Four ways to improve internal employee engagement on Confluence

Elena Zanchetta
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
January 14, 2025

 

You could have spent months creating the perfect Confluence instance, but if your internal teams don’t actively use it, you’ll have to answer the question we’d all like to avoid: was it worth the effort?

Whether it boils down to a lack of awareness, training, or poorly structured pages, not taking full advantage of Confluence wastes resources. Improper documentation is a widespread challenge; for instance, 96% of organizations don’t properly document their processes and knowledge, stressing the importance of addressing this issue.

If you’re struggling with getting your teams to engage with Confluence, we invite you to read on! Below, we’ll cover why nailing internal employee engagement matters and provide you with four tips and strategies to improve engagement within your organization.

Alert: No Employee Engagement Survey will be mentioned Crying with laughter

employee engagement.jfif

Image by Meme Arsenal

Why is internal Confluence engagement important?

 

Let’s get things straight – internal engagement is more than creating pages and expecting your teams to use them. It’s about fostering a culture of sharing and open communication between employees and creating a workplace that incentivizes active participation where ideas flow freely.

The benefits of improving internal employee engagement on Confluence are numerous as it can:

  • Foster collaboration: Confluence naturally encourages open collaboration, helping break down silos and promote environments where sharing knowledge and feedback is the norm. This enables employees to work together more effectively towards shared goals.
  • Boost employee morale: Engagement with Confluence instances can make employees feel more connected to their organization, fostering a stronger sense of belonging and, consequently, boosting morale.
  • Accelerate decision-making: Better informed teams are more efficient teams. With access to the latest information, making key decisions becomes a quicker and more accurate process.
  • Increase overall productivity: Teams that are engaged and know how to find what they need to spend less time searching and querying. This leads to quicker project turnarounds and increased productivity.

How to improve employee engagement on Confluence

 

Internal employee engagement with your Confluence spaces is more than just a nice-to-have; it is essential. Now, let’s dive into several employee engagement strategies that can be executed to improve your internal Confluence engagement:

1. Refine your onboarding processes

Effective engagement with Confluence spaces begins with proper onboarding, particularly for new hires. Remember, good Confluence onboarding is more than teaching users how to create a page or navigate between spaces. It’s about immersing them in the understanding that Confluence is more than a wiki – it’s a collaborative tool integral to the entire organization and its workflows.

Beyond demonstrating how to use Confluence for internal processes like managing projects or sharing knowledge, it’s essential to encourage new hires to actively explore and familiarize themselves with the platform to make them feel part of the collaborative environment. 

2. Educate employees about your Confluence spaces

While perfecting your onboarding process is vital, the education of your teams shouldn’t stop there. Whether through a casual lunch and learn, a formal company-wide workshop, or even a dedicated FAQ resource page, it’s crucial to educate your existing employees on everything Confluence-related continually. This includes sharing relevant updates about Confluence features and simply reminding them of best practices from time to time.

3. Ensure your pages are accessible

You could implement the most in-depth Confluence education program in your organization, but it would be a wasted opportunity if your spaces aren’t on par with it. At the end of the day, if you’re not using Confluence to its full potential, everything just falls short. 

Spaces and pages need to be organized in a way that makes sense to help users find what they need. Consistent formatting, adherence to a style guide, ensuring pages are up-to-date, and providing content in various formats — from videos to infographics to charts — all help cater to employees with different learning styles. On top of this, you should take full advantage of Confluence’s vast array of templates and macros to structure your spaces, and don’t forget to use labels consistently to keep things organized and navigable!

4. Use external apps like Viewtracker

Imagine this: You’ve spent hours organizing your spaces and pages and poured even more time into designing the perfect guide for your employees. But still, there’s one final, nagging unanswered question: How can you determine if your efforts were worth it? Use the data you can gather with Viewtracker – Analytics for Confluence.

