Bad content infrastructure impacts employee wellbeing

Content is the foundation on which organizations are built. Whether it’s marketing materials, legal documents or sales pitch decks, content, and the process of content creation, is crucial to business success. Without efficient content creation processes, the whole business is affected.

Many businesses, however, aren’t valuing this component the way they should, often at the expense of employee wellbeing and brand integrity.

Our recent global survey into the role content plays in businesses shows that efficient content infrastructure – the systems and processes for content creation – is an area where enterprises are sorely lacking.

In today’s tech-driven, hybrid working age, missing out on a well-oiled content infrastructure leads to inefficient processes; it also hinders productivity, damages brand integrity, and negatively impacts employee wellbeing.

The revolving door of content reviewal

Content reviews are one of the biggest pain points of employees around the world, and an area creating huge productivity bottlenecks and damaging employee wellbeing. Research shows that 60% of UK workers state that their company’s process for reviewing and approving content delays other work.

To add insult to injury, even after multiple rounds of review, 94% still find errors in approved content.

This means human error is an all too present issue, and manual processes for reviewing content are not only inefficient and time consuming, but fail to be accurate. 

Inefficient review processes create ‘content bottlenecks’ which, on average, causes a business document in the UK to be reviewed four times before final approval, which further damages employee wellbeing by adding to workloads.

According to the survey, a staggering 62% percent of workers admit they waste time tracking down content that already exists somewhere in their organizations. 

An example of this is using Google to search for company images or logos to be included in a piece of business content. This issue compounds to hurt brand integrity, as employees end up turning to alternative, non-compliant materials while creating content.

Non-compliance breeds productivity paralysis

Businesses need to ensure employees have easy access to compliant materials. Without this, employees are faced with the conundrum: spend time trying to hunt down the latest brand-approved collateral, or use whatever they have saved to their desktop?

The answer is often a resounding “whatever is easiest” which doesn’t bode well for brand continuity. In fact, only 46% of workers across the US and Australia turn to their company’s database in search of company-approved content, showing how difficult it is to find company-approved content.

The cost of non-optimized workflows and inefficient content infrastructure trickles down to affect all aspects of business, like employee wellbeing, brand trust, reputation, and ultimately revenue.

Since IT infrastructure requires employees to search for materials, as opposed to automating, or ‘pushing’ content to employees, errors culminate which hurts the company branding or employer expectations.

Indeed, our survey reveals that almost all (88%) of UK respondents believe that small errors like typos, or outdated messaging in approved content damages client trust, and 76% believe that errors damage employee trust.

Bad contents toll on wellbeing

Finally, with such a culture of inefficiency, it’s unsurprising that so many employees experience burnout.

Whether it be sifting through files to track down on-brand content, or delays caused by review processes, a third of UK workers told us a mixture of these factors causes them to feel overloaded and pressured to take on more work than they are able. 

Hybrid working exacerbates these issues as inefficient content infrastructure, combined with the difficulty of being separated from colleagues, leads workers to use their own solutions and strained collaboration.

Indeed, two-thirds of UK workers regularly turn to colleagues for information as to where certain documents are located, which hinders productivity and often leads to off-brand or incorrect content creation. Resulting in a negative impact in overall team efficiency. 

Issues of collaboration and the hybrid working mental health dilemma have also been well documented. Recently cited in Forbes, three in five workers find something lacking in the quality of communication when working from home, with 77% in agreement that better communication leads to better work culture. 

In the context of inefficient content infrastructure, it is easy to see why employees feel overwhelmed. Inefficient processes plus a lack of efficient communication mean employees are left to their own devices, disengaged from the work that matters and are consumed by repetitive duties like content reviews. 

The road to efficient content: automation

Enterprises worldwide lack the infrastructure needed to empower employees and efficiently produce content. Businesses need to consider technological solutions that standardize and automate content, allowing employees to create content without bottlenecks. 

Automated document solutions enable teams to ensure content remains on-brand and compliant. By making it easier to locate and use the latest brand-approved content, employees can create documents easier and faster allowing them to focus on more impactful work.

To reach this level of productivity, business leaders must look for a platform that connects tools across their tech stack to create better workflows.

Employees should be supported with the right technology to allow them to better perform in their roles without the monotonous hassle of browsing for up-to-date documents. 

Supporting businesses with content automation

Content is critical to businesses, but inefficient infrastructures can become a hindrance to productivity, employee wellbeing, and ultimately, your brand.

Employees worldwide are labored by endless rounds of reviews and have adopted alternative non-compliant habits to create content. Without a support system to improve content processes, employees will remain overloaded and imperfect content will continue to be created in turn, damaging brand sentiment and integrity.

Employers must look to solutions to take the graft out of content creation and allow employees to focus on the things that matter, and for the role they originally applied for. Not only will their employee happiness increase, but their brand will be better off for it.