Hoopla Transforms Employee Engagement Strategy With a Focus on Visual, Shared Experiences

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 20, 2015) - Hoopla, the visual communication platform that connects, engages and motivates your entire company, plans to transform how people interact at work. The way people communicate in their personal lives has shifted dramatically with the mobile and social revolution, but the tools businesses use to connect their workforce have failed to adapt to this new paradigm. To bring the excitement of the latest consumer technologies to today's workplace, Hoopla has announced the next generation of Hoopla TV, which takes a highly visual, shared approach to motivating and engaging employees across every department.

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Keeping employees engaged and motivated at work has been a challenge that businesses have struggled with for years, but engagement levels have hardly budged in the past decade. Research from Gallup shows that only 30 percent of US employees are engaged while nearly 20 percent are actively disengaged, costing companies an estimated $500 billion in lost productivity and poor customer service. To reverse the trend, company leaders and managers need to reimagine the way workers interact and truly bring the workplace into the digital age.

Changing Workplace Dynamics Call for a New Approach to Employee Engagement

The way that people receive information and interact with each other has evolved, but the technology that managers and teams use to communicate remains stuck in the past. With shortening attention spans, there has been a shift towards packaging information in easily digestible, shareable formats -- especially video content. But when it comes to communicating company goals and recognizing employees, managers have had to rely on antiquated tools like spreadsheets, whiteboards and company-wide email blasts.

These approaches have led to a lack of transparency and focus across the organization, late feedback, missed opportunities for recognition and interaction, and ultimately disengagement. Employees now devote 28 percent of their time to managing emails, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, and overcrowded inboxes have become a highly ineffective place to communicate important updates and deliver feedback. At the same time, workers who are used to instant interaction opportunities offered by popular platforms like Instagram, Vine and Snapchat expect regular recognition -- at least once every seven days, according to recent research.

"There is a disconnect today between the way we consume information and how we communicate at work: leaders feel that they are sharing goals and progress, however employees state that they don't know what is going on in their own organizations," said Hoopla CEO Mike Smalls. "This problem grows as companies become larger and take on a more distributed workforce, with remote teams and multiple offices collaborating across the country or the globe."

Broadcasting a Culture of Recognition and Reward

Companies can respond to the disconnect in today's workplace by adopting the latest trends in consumer technology to broadcast a culture of recognition and reward. Hoopla TV offers a highly visual and fun way for leaders and employees to interact, celebrate and broadcast engaging updates on performance that everyone wants to see. Built for the digital age, Hoopla delivers key metrics, videos, images, newsflashes, challenges and opportunities for company-wide interaction to celebrate employee success and mark important milestones.

The broadcast approach also addresses the rise in distributed workforces, where face-to-face interaction is no longer the norm. Beyond fostering an office environment where employees feel energized and engaged, the Hoopla platform responds to the increasing demand to keep people in every location connected with content shared through TV, mobile and other web-based channels. Live leaderboards, challenges and recognition events build a sense of camaraderie that crosses geographical boundaries.

Finally, Hoopla TV brings a new emphasis on positive reinforcement and recognition to an arena where too much of the focus has been on appealing to workers' competitive instincts. Today's leaders understand that tapping employees' desire to compete is only half the battle in motivating individuals and high-performance teams. In fact, the best results come from building a culture of celebration, recognition and reward that leverages positive reinforcement to boost productivity. Combining competition and challenge with moments of celebration and recognition balances out the employee engagement equation.

About Hoopla
Hoopla amplifies performance for businesses of all sizes through its visual communication platform. Hoopla's live broadcasts of company news, key milestones and accomplishments empower companies to foster a culture of connectedness, transparency and recognition. Customers including GM Financial, Marketo and Zillow use Hoopla to celebrate achievements and keep employees energized, engaged and motivated. Visit hoopla.net to learn more, or find us on Facebook at facebook.com/hoopla and on Twitter at @hooplasoftware.