Overview of Employee Messaging

Team Engine's employee messaging features make it easy to manage all employee communication from one place without having to rely on bulletin boards, track down someone in person in a different location, or use your personal cell phone. Each company receives its own local phone number that you can use to send and receive messages.

Key Employee Use Cases

Companies take advantage of simple employee messaging in lots of ways, including:

• Message employees about major events (Bad weather, Coronavirus, etc)
• Create a simple hotline for reaching HR that employees can text questions to about benefits, payroll, etc. 
• Communicate with new employees during onboarding (for example, to get documents signed, order uniforms, etc)
• Have employees text in call-outs or time off requests
• Send announcements to the entire company (or to just certain teams of employees) for new policies, company events, etc
• Schedule announcements or messages to be sent at a future date and time
• Survey employees to get feedback about onboarding or answer key questions (e.g. uniform sizes)

Getting Started

In the sidebar menu, you'll see three tabs - Messages, Announcements, and Surveys

To get started, set up your employee directory.

Messages

The Messages tab is for communicating with individual employees. This can be a one-on-one conversation or a message to a set of employees that are not part of a group.

Announcements

Announcements are how you can send one message to an entire group at once or to all employees. If someone responds to a message sent to a group or they respond to an announcement, the response will only go back to the Inbox - no one else will get it. Note: If you are specifically asking a question in your message, you should use surveys.

Employee groups are very flexible and could be a role (for example, Foremen), a location (San Antonio), a category (for example, everyone in the Factory), or any other set that is useful to you. 

Announcements take around 15 minutes to send to every employee.

Adding Files to Messages

If you would like to add an image or a document to messages to employees, or to an announcement, you simply have to click the "Upload File" button on the top of the message editor box. 

This will add a clickable link to the message that the recipient can click on that will open the file in an internet browser like this.

Surveys

A survey is a special type of announcement where you are asking a question and expect a response. Team Engine will collect all responses in one easy-to-see place and send reminders to people who have not responded.

For more detail on surveys, see: Employee Surveys

FAQ

• What phone number do messages come from?
  • There's a single phone number for your entire company that's local. Any texts sent to that number will show up in the main inbox. 
• How do employees know who it is texting them?
  • We recommend sending an initial announcement to employees telling them it's you (and including the company name). In the future, all texts will come from the same number. 
• How does texting work?
  • The Inbox is designed to work just like the other texting tools you are used to. Your messages in blue, and the recipients in gray. As soon as a new message comes in, you'll get an email notification.
• Are responses to announcements visible to all recipients?
  • No. When you message a group of employees, and someone responds, that response only goes to you. At that point, it becomes a one on one conversation between you and that employee. 
• How much does this cost?
  • All employee communications features are included.