurtures a collaborative environment where individuals feel integrated into the company’s core. This leads to a more cohesive work environment where team members feel valued and heard, ultimately boosting morale and productivity. As a result, with improved communication channels, workflows become smoother, collaboration improves, and projects are completed more efficiently.

Enhances productivity and efficiency

Your employees achieve higher productivity and efficiency when they feel strongly connected to their peers and the organization. According to a survey conducted by Eagle Hill Consulting, 60% of employees reported that feeling connected to their work has improved their productivity and ability to do their jobs.

Reduced turnover

A strong employee connection significantly reduces employee turnover, as individuals are more likely to remain with organizations where they feel respected and connected. According to the Harvard Business Review, companies with a strong sense of community report a 50% reduction in turnover rates and 75% fewer sick days.

Improved employee well-being and reduced stress 

Building social bonds in the workplace improves well-being and reduces stress and burnout. When employees form meaningful connections, they are more likely to seek help and confide in teammates when they face difficulties. This support network alleviates stress and promotes a healthier work-life balance, which is crucial for sustained productivity and job satisfaction.

Creates a positive work environment

Happy and connected employees promote collaboration and mutual respect, creating a positive work environment. This encourages employees to support one another, share knowledge, and celebrate each other’s successes. Therefore, by prioritizing a positive workspace, you can cultivate an engaged and cohesive workforce that thrives on collaboration and shared achievements.

How to connect with employees as a leader?

As leaders, your objective is to foster meaningful employee connections by creating an environment where individuals feel valued, supported, and united by a shared purpose. While strategies and tactics must be tailored to the organization’s unique circumstances, several effective approaches can be implemented.

Get to the root cause of any disconnection

Research conducted by Enboarder revealed that 29% of employees cited unsupportive or passive managers as the primary factor contributing to their disconnection. Leaders who are distant, unapproachable, or fail to provide adequate guidance can foster feelings of social loneliness and detachment within their teams.

To get to the root cause of disconnection, ask the following questions in manager-led one-on-ones or employee pulse surveys.

• Do your employees believe their work contributes to the company’s goals? Can they connect their daily tasks to overall performance?
• Are employees aware of your company’s key objectives? Do they align with these goals?
• Can employees see how their contributions support the larger mission? Is it evident how their roles fit into the bigger picture?

If the answer to all these is “no,” dig deeper and take action. 

Set the stage for open communication

When leaders communicate openly and transparently, they build trust and create a sense of inclusion among employees. Therefore, create a safe space for employees to share their thoughts and concerns. This approach can resolve communication breakdowns that lead to confusion, disengagement, misalignment, errors, and a significant loss of productivity. 

Organize team-building activities

In an office setting, you have opportunities to get to know your new colleagues and partners. However, to build relationships in the digital workplace, bring remote teams together through virtual engagement activities like icebreakers. They are a warm way to introduce new teammates and build immediate rapport. Additionally, you also organize events such as trivia nights, workshops, team retreats, or even play virtual online games to ensure the connection between you and your team remains intact. 

Encourage peer recognition

Even with access to the best tools, all of the necessary information, and a collaborative team, employees can still feel disconnected. One way to increase connection is through peer-to-peer recognition. With a peer recognition system, employees can celebrate each other’s achievements, big or small, fostering a sense of appreciation and belonging. 

To emphasize its importance, Miriam Connaughton, Chief People & Experience Officer at Simpplr, said:

“Whether you’re recognizing a peer within your team or from another team, recognition is for more than saying thank you. It is about expressing gratitude and appreciation in a way that touches the core of what someone contributes. It’s about acknowledging a person’s inherent value — as a co-worker and as a human being.” 

Provide professional development opportunities

Offering opportunities for training, skill development, mentorship and career advancement is a great way to show your employees that you care about their professional development. According to a study, 51% of employees believe training gives them more confidence and 41% say it helps improve their time management skills. Furthermore, the LinkedIn report states that 64% of learning and development professionals believe reskilling is important to bridge the skills gap. This data highlights the importance of providing continuous learning opportunities to empower employees and ensure your organization stays competitive.

