Whether it’s in times of crisis or operational change, there will come a moment when you need to mass text employees. Having the right tools and strategy at your disposal will make things easier when the occasion arises.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how important it is to have solid internal communication channels during times of change and uncertainty.
These days, top-performing businesses have a tailored plan for communicating with staff during emergencies and last-minute operational updates. For many, this involves an employee text alert system for employees that integrates with email, enabling anyone to send mass text to employees from their existing email tool.
In this post, we’ll cover the importance of employee text alerts and how to use an SMS alert system to mass text employees (without compromising employee engagement). We’ll also show you exactly how to send mass text to employees and discuss how to mass message workers without annoying them!
Why Send Mass Text Message to Employees?
SMS employee communications have significant advantages. Take the fact that texting is familiar to practically everyone and can be done from any mobile phone.
This means that there is absolutely zero learning curve to SMS communication. Not to mention, you can reach employees from anywhere, so frontline staff, deskless workers, and other dispersed employees never miss vital updates.
Here are a few other benefits of mass text notifications:
- Faster information delivery: 82% of text messages are read within 5 minutes.
- More visibility: Smartphone users spend 22% of their time on their phone texting.
- Cost savings: instead of investing in countless employee instant messaging tools, like Slack, SMS lets you leverage the channels that employees already use.
- Less competition to reach staff: email fatigue and cluttered inboxes mean more competition to reach staff. SMS text messaging sidesteps this problem.
- Higher response rates: the convenience of text messaging increases employee response rates.
- Less connectivity and deliverability issues: avoid deliverability issues that are common with email and missed messages that happen when your intranet or Slack is down.
- Improved accessibility for employees: frontline staff, remote teams, and deskless workers can all have access to your messages in a timely manner.
- Urgent messages reach employees quickly: since texts reach employees faster, text messages are a more reliable means of sending crisis communications.
ContactMonkey lets you leverage employee SMS to send text messages to your dispersed workforce. See how it works by requesting your free ContactMonkey demo.
Employee SMS Mass Text Ideas and Use Cases
Employee SMS is built for today’s fast-moving workforce. It keeps teams informed and engaged from anywhere, at any time. Which makes employee text messaging systems an excellent employee engagement idea for aligning a dispersed workforce.
Whether you’re sending recurring messages or asynchronous communications, SMS messages are a cost-effective solution that doesn’t require any additional training for employees.
Below, we break down some notable ways of using employee SMS to boost productivity and improve employee communications. And be sure to check out our SMS compliance checklist to ensure you’re employee text messages are sent lawfully.
1. Two-way communication with remote workers
When you assign a last-minute task or send a meeting reminder, employees will often have questions. Some concerns need to be addressed quickly. Waiting for an email response may be a huge inconvenience and can stunt productivity. That’s when it’s time to send out mass text alerts.
Encouraging quick back-and-forth SMS communication can often be more effective. SMS as a remote team communication tool also promotes two-way communication between employees and managers, and can solve many remote team communication challenges.
With ContactMonkey’s employee SMS tool, you can send out mass text alerts to communicate with staff quickly, directly, and at scale.
There’s no need for sending a bunch of individual texts, all it takes is accessing your ContactMonkey dashboard and engaging the SMS tab. You’ll be able to group text employees en-masse and engage in real-time two-way conversations.
Learn how to build a business case for internal communications tools and initiatives with our step-by-step guide.
2. Employee management
Large modern enterprises often oversee dozens of teams and departments across multiple time zones and locations. Some employees may be on the factory floor in Western Canada, while others may be at HQ in New York.
Yet it’s vital that everyone remains connected and aligned. This is especially the case during an unforeseen event (we know a thing or two about major snow storms here in Canada), or operational update.
The speed and efficiency of employee SMS makes it an efficient and reliable platform for managing employees across large, dispersed teams.
3. Employee notifications
While the future of email still sees it as a dominant internal communications tool, important email updates can get lost or accidentally deleted. Or, your employees may simply be away from their computers when a last-minute client update rolls in.
If it’s the last thing standing in the way of a closed deal, you’ll want to get the notification to the right people quickly. This is an ideal use case for sending out mass text notifications.
Employee mass text notifications alert your staff to key updates that they may have missed in their inbox. In time-sensitive situations, this can make all the difference.
4. Team updates
While email notifications remain a primary information channel at most companies, SMS can help strengthen it. A last-minute leadership team meeting or benefits enrollment deadline may not make it in time to employees through email. Again, this is an instance when you need to send mass text alerts instead of lengthy communications.