While native Confluence is invaluable as a documentation tool, it falls short when in-depth analytics is involved. Even though its premium and standard plans offer insights, like page views, they only scratch the surface compared to what external tools like Viewtracker can provide. From tracking user behavior to measuring content performance and even identifying outdated or underutilized content, apps like Viewtracker make it easier to ensure your teams engage with your spaces and identify areas for improvement in existing and future content.

Keep your workforce engaged

 

Well-maintained and accessible Confluence spaces make workforces that much more efficient. But remember, Confluence is just a tool; it’s entirely up to you to ensure you take full advantage of it to reap its benefits. 

2 comments

Comment

Log in or Sign up to comment
Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_
Atlassian Partner
January 14, 2025

Refining your onboarding processes is key - not just to teach people about the tools, but to use the tools as part of the learning process. When I was onboarding interns, it was crucial to have consistent instructions and tasks in place. Some things can be done directly in Jira, but Confluence remains a central hub. I encouraged people to take notes and use it as their personal workspace.

I also introduced them to the 'My User Manual' play from Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/my-user-manual 
It’s a great way to teach people how to work with you. For example, we used the 'No Hello' approach to improve communication: https://nohello.net/en/ 

However, one common issue in companies is page ownership. If content becomes outdated and people follow incorrect instructions, processes are bound to fail.

Another frustrating problem is when issues related to documentation are reported, but nobody takes action. It really kills the vibe. To avoid this, companies should establish a routine to regularly review and update pages to keep everything accurate and up to date.

So again, it comes back to engagement and work culture.
We can assign tasks to update a page, but if it’s done just to tick a box, without focusing on the purpose, it will likely result in poor-quality content that doesn’t serve the team effectively.

Like Elena Zanchetta likes this
Elena Zanchetta
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
January 14, 2025

Hi @Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_ thanks for sharing your experience. 

I completely agree with your perspective. The 'no hello' approach can be highly effective for concise and efficient communication. Regarding the quality of updates, it's absolutely critical. A significant issue that can negatively impact communication is the presence of outdated information alongside newer content on the same topic. This often occurs when there's a change in team members or when new people join the organization.

To prevent this, a consistent and quality-focused content management policy is essential.

Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_
Atlassian Partner
January 14, 2025

Great article @Elena Zanchetta

Love the joke about surveys :) 

My team developed Content Formatting Macros that provide advanced macros and templates to help boost Confluence content engagement. 

I have a question about the app Viewtracker, you have mentioned - does it work with GA4? 

Like Elena Zanchetta likes this
Mattia _bitvoodoo ag_
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
January 14, 2025

Hello @Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_ ,

Visits and Confluence content views are not tracked on the front end or by Google Analytics. Instead, tracking takes place at the product level. This has the advantage that page visits are also tracked if the browser or browser extensions are set to prevent tracking.

Or is your question about whether Viewtracker also sends the tracked data to Google Analytics? Perhaps you would like to tell us more about the use case so that we can better answer your question.

Kind regards,

Mattia

Elena Zanchetta
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
January 14, 2025

Hi @Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_ thank you :)

What exactly do you mean by your question? As Mattia also mentioned, Confluence content views and visits are not tracked by GA4. Were you thinking of some kind of integration?

David at David Simpson Apps
Atlassian Partner
January 15, 2025

@Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_ If you need to integrate with GA4, I can thoroughly recommend Google Analytics in Confluence by David Simpson Apps :)

Like # people like this
Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_
Atlassian Partner
January 15, 2025

My case is when we use Confluence as a website for end-user documentation or demo space, it is pretty helpful to see the things that Google Analytics gives: Source/Medium, Channels, Events of visitors. I know that one team has connected their documentation space to GA, but I don't know what tool they used for that.  

Like # people like this
Elena Zanchetta
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
January 15, 2025

Hi @Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_

Thank you for sharing your use case. It has helped us understand what you need. In this case, if I understand correctly, it's more about the KPIs you want to track than the tools. Viewtracker can also track visitors, Confluence related events like views, edits, likes, comments etc. In the Data Center, Viewtracker can also track sources. If you want to have a look at the documentation, I have collected some links here that might help you:

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions :)

TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events