Not all companies have employee directories. But those who do enjoy a significant boost to productivity. Employee directories make it easier for people across your organization to work together.

What is an Employee Directory?

Think of the Yellow Pages. It’s a thick yellow book full of contact details for local tradespeople. People are listed by their expertise. So whatever work you need doing, you can find the right person for the job in a matter of minutes.

An employee directory is like the Yellow Pages, but for your business. You can list employees by their expertise. So any member of your team can quickly find the help they need to do whatever needs doing.

Why Do You Need an Employee Directory?

Even in the smallest organizations, it’s very rare indeed that everyone knows each other. Yes, everyone might be on first-name terms. But is everyone aware of everyone else’s talents, experience, and expertise?

An employee struggling with a spreadsheet formula, for example, would be very interested indeed to know who the spreadsheet experts are in the office. With an employee directory, they could quickly find the help they need, without having to ask around.

Obviously, the bigger your company, the more useful an employee directory can be. They’re particularly useful for companies with multiple locations and remote workers. With an employee directory, you can see who’s who from one clear, centrally located system. This makes managing workloads and workforces much easier than it would be if you had to rely on separate paperwork for each location and each team member.

How Can You Use an Employee Directory?

There is no single way to use an employee directory. So here four ways they can help:

1. Looking Up Someone’s Contact Information. Say you’ve got an IT error. You tell the person sat next to you about it. They’re stumped. But they think that Roger, from finances, might be able to help. With an employee directory, you can find Roger and make a call, or send an email, in minutes.
2. Finding Out Where Someone is Based. A long chain of emails is not the best way to collaborate on projects. A conference call is better. But for best results, you really can’t beat getting everyone in the same room at the same time. With an employee directory, you can quickly find where everyone on a project is based. This will make it easier to set up meetings. And if people are based in different time zones, you’ll know when’s best to call them.
3. Finding the Specialist. Whether you’re assembling a varied team, or you’re looking for a specific skill set to help with a specific task, an employee directory makes it easy to find the talented help you need.
4. Onboarding. When you first start a job, getting to know everyone can feel intimidating. And the bigger the team, the more intimidating it can feel. An employee directory makes it easier for new-hires to learn about their new colleagues. It’ll help them feel like an integrated member of the team, and they’ll feel readier to collaborate in no time at all.

An Employee Directory for Your Business – What to Include

What sort of information about your employees should you store in your employee directory?

Start with the basics. Name, department, contact details (phone, email etc), location, and job title. It also helps to include a photo, so anyone looking up that employee knows who to approach!

Beyond the basics, some more personal information will help employees find the help they need. They might even make a new friend!

When we talk about “personal information”, we don’t mean really personal stuff, like blood types, mothers’ maiden names, and so on. We’re talking about things like interests, education, skills, certifications and past-projects and achievements. The sort of things that make employees approachable, relatable people, as opposed to names on a screen.

4 Key Features that Make a Good Employee Directory

1. Easy to access. Any employee should be able to securely access the system from any device.
2. Easy to navigate. It should be completely intuitive. You shouldn’t have to offer specialist training on using the directory.
3. Complete and up-to-date. There’s no point in having a directory if the information it contains isn’t reliable!
4. Lovely to look at. A good employee directory is visually appealing. Rather than swamping employees with reams of text, it should be clear and uncluttered. It also helps to give your directory your company branding, for a more consistent feel across your systems.

Introduce an Employee Directory for Your Organisation Today

If you don’t already have an employee directory for your organization, what system are you currently using? Paperwork? Multiple spreadsheets? Lots of filing cabinets filled to bursting?

These types of systems are highly inefficient. Who knows how much you’re losing to wasted hours? And think of the security. How easy would it be for someone to compromise your system? How much would a data breach cost you?

On Edays we have created a safe and secure employee directory system with HR document storage functionality. Features include an accessible employee database, with everyone’s employment history stored safely on the system. You can store documents against every employee, with a clear audit trail for everyone. And you can rest assured that all the data you store will be fully compliant with GDPR regulations.

Any employee can access the directory from any device. It’s totally secure and very easy to navigate, so you can expect to enjoy all the benefits that a good employee directory can bring. Head here to learn more about our employee directory software.

But this is just one of many features you’ll find in Edays. Through streamlining all of the most vital HR processes, we’ll help reduce absenteeism through intelligent reporting and boost productivity for your whole organization.

Take a look at some of the features we offer here. And if you want to see for yourself how Edays will transform your system, we can give you a personalised demo for free, with no obligation.

Book a free, no-obligation demo to see how Edays can transform your business.

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