Key strategies to build good employee connections

Building strong employee connections is an ongoing process that demands dedication and persistence from the beginning. Without employees working in harmony and aligning towards common goals, an organization may fall short—or, at times, collapse entirely. The research is clear: the more positively employees experience their work, the better they perform and the longer they stay connected. 

Here are a few ways to build strong employee connections in your workplace:

Create a centralized digital workplace

Create a centralized digital work hub that contains important documents, policies, and training materials. Use the AI-advanced search feature to find and access the information one needs to succeed.

Read case study: Pure Storage connects 2000+ employees over a centralized hub

Streamline internal communication

Effective internal communications keep teams on the same page and actively working toward shared goals.  However, based on the State of Internal Communications Report 2024, 5% of respondents rate their internal communications “below average,” and the remaining 1% rate it as “poor.” This stat highlights the importance of implementing an easy, secure and reliable communication platform to foster collaboration and innovation.

Using multiple communication channels can increase the IT burden and complicate information management. To combat this issue, organizations can consolidate their communication through a single modern intranet. Equipped with AI capabilities, modern intranets enable employees to engage with content in a more personalized and meaningful manner.

Focus on cross-functional collaboration

Encourage cross-functional collaboration to enhance employee connection by breaking down knowledge silos and promoting teamwork across departments. When employees collaborate with different teams, it broadens perspectives and fosters innovation. Such interactions build stronger inter-departmental relationships, ensuring that employees feel more connected to their team and the organization as a whole.

Promote personalized & targeted communication

Personalized content has been the foundation for keeping employees connected. With that in mind, leverage a platform, like a modern intranet, that can share targeted and personalized messaging and democratize content creation. When employees at all levels add and share content — whether video, text, or audio — it fosters a sense of ownership and amplifies diverse voices.

Read case study: Bay Federal Credit Union implemented Simpplr to personalize content, received a 100% login rate

Encourages feedback and active listening

You may have the best intentions, use the best research, and implement the best tools, but you can’t be sure that you are doing the right things to enhance employee connection unless you talk to your team.  
Therefore, use an employee listening tool to unearth hidden employee sentiment that traditional surveys often miss — in real-time. This AI-powered passive listening tool analyzes sentiment data gathered through polls, pulse and traditional surveys, sentiment check, awareness check, and everyday interactions, like comments.

Recognize and reward good work

Rewarding employees is more than a gesture of goodwill; it is a strategic approach to make sure employees know how significant their contributions are to the overall organizational success. However, only one in three workers in the U.S. strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work.  

Use a modern intranet that integrates recognition and reward feature to help employees easily recognize their peers’ achievements and publicly celebrate them using five social media templates. 

Read case study: Agero unites workforces with Employee Recognition, sparking 22x engagement in the digital workplace

Enhance employee connection with Simpplr

The setting in which team members are expected to collaborate is expanding and changing every day. They no longer work in adjoining cubes, in a traditional office, or over a morning cup of coffee in the conference room. With a combination of on-site, remote, and deskless workers, most organizations are finding it difficult to keep employees connected. 

Therefore, one of the most effective solutions to enhance employee connection in your organization is implementing a modern intranet platform like Simpplr. 

Simpplr is an AI-powered employee experience platform that can help your organization reduce digital friction, increase productivity, and make employees feel more connected, empowered, and engaged. Our commitment to purposefully leveraging AI-driven insights to empower employees, enhance decision-making, and streamline day-to-day workflows drives innovation across our platform. We use pre-trained AI models for search, content recommendation and moderation, emotion/sentiment analysis, theme classification, and prescriptive analytics to ensure efficient and accurate data processing for actionable insights.

Watch a quick demo to see how Simpplr’s solution boosts connection, facilitates collaboration, and drives engagement across your organization.