An SMS-integrated internal messaging software like ContactMonkey allows you to alert employees to email notifications via mass text alerts. This added information portal can be the difference between a missed meeting or a client deal falling through.
5. Weather alerts
Weather can change quickly. If you have a team working in the field, or residing in a hurricane hot spot, this can pose a serious challenge to employee safety.
You’ll need a quick way of checking if employees are out of harm’s way and passing along important safety alerts or instructions. Mass texting to employees is an easy solution. The speed and efficiency of employee mass SMS notifications make them an optimal platform for sharing weather alerts and keep employees secure.
ContactMonkey’s internal communications and event management tool lets you check if employees in zones of turbulent weather are safe. With employees working across hurricane hot spots, ContactMonkey customers use event management as a way for employees to check-in when they’re safe.
6. Event reminders
Employee events are an important part of team building, training, and employee coaching. As such, they’re a pivotal driver of employee engagement in your organization. When employees miss company events, it can impact your internal communications goals as well as your employee engagement objectives.
A simple SMS event reminder can draw employees’ attention to the upcoming webinar, town hall, or team meeting and increase the chances that employees can make it. With ContactMonkey’s event management tool, mass employee text messaging is easy and intuitive. You can synchronize email invites and SMS reminders, letting you streamline event management and increase participation in your next workplace event.
Step up your next company event and improve employee engagement with our top virtual event ideas.
7. Deadline reminders
We all want to stay on top of deadlines. But if you have multiple due dates coming up at the same time, one is bound to slip through the cracks—especially in a crowded mailbox.
With an employee SMS text messaging system, you provide your staff with an additional channel for staying on top of important deadlines. If they missed an email, they can always count on receiving a reminder in their messenger app.
Read our blog on the importance of internal communication and learn how to get team buy-in for effective digital employee communication tools.
8. Crisis management
Unfortunately, crises strike when we least expect them. Staying prepared with a solid crisis communications plan is the best way to avoid the worst of a crisis. Pre-drafted email communications with designated points of contact and crisis resources are essential. But in the midst of an emergency, employees may not immediately check their inbox.
To ensure that information reaches employees in a timely manner, adding employee SMS to your crisis management plan is crucial.
With ContactMonkey’s emergency notification system for business, you can synchronize your email newsletter communications with mass employee texts. Copy, schedule, and send your crisis communications from a single platform to streamline crisis management and deliver essential information quickly.
9. Shift scheduling team updates
Shift scheduling is one of the most notable employee SMS use cases. If your team includes hourly staff or shift workers, SMS group texting offers an easy way to mass notify employees about last-minute shift changes.
Mass employee text messaging provides a quick way for deskless workers to notify you if they’re running late to work or need to take a sick day. Employee SMS tools like ContactMonkey, offer a more practical alternative to other types of communication by allowing you to relay shift updates quickly.
10. Leadership communication and updates
In 2022, leaders need to be more hands-on and involved in the action. Distant and detached quarterly newsletter statements simply won’t cut it anymore. Employees want to hear from the leadership team more often and in more personal ways.
Employee SMS offers a platform to facilitate this type of two-way communication. It’s especially useful during crises and change management communications, when employees want authentic, straightforward, and transparent communications from leaders.
11. Key project updates
In any workplace, individual projects and tasks are deeply connected. An IT upgrade may impact the information provided by your Sales team. The Sales insights may then impact the materials published by marketing. In light of this, some projects will require that you deliver key updates to employees quickly.
This is especially the case if some members of your team are working in an office, while others are on the factory floor or a construction site.
So how do companies send mass text messages about key projects in a quick and streamlined way?
You can ensure that everyone on your team is aligned with a simple employee mass text email integration. ContactMonkey allows you to send SMS messages from your existing internal email software. So your IC team can easily align and streamline internal communications.
12. Emergency notifications
Along with weather alerts, there are many types of emergency scenarios that you’ll want to mass notify employees about quickly. Dangerous terrain on a construction site, faulty equipment on the factory floor, or a security breach in the office, and email phishing awareness are just a few examples. In these scenarios, employee mass SMS notifications will help you act quickly to inform staff about potential hazards.
If you’re in need of a reliable and creative way to communicate with your employees and dispersed team during emergencies, ContactMonkey can help. How do companies send mass text messages using this software?
Our integrated internal communications platform lets you send employee mass SMS notifications and internal emails with the click of a few buttons. Create, send, and track email and SMS from a single platform. Book a free demo to see how it works!
13. Key customer updates
On a similar note, if there are key updates impacting customers, your client-facing team will need to know about them quickly. Imagine one of your remote sales associates is about to conduct a virtual product demo. Meanwhile, the IT team has detected an outage across your product software.
