Salesforce Employee Communities: A Guide

Connectivity, engagement, collaboration, and communication: the four essential ingredients of a successful business. That said, your employees are one of the most fundamental aspects of your business and it’s important to ensure that you are giving them all the tools to succeed.

When employees are told to make do with several disjointed and separate communication tools frustration and inefficiency are inevitable. This can cause lost time, energy, and money, all of which will cause your business to suffer.

Salesforce developed an integrated solution for this problem — Salesforce employee communities. This digital solution ensures that no matter the scope of the project, the length of the deadline, or the size of the order, your employees are fully equipped with the tools to handle the job.

This one-stop-shop for employees is a space for questions and answers, storing important and educational information, and helps to simplify communication with HR teams. A Salesforce employee community will transform your employee’s modus operandi from being reactive to becoming proactive. Your employees can simply log in, join forces, and solve problems together while keeping up with daily tasks and long-term goals.

Here’s a comprehensive guide to understanding the ins and outs of Salesforce Employee Communities.

What is a Salesforce Employee Community?

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool with a clear function: improving communication and collaboration within a business.

While this article focuses on Salesforce employee Communities, Salesforce has various services and products geared to sales-focused businesses and their needs. Within Salesforce communities, there are three subsets: customer community, employee community, and partner community. Each type serves the individual needs of these groups. If you happen to utilize one community, it’s likely you’ll find value in all of the communities!

A Salesforce employee community is specifically designed for members of a company, especially employees and co-workers, to collaborate. So, what can a Salesforce employee community do for your employees?

Primarily, the combination of tools within an employee community empowers them to find solutions and to seek out collaboration. Within a single business, multiple employee communities can be created to group those together who are working on similar targets or aspects of the business. As this is a cloud-based service, it’s easy for employees to access information on-the-go by using their smartphone.

Using an employee community simplifies the process of addressing entire teams, sharing important information, making announcements, and ensuring everyone is on the same page. It can be used to store information, including guidelines, tips, training materials, safety instructions, etc. Better yet, when someone has a question, an employee community has a forum space where coworkers can discuss and help one another find answers.

Should Your Business Be Using a Salesforce Employee Community?

Even though Salesforce employee communities are ultra-customizable and can certainly be adjusted to suit your business’ needs, it’s worth evaluating closely whether you need this tool or not.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the added value an employee community can bring to your business.

Efficiency and Clarity

When information is spread across various tools and platforms, employees wind up wasting a lot of time searching for what they need to find. By integrating everything into one platform, you’ll not only speed up your employees, but you’ll also alleviate potential frustration, miscommunication, and navigation issues.

Whether someone is looking for a memo discussed a month before or is seeking to revisit the employee handbook, having it all in one place enhances efficiency and clarity. If finding a piece of information requires numerous emails or another multi-step process, it discourages them from doing so. By making all necessary information visible and available within an employee community, getting things done requires much less of a headache.

Connect and Plan from Anywhere

Nowadays, it’s not unlikely for teams to be spread out across a country or even across borders. For sales teams that do have remote employees, a Salesforce community would be very beneficial.

It allows for easy access to information, real-time communication, a space for questions and answers — eliminating the need for face-to-face interactions within an office space to get issues resolved or meetings scheduled.

Not to mention, as it’s a digital solution, employees get access to this information on the go. So whether a team member is out of town at a conference, working from home, or in the office after hours, as long as they have a smartphone with them, they can connect and collaborate. This is essential as the move toward more remote working environments will require reliable and efficient means of communication.

Increase Employee Satisfaction

What’s the antidote for workplace frustration and confusion? Communication. A Salesforce employee community can help promote teamwork and goal-setting, and also allows for progress tracking. Visual representations of what your team is getting done can be motivating and stimulating to accomplish even more.

Your employees will also appreciate the user-friendliness of this CRM tool, and will undoubtedly note that it is employee-focused and is there to serve their needs and improve their ability to succeed.

All great business owners and those in upper management know both the strengths and weaknesses of their employees. It’s important to use this information to create teams that will excel at achieving a goal because they are able to use their strengths to help one another.

A Salesforce employee community allows employees to collaborate on tasks more efficiently. If a team member is weak in one area where another is strong, then they can discuss how to assign tasks according to strengths, all in one place!

The Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a tool to enhance the efficiency and satisfaction of your employees, creating a Salesforce employee community may be exactly what you need. With endless options for customization, you can incorporate unique and targeted elements to maximize what you get out of it. It’s not short of features and possibilities, providing a real opportunity to enhance communication and collaboration among your employees.

However, do make sure that a Salesforce employee community is a wise investment and conduct your own research. Your business shouldn’t need to bend to benefit from the product, the product needs to be tailored to you. It wouldn’t hurt to discuss what you’re looking for with an expert sales rep to make sure that you would benefit from a Salesforce employee community.