Congratulations on launching your digital employee experience platform!
You’ve put in a lot of hard work, and it’s finally here. But don’t think your job is done just yet. The real work starts now.
One of the first questions you might ask yourself post-launch is “was your project successful?” Well, it’s too early to say for sure. But you can take steps to increase the chances of success by following these five critical tips:
- Track Success and Complete Your Objectives
- Stay on top of Product Updates and Manage Product Support
- Implement and Evolve Content Platform Governance
- Continued Enablement and Training
- Create and Promote New Content
In this article, we’ll discuss each of these tips in detail. We’ll also provide tips on how to implement them successfully.
So whether you’re just about to launch your intranet or you’re looking to improve the one you already have, read on for essential advice!
1. Track Success and Complete Your Objectives
Before you implement your digital employee experience, it’s important to define your objectives. What do you hope to achieve with your intranet? Some common objectives include:
- Decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information
- Increasing access to subject matter experts across the organization
- Creating a single, trusted source of truth
Once you’ve defined your objectives, you can start to implement a digital employee experience–or, intranet–such as LumApps, Happeo, Interact, MangoApps or Simpplr. During the implementation process, work with your entire team to ensure that your objectives are laid out, and then met at each step. We often work with our clients before and during the implementation to gut-check your objectives and make sure that the intranet is launched on time and within budget.
After your digital employee experience is launched, keep a team in place to ensure its success. Our customers need regular check-ins to ensure they choose the right new features, and get the internal training and support their employees need for adoption of new workflows. Don’t forget that after any new upgrade or feature add-on, it’s critical to keep your employees informed about new functionality that may be important to them.
To successfully deploy and maintain an intranet, we recommend weekly or bi-weekly meetings for the first few months and then at the very least quarterly or preferably monthly meetings after the first few months post implementation to review your current state and continuously nurture your existing technical landscape and culture.
Learn more about how Agora Consulting Group can help you with your LumApps implementation.
2. Stay on Top of Product Updates and Manage Product Support
Product Suggestions
Did you know that you can suggest product updates to digital workplace software providers? If there is a need for custom-created features for your company intranet, or digital employee experience, to improve team collaboration, you can write your own product suggestions and send them to your vendor, or request assistance from Agora Consulting Group, who can even help you create your own custom add-ons without the uncertainty of requesting changes from the vendor at all.
Here’s a recent example from a Simpplr customer: Although Simpplr’s content tile allows for surfacing and promotion of content from a single site and page category, the customer needed to be able to surface content from multiple page categories and multiple sites in the same content tile. Agora Consulting Group worked with our developers to design a customer solution for the customer.. Agora is always happy to help you add value to your company by suggesting product updates.
Tracking Issues Inside of the Intranet
Support tickets can be frustrating. Sometimes, you don’t know what questions to ask the development or support team, and find yourself in a back and forth conversation with dozens of emails before you figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it.
At Agora, we help our customers by making sure they are asking the right questions and providing all the necessary information in the support tickets to avoid lengthy back-and-forths with support and ultimately solve the issue quicker. We can also advocate for specific enhancements and suggestions, and then track and see if it’s going to get done. We will also advocate solutions for you. Sometimes we can help bring in the right people to actually create a custom developed tool or solution for your team.
3. Implement and Evolve Content Platform Governance
In the context of company teams and employee intranet systems, governance refers to the set of rules, policies, and procedures that guide the use of these systems. It is important to have strong governance in place to ensure that these systems are used effectively and securely.
Some key elements of governance include:
Defining the roles and responsibilities of employees who use the intranet system.
Setting policies for the use of the intranet system, such as data security and privacy policies.
Monitoring the use of the intranet system to ensure compliance with policies.
Providing training on the use of the intranet system.
Governance can help to protect the company from data breaches, ensure compliance with regulations, and promote the effective use of the intranet system.
Governance is about two things: content and process. Content governance is about how we organize and present content. Process governance is about who is managing what on the site and who has permissions.
It is important to have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, and how everything fits together. This is because you don’t want admins who don’t know what they are doing. It is common to see one or two people who are experts in many different areas, while no one else knows much about those areas. So, we need to create an actual governance map that outlines the rules on what it takes to run the intranet program. This map should identify the roles involved, what each role looks like, and who that person is. It should also make sure that everyone knows who is responsible for what, from the steering committees to the content owners and creators all the way down to the champions and advocates.
Here are some additional tips for effective governance:
Keep it simple. Don’t create a complex governance structure that is difficult to understand or implement.
Be flexible. Things change, so be prepared to adjust your governance structure as needed.
Get buy-in from all stakeholders. Make sure everyone understands the importance of governance and their role in it.
Communicate regularly. Keep everyone informed of changes and updates to the governance structure.
Monitor and evaluate your governance structure. Make sure it is working effectively and make changes as needed.
4. Continued Enablement and Training
Enablement is the process of helping employees learn and use new skills and knowledge. It can be done through a variety of methods, including training, coaching, and mentoring.
There are two main types of enablement:
Enablement on existing functionality: This type of enablement is typically used when new employees join the company or when existing employees need to learn new features of a software application.
Enablement on new functionality (new releases): This type of enablement is used when new features are released to a software application.
How to Get the Most Out of Enablement
There are a few things you can do to get the most out of enablement:
Make sure your employees understand the purpose of the enablement program.
Provide them with the resources they need to succeed, such as training materials, online resources, and access to experts.
Encourage them to ask questions and seek help when they need it.
Evaluate the effectiveness of your enablement program and make changes as needed.
Pitfalls to Avoid
There are a few pitfalls to avoid when implementing enablement:
Don’t assume that your employees know how to use the software application.
Don’t provide too much information at once.
Don’t forget to provide ongoing support after the initial training.
Don’t make the enablement program too rigid.
Enablement is an important part of any successful software implementation. By following the tips in this blog post, you can ensure that your employees are able to get the most out of your software application.
Enablement / Training and Deployment of Functionality
At Agora Consulting Group, we often assist in the enablement of product functionality during the initial deployment and while maintaining and exploring future enhancements. Agora Consulting Group can assist you in the deployment of advanced functionality which may be in the form of a product add-on during a phase 2 or 3 deployment.
Create and Promote New Content
The most important part of any intranet is the content. Make sure to create content that is relevant to your audience and that will keep them coming back.
News and updates: This could include articles about company news, new products or services, employee achievements, and industry trends.
Employee profiles: These could be short biographies of employees, with information about their roles, experience, and interests. This can also include employee spotlights and / or employee recognition.
Training materials: This could include documents, videos, and other resources that employees can use to learn about new skills or processes.
Policies and procedures: This could include information about company policies, such as dress code, vacation time, and sick leave.
Forms and surveys: These could be used to collect data from employees, such as for performance reviews or customer satisfaction surveys, intranet sentiment surveys, NPS surveys.
Social media feeds: This could include links to the company’s social media pages, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
These are just a few ideas, and the specific content that is included in an intranet will vary depending on the needs of the organization.
Designing the Interface
The design of your digital employee experience is also important. Make sure it is easy to navigate and that the content is easy to read and understand. It’s important to Use clear and concise language, headings and subheadings to break up text, images and videos to illustrate your points. And always work to create a consistent design throughout the intranet.
Promoting Your Content
Once you have created your intranet, you need to promote it to your employees. Make sure they know about it and how to use it. Some ways to promote your intranet content include:
Sending out emails
Creating posters and flyers
Holding training sessions
Adding a link to your intranet on your website
Measuring Results
Finally, it is important to measure the results of your digital employee experience. This will help you to see how well it is being used and make changes as needed. Some ways to measure the results of your intranet include:
How many employees are logging in to the intranet
How engaged are employees with the content on your intranet
Which parts of the organization are leveraging the intranet and consuming, engaging with, and / or contributing content
Which parts of the organization are finding the information and resources that are relevant to them effectively and efficiently
Breaking a sweat yet? We got you covered!
To ensure the success of your digital employee experience, it’s important to track success, keep the vendor accountable, suggest product updates, create governance, and enable/train employees. Agora Consulting Group can help you with all of these tasks. We have a team of experts who can help you define your objectives, implement your intranet, and track its success. We can also help you with product suggestions, governance, and enablement.
If you’re looking for a partner to help you succeed with your intranet, contact Agora Consulting Group today. We’ll be happy to help you get the most out of your investment.