Improving communication with employee intranet software

Improving communication and culture with employee intranet software

Argyll Community Housing Association is a charitable organisation, providing affordable social housing across the region. As the eighth largest housing association in Scotland, they offer more than 5,000 homes available for rent, spread over multiple locations across 11 islands in Argyll and Bute. The association is also involved with building new homes, providing support to tenants, and offering a factoring service to private owners.

Strategic Challenges

Absence of a shared internal digital space or intranet

The initial aim of the project was to introduce a central channel, a company intranet to enable better communications. There was no existing internal communication solution in place. Instead, the organisation relied on mass emails and video calls to distribute essential business updates to the entire company.

Employees had varying levels of direct communication with their wider teams and management. The HR team wanted to reduce the number of ‘all company’ emails sent. They wanted to distribute this information in a more centralised platform that enabled employees to feedback to senior management, with reporting tools to understand engagement.

The association wanted to become more fun and engaging in its internal communications strategy. They identified an existing state of ‘top down’ leadership, which the HR team wanted to become more collaborative and inclusive.

Lack of accessible communication channels for many employees

Since lockdown, the team have adopted a blended working model. Employees work remotely or on a hybrid schedule across the widespread Argyll and Bute area. This includes property services and housing teams, alongside fully remote employees such as maintenance engineers who work for a subsidiary company.

As a community-focused organisation, regaining organisational visibility in the local area following the pandemic is a key priority. This aim can only be achieved by employees working flexibly, out in the field visiting properties and speaking with tenants.

This made it vital for all employees to have access to communications and a social employee intranet on the go. Many of the teams working in the community don’t have regular access to a computer, so an internal communications tool that would work on mobile devices, such as phones or tablets, was essential.

Limited in-house resources for implementing employee intranet software

During the proposed sign-on and implementation phase for a new intranet, the organisation was in the process of introducing an updated housing management system. This was a huge internal project with many dependencies, so the HR team would have limited access to development expertise in-house.

For the communications project to be a success, any intranet provider would have to be able to provide hands-on support throughout. Their requirements from the new supplier were initial demonstrations, senior management presentations, full implementation support and continuous improvements.

Solutions and Results

Enhanced teamwork and collaboration with dedicated employee intranet newsfeeds

Argyll Housing have set up three distinct employee intranets to improve teamwork and collaboration across the entire workforce.

The central newsfeed is used to distribute company announcements and improve overall company culture. This has so far been used for formal business communications and announcements. Thanks to real-time engagement functionality, HR can understand and evaluate how their employees engage with their messaging. All team members can react or comment on each announcement, creating a more inclusive communications structure. This in turn also helps the HR team to create more engaging posts.