Last updated on January 13, 2023 at 09:15 pm

In my experience as a Client Success Account Manager at theEMPLOYEEapp, I’ve found that push notifications are a highly underused feature on our platform. Using push notifications for your employees gives them direct access to timely, important content that helps them get their job done, allows them to follow the company’s progress, and includes them in your company’s culture. It’s not rocket science to see that making things easier and more inclusive will improve an employee’s experience of the workplace. Yet, using push notifications—and using them well—continues to be a challenge. So, I’m going to make the case for why push notifications are critical to improving employee experience.

Overcoming Push Notification Hesitation

So, why don’t we use push notifications more? With each new cohort of customers that I onboard to our platform, I always have to emphasize how important it is to use this functionality. And the reason clients hesitate that I see time and time again is fear. They don’t want to “bug” their employees. They worry that they will overdo it.

I always ask where that fear comes from and it’s always a gut feeling. But it’s a strong one and it’s difficult to override that feeling. And I get it. It can be hard to know how many pushes are too much? What content really warrants one? It’s easy to understand where the apprehension comes from. 

Data shows us that good, relevant communication isn’t just tolerated, it is desired. Employees crave updates from their employers. And their tolerance for things like push notifications is actually quite high. In fact, 80% of employees say they want to be updated on company news (Bambu), and 74% feel like they are missing out on company information and news (Trade Press Service).

Push Notification Best Practices

The key to not becoming burdensome with your push notifications is to keep the quality high. Use them often but strategically. 

A basic overriding principle should be to ask yourself the question “Is this important?” And then, you can create governance around what is important. Such as important content types:

• Alerts (e.g New CEO Blog available)
• Calls to action (e.g Sign-up for the next town hall event, Complete post-event survey)
• Emergency messages (e.g HQ closing early due to a snowstorm)

And you can use push notifications strategically. If you have more than one important piece of content to push out, apply the push notification to the most pressing message and have it live at the top of the News Feed. That push will bring more employees into your app and they will be able to see all the new content that’s been added.

Show me the Data

So, what results can you expect from using push notifications strategically? Qualitatively, you can expect a more engaged, informed, and culturally aligned workforce. Quantitatively, you can expect a massive increase in employee engagement.

Let me show you an example. Here’s a manufacturing company we work with that has 3,100 employees. They sent one push notification this past month, can you guess which day that was?

That’s 87% of their employees logging in on that day. What’s your average email open rate? 87% is fantastic.

And here’s a smaller client that has used push notifications as a key component of their communication strategy over the past year. It is clear in this graph where push notifications have been used:

Embracing Push Notifications

We should not fear push notifications. We should embrace them as a great tactic for improving employee experience and engagement with your messages. With a solid strategy and good governance, they will help you to build your core audience and increase the daily activity of your app over time. And in return, this will help your workforce access the information they need while connecting with the company.

And when you choose theEMPLOYEEapp, you don’t have to figure this out alone. My team offers consults to all clients to help them determine the best mobile comms strategy for their company and goals.