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Take a look at the templates below to see what your website could look like. You can even log in as one of your potential clients to see what they would have available as well!Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson was, in his way, the Scott Walker of the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of a cadre of young Republican governors who overturned a longstanding status quo and whose policy innovations -- welfare reform first of all -- transformed the nation.
In an interview today, Thompson praised Walker and described him as a successor to Thompson's generation of governors -- but stopped short of endorsing his proposals to structurally weaken public sector unions.
"Governor Walker is following along in the lines of being a very strong innovator," Thompson said, noting that Wisconsin had pioneered everything from the progressive income tax to workers compensation to welfare reform, which produced protests but "a smaller volcano" than the one in Madison today. "He believes -- and I think rightly -- that he only way to solve this [budget] problem is to make some dramatic changes early on in his administration, so he can rebuild the base and open the doors for jobs."
Thompson also recalled his own generation of Republican governors in the Midwest.
"The governors like Engler and Leavitt and Branstad and Ridge and Arne and myself, we were on the cutting edge of a lot of things back then," he said. "It takes the governors to change the federal direction, and I think it was shown in many areas in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I think governors after that just stopped.... From ’95 until now the governors were more acquiescent to the Federal Government."
"Now you see a new breed of governors saying, 'We are the laboratory of democracy,' and you see it across the country – and I think that's fantastic," he said.In 2021, intranets, digital workplaces and digital employee experience have proved to be critical in ensuring business continuity, engaging employees and keeping everyone informed during an incredibly difficult year. The digital tools and important information that employees access every day have proved to be of incredible value; similarly, the teams behind these channels have played a huge role in helping individuals, teams and businesses navigate the challenges of COVID-19.
The 2021 Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards show the very latest trends in intranets and digital workplaces. They confirm that digital employee experience continues to evolve and improve. Interest in the awards remains strong and this year we received 69 entries from 66 organisations in 20 countries, an increase of nearly 25 percent on the volume of entries from last year. Entries covered the full range of organisations of different sizes, across different sectors and from different territories.
A wave of employee communication apps that focus on the specific needs of frontline staff is revolutionising the digital employee experience for a group that has previously been poorly served by digital tools.
At last frontline employees have a mobile-first digital experience accessible on their own devices that is driving engagement and improving processes. The digital gap between frontline, mobile, field and customer-facing staff on one hand and knowledge workers on the other is starting to close.
Global logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL has over 500,000 employees worldwide, most of whom work on the frontline. The company aims to deliver a single app to all employees that provides strong frontline DEX through content, integrations and useful features, but is relevant for every employee through local and regional variations.
The sheer ambition of one common mobile app and the scale of the project is daunting, but the team is already making great progress, supporting operations in different territories, and driving momentum with a carefully crafted launch campaign.
Other solutions carefully pinpoint specific frontline needs. Russian steel producer NLMK launched an app focused on the custom needs of staff working in plants. Available on employees’ own devices, the app provides access to NLMK’s corporate portal but also includes additional features.
These include a safety hazard reporting feature where photos can be submitted, a back-up of a person’s mobile security pass if it has been forgotten, and the ability to request PPE equipment. By focusing on very specific frontline use cases, the app is driving both adