An app as the next step in employee engagement

Working with outsourced employees comes with challenges. By definition, they work at our customers and not at our office, so there is no daily interaction. At the same time, we regard them as full members of the Novellas team and want to connect more with them.

In order to strengthen and strengthen the bond with our outsourcers and contractors, we developed an app together with Semasu, specialists in Microsoft 365 applications. “With this application, we will bring the team closer together digitally and we will be able to connect more quickly with our employees,” says Leen Van Herzele, CFO at Novellas Healthcare. ‘With the app we can communicate more smoothly and we make the bond with the outsourcers even closer.

In the app itself there is a ‘fun’ section, the Catch-up, where people can share what they are doing. Announcements that are more formal will be made under the “The Nov Pack” section. Both work on the principle of a timeline, as we know it on social media. The newest messages are at the top and you scroll through to older messages that you can reply to, like… In any case, vacancies and new colleagues are presented in the app, so there is something to share every day.

There is also a thematic FAQ with search function. Employees will find all kinds of useful information there, for example about their salary, our car policy… Finally, via the ‘Book a meeting’ button, they can immediately schedule a meeting with their manager at Novellas.

“The app runs on the Microsoft Viva platform, with Yammer as a chat function, connection to Sharepoint to share documents and works in a web browser as well as on the smartphone,” says Jochem Claus of Semasu. Connecting with other tools we work with, such as time registration, is still in the future, but that is definitely coming.

“In the past we have sent newsletters, but that remains a one-way communication. We have also worked on an intranet. There we notice that people easily lose their login details and then don’t come back,” says Leen. “We definitely wanted an app for the smartphone, because our outsourced employees very often work with a laptop and a customer’s network. We notice that they are therefore less inclined to open their browser to chat with colleagues in other companies. You always have a phone with you, which makes it easier to keep in touch.’

New employees install the app when they start at Novellas Healthcare and are instantly included in our community.