Instead of leaving your sales rep in the middle of an awkward situation, use an SMS internal communication tool like ContactMonkey to reach your sales team instantly. This way, they can either reschedule the demo or gauge the issues and adjust their presentation.
14. Quickly connect with employee candidates and job seekers
Love it or hate it, it’s a candidate’s market out there these days. This means that employers seeking to hire top talent will need to work harder, and faster.
As the recruitment process can come with many questions and scheduling conflicts, employee SMS is the best way to stay on top of things.
Concerns and questions can be answered quickly, and in real-time, which adds up to a smoother, more streamlined applicant experience.
15. New employee communication
Think back to when you were just starting out a new job. The first few weeks were probably disorienting. As you navigated new office tools, registered your workplace email, and set up Slack, it would’ve been nice to have a way to reach out for help in the meantime.
Employee SMS offers employees and managers a simple, accessible platform that they can use to connect at any time.
Not to mention, it complements your existing onboarding communications, by helping to remind staff to check their new employee email and review important documents.
16. Open Enrollment
Employee benefits are a huge driver of employee satisfaction. In fact, employees who are happy with their benefits package are 4x more likely to be engaged in their work.
By group texting employees a reminder about benefits enrollment deadlines via SMS, you’ll give them plenty of time to evaluate things and ask questions.
With a mass texting service for employees like ContactMonkey, you can add links directly into employee enrollment text messages. This enables employees to evaluate the available plans carefully and get answers to their questions quickly, optimizing efficiencies. You can also send reminders to employees to fill out employee benefits surveys when they have access to a computer.
17. Gather instant feedback
Employee surveys are an essential part of any great internal communications strategy. But sometimes, employee feedback needs to be speedy and efficient. If you have to gather employee input in order for a project to move forward, or to fix a problem quickly, employee SMS may be the best way to go.
ContactMonkey’s employee feedback tool with integrated SMS lets you mass text employees to quickly gather feedback. Simply send your question to the team involved in a task or project and use letters, numbers, or emojis to label response options. The example below serves up some inspiration.
Learn how to use internal communications software and a mass texting service for employees to gather better employee feedback.
18. Employee recognition
In the hustle and bustle of the workday, we often forget to say thank you.
When we do remember, it might not be when we’re standing next to a work computer. What ends up happening is a much-deserved thank you email gets put off until it’s totally forgotten.
With employee SMS, you can start mass texting to employees about the things you appreciate. Show gratitude using the tools that are already at your fingertips. Internal communications SMS tools like ContactMonkey, make it easy to learn how to set up mass text alerts.
This way, you can quickly and intuitively send or schedule digital employee thank you notes, making employee recognition the office norm.
Think employee recognition is all about free swag and yearly bonuses? Think again. Our list of top employee recognition ideas shows you how to recognize employees on a consistent basis.
How to Send Mass Text to Employees Using ContactMonkey
Wondering, ‘how do companies send mass text messages?’ Well, if they want to ensure that their mass employee text messaging remains secure and upholds employee SMS content best practices, the answer is simple. They use a dedicated internal mass text messaging software.
So how do you send mass text to employees? With ContactMonkey’s mass texting service for employees, users can send out mass text alerts in the workplace in the same place where they send emails. Here’s how to set up mass text alerts using ContactMonkey:
- Open up your ContactMonkey dashboard.
- Hover to the top right corner to expand your profile and select “Switch to SMS.”
- Click “Compose and Send” once you’re in the SMS dashboard; you’ll now be able to mass message workers.
- Input your send details once you’re in the compose window to set up mass text alerts. Here’s what you’ll need to add:
- Campaign Name: The name that will show in the “Analytics” tab of the SMS dashboard.
- Send To: Choose the recipients of your mass SMS notifications.
- Message: Copy/Paste or type in the message you want to send to your intended recipients. Click rates will be measured on all links within the mass SMS alerts.
- Preview your mass message to workers as it will look within a sample cellular device.
- Hit send to track and deliver your mass SMS alerts.
Speed Up Employee Communications With ContactMonkey’s SMS Software
There are many reasons why an employee SMS alert system is a great tool to strengthen your internal communication strategy. From wider reach to faster response times, employee mass SMS alerts have countless benefits to help you tackle the internal communication challenges of the modern workforce.
With a reliable text alert system for employees, you can maximize the advantages of employee mass text and prove the ROI of employee engagement to leadership.
ContactMonkey streamlines internal communication by synchronizing all of your employee messaging channels. Learning how to send mass text to employees has never been easier! Improve employee engagement and send mass text to employees without the hassle. Book your free ContactMonkey demo today!
