The WallSecrets of Housing Intranet Success

About Me

Chris Peters-BondInternal Communications OfficerGrŵp Gwalia Cyf

About Gwalia

Established in 1973, Gwalia today is the largest Housing Association in Wales

Across Wales Gwalia has:

- Around 5500 houses and flats for social rent

- Over 4000 student homes for rent

- Over 150 Care & Support projects providing around 1200 units of support

About Gwalia

Gwalia employs around 1500 staff

260 staff are based in the Swansea Head Office.

Around 100 other locations

About Gwalia

Gwalia is geographically diverse & has a wide service offering

- Social Housing for rent- Affordable homes for sale- Student Housing- Supported Housing- Social Care- Floating Support- Home Care- Residential, Extra Care & Nursing Care Homes

Operating in 16 of the 22 local authorities in WalesGwalia provides:

SharePoint

“SharePoint is a great development platform, but it needs expensive customisation to make it work effectively”

• IT driven project & ‘Out of the Box’ implementation

• Homepage news? Email John in IT!

• Lots of versions of the same documents

• Lack of governance & ownership

• Ineffective search & difficult to use

• Disengaged users – Trust in Intranet lost

• Silo working

Planning

Interact Intranet

• April 2011 Interact chosen

• Cheaper than getting SharePoint to do what we wanted

• Internal Communications Officer recruited

• 12 weeks to deliver

• Engage staff

• Encourage a more open and transparentworking environment

Planning

• Decided to not migrate existing content

• Identify what we ACTUALLY need

• No Department Pages

• Card Sort with users to determine structure

• Blog the project

• Competition to name intranet

The Wall

News Articles

• Decentralised team of content authors (Comms Champs)

• Content has ownership

• Keywords

• Recommended content

• Two way conversation

• Comment, Like and Share

• Mandatory Reads

• Targeted Information

The Wall

Blogging

• Senior Management & Project Teams

• Raise profile of individuals

• Humanising effect

• Raise awareness & understanding of projects

• Two way conversation

• Comment, Like and Share

• Less formal than a briefing

In 2011 there was 1 blogger*.

In 2013 there are 33…

The Wall

My Page

• Contact Details at a glance

• Facebook style collaboration

• Tag people & content

• Reduce reliance on email

• Activity timeline

• Gamification

• Share Skills & Interests

The Wall

Workflow & Forms

• Eliminate Paper Forms

• Save time and double handling data

• Reason to visit Intranet

• Workflow

• Reporting

The Wall

Discussion Forums

• Easy to use

• Encourage debate

• Share Best Practice

• Practical work based discussions – not just Classified Ads!

• Reinforces open and transparent working

The Wall

Wiki

• Share Best Practice

• Research Materials

• Sector Information

• ‘How To’ Guides

• Anyone can publish

The Wall

Redesign*

• Growing Organisation

• Consolidation of brands

• Promotion of Values

• Maintain Staff Engagement

• Revamp homepage

• Utilise Intranet Best Practice

* Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen was not involved with the redesign although we did pretend to be a bit like him when choosing wallpaper patterns

The Wall

Some Stats

• Over 80% readership

• 3.19 pages on average per visit

• 249 likes

• 18 new blogs entries

• 75 blog comments

• 12 new discussion threads

• ‘Policies’ most popular content area

• ‘News’ 2nd most popular content area

July 2013

Future Plans

• Mobile working

• Integration with HR Systems

• Encourage further collaboration

• Upgrade?

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