Reach and engage your dispersed workforce
ContactMonkey’s employee SMS tool lets you deliver urgent updates to employees quickly and reliably.
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Ensure that alerts and reminders reach all employees
Employees can receive SMS messages from anywhere—whether they’re in-office, on the factory floor, or working remotely.
Streamline internal communications management
Create, save, and organize SMS messages and internal emails in the same place for optimal alignment.
Embed links, event invites, and reminders into employee texts
Allow employees to open key resources straight from your SMS message by adding URLs within your text builder.
Preview your SMS before sending
See exactly what your employees will receive and avoid errors by previewing all of your SMS content.
Use your existing recipient lists
Select from your most recent uploaded recipient lists or upload a new recipient list using a CSV file.
Track your messages
Check your SMS delivery and bounce rates to keep track of who received your updates and ensure that vital information was delivered.
Deliver crisis communications quickly
90% of texts are opened within five minutes, making SMS a faster, more reliable way for employees to stay up-to-date with the latest alerts.
Reach every employee
Employee SMS was designed to tackle the unique challenges of a fast-paced modern workforce. Healthcare providers, logistics personnel, and retail workers, among other professionals, don’t have instant access to email. But they’re connected to their mobile phones around the clock. This makes SMS ideal for communicating time-sensitive updates and reminders—to anyone, from anywhere.
Get started with SMS for internal communications
You should hear from us within minutes!
Improve Your Internal Communications With ContactMonkey
Reach deskless, dispersed, and frontline workers.
Deliver urgent updates to employees without corporate emails.
Expand internal communications channels for greater reach.
Provide a backup channel in case of email disruptions.
Increase overall open rate across internal communications.
Streamline internal communications management.
Speed up communication.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Following the rules around communicating via text message will help keep your employees happy and informed. In the U.S., these rules come mostly from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and related regulations issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but state laws and mobile carrier requirements also are important.
In Canada, text messaging is governed by Canadian federal and provincial privacy legislation and, depending on the type of message, Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”).
While the sending of text messages for the purposes of direct marketing is tightly regulated by the ePrivacy Directive in the EU and PECR in the UK, those rules do not apply to the sending of text messages to employees for management purposes.
However, employees’ mobile phone numbers are personal data so you should make sure that you handle that information in accordance with data protection law. For example, you should make clear in your employee privacy policy that you will use phone numbers to send messages and you need to keep those numbers secure.
Yes, employees should be notified of the purposes for which their mobile phone number will be used, including the types of text messages that will be sent. Depending on the type of messages, you may need to provide your employees with the option to choose how they wish to receive the text messages. You can find more details on gaining consent below.
Yes, with one possible exception for certain emergency situations. To use our services, we require that our customers obtain express consent from their employees to receive text messages. When gaining consent, you should describe all the types of texts you plan to send. For example, you should explain if you plan to text employees only for emergency alerts, or if you also will text them to notify them of company events, facilities updates, benefits eligibility, and other important content.
Depending on the provinces in which your employees are located and your type of organization, privacy laws may apply to your employees. In general, consent is required to collect, use, and disclose personal information. However, most privacy legislation in Canada permits employers to collect, use, and disclose employee personal information without consent as long as it is reasonable for administering the employment relationship and employees are provided with prior notice. As a matter of best practice, you may want to provide your employees with a choice regarding how they wish to receive certain communications.
In addition, business contact information is not generally subject to privacy legislation where you are using it to communicate with your employees in relation to their employment.
There are a number of good options for getting consent, and we can work with you to implement those. For example, you can post on your intranet site or email your employees a description of your planned use of the services and include a phone number to which employees can text “Yes” to opt-in to communications. You can also gain consent via embedded forms that we can help you create or through QR codes.
The consent should cover the one cell number that will receive the messages, and the person giving consent should be the subscriber or customary user of that phone. Your consent request should give employees a clear understanding of the full scope of the messages you’ll send, and you should indicate that you’ll send the messages via text message.
You should ensure your employee contact information is always up to date. If an employee indicates they no longer want to receive texts, you should remove them from your employee list. You should also remove individuals when their employment is terminated.
Our services are specifically designed to facilitate the communication of timely updates and reminders related to the employment relationship, not to communicate commercial marketing or sales messages. You are not permitted to use our services to send any commercial, marketing, or sales messages including any messages that encourage participation in a commercial activity as defined under CASL in Canada and similar laws will apply in the US.
Our services are designed for internal employee communications that do not involve commercial, marketing, or sales messages.
ContactMonkey can be used for emergency alert situations in which life, health, or safety is at stake, however, you should also support this with additional communications channels to ensure that your messages reach your employees. See below for guidance on emergency communications.
There are no statutory rules that govern when employers may contact employees, but this may be subject to your internal policies and notices you provide to employees. We recommend using reasonable time of day restrictions. Sending texts during employees’ working hours will maximize employee satisfaction.
If your employee has provided you with their personal mobile number for the purposes of receiving employment-related communications (including text messages), then you would not be prohibited from using the personal telephone number to send text messages.
Under federal law in the US, you do not need consent to send communications for an “emergency purpose” (i.e., messages necessary in situations “affecting the health and safety of consumers”). You are most likely to qualify for this exception when sending a message that lowers the likelihood of harm in such a situation, such as a message advising employees to evacuate from or avoid a dangerous location.
For situations in which life, health, or safety is at stake, you should use ContactMonkey in conjunction with additional communications channels to ensure that your messages reach your employees.
Under federal law, no consent is needed for sending necessary communications for an emergency purpose.
While you should consult your own legal counsel for any specific restrictions in statute states where you and your employees are located, so long as the texts are not marketing texts, the guidance above should generally apply.
