The collaborative intranet is essential for maintaining links and enabling remote working

Here's a best of from customer testimonials on employee connection and engagement, collected during the Digital Workplace Days conferences. To maintain the link with employees and facilitate remote working during the crisis, the collaborative intranet has proved essential. While its uses are developing, organizations are continuing their work to make it a true Digital Workplace. 

A priority: maintain the link

"We used all that our collaborative intranet could offer," says Vanessa Gryczynski, communications manager for the construction group NGE. Here, as elsewhere, the pandemic has made it necessary to maintain the link with employees, whether they are teleworking, in the field or on short-time working.

With a discussion thread with the CEO on the first day of the lockdown, a management blog where everyone can speak out, a collaborative space dedicated to the crisis with news, documents to download, a question-and-answer database and even a suggestion box, NGE has pulled out all the stops. "The intranet has become our main channel for communication and dialogue with employees," says Vanessa Gryczynski.

At the French Red Cross, the collaborative extranet, which brings together employees and volunteers, has been enhanced with a portal on the health situation. It is used in particular to organize a daily live video operational update. "Using all the extranet tools was vital to communicate with the greatest number of people in a simple way," says Tatiana Babsky, head of strategic digital projects in the communications department.

"To maintain the link, the corporate social network has played an important role," says Emmanuelle Robino, communications manager at the CPAM of Loire-Atlantique. "Being able to discuss, like, comment, appear with your photo, makes things more human."

Un fort développement des usages

With the crisis, the development of uses has experienced a strong dynamic. Businesses and managers have been quick to take advantage of collaborative spaces to interact with their teams and organize their activities. "Document sharing, conversations, question-and-answer spaces, blogs, wikis, task managers, shared calendars... The use of collaborative functions has soared," notes Rémi Coyo, communications manager at the CPAM de Gironde. The latter had just launched its collaborative intranet when the crisis occurred.

In the community of communes Aunis Atlantique, which launched its own in September 2020, collaborative spaces have also developed very quickly. "The task management and wiki functions are very popular and the team messaging system is widely used," says Juliette Grinard, the communications director.

New avenues of development and new challenges

At NGE, this development of uses will mark the evolution of the intranet. "We were able to better identify what people's expectations were," explains Vanessa Gryczynski. Interaction capabilities will thus be strengthened, notably with the addition of team messaging. The mobile dimension will also be improved, as 80% of the staff work on construction sites and only connect with a smartphone, as well as the international dimension. The group is present in 16 countries.

"Given the success of the intranet, we have also decided to make it accessible to everyone, whatever the means," says the manager. Today, only the 6,000 people with a professional e-mail address have access to it, out of a workforce of 12,600. At the CPAM in Loire-Atlantique, the collaborative spaces are being restructured, with the implementation of sub-spaces for communities and teams. "They respond to the need for closer links," explains Emmanuelle Robino.

After this strong start, the challenge is to maintain usage," says Juliette Grinard. In particular, we're going to focus on community animation, which requires the implementation of real training. But the year 2021 also marks the opening of the intranet to the 20 communes that make up Aunis Atlantique, which will facilitate communication and collaboration with the community's elected officials and the services of the various town halls. At the French Red Cross, the time has come to deploy the Google Workspace collaborative suite and to link it with the collaborative extranet. "Improving mobile usage is another project we want to complete," says Tatiana Babsky.

As for the CPAM of Gironde, it is working on connecting its document management to the collaborative intranet. The dynamic around collaborative tools remains strong. We are still in the discovery phase," admits Rémi Coyo. But our intranet has already become an essential communication and work tool," he notes.

Do you also have the need to create more connections and engagement within your organization ? To learn more about how Jalios Workplace can help, get in touch with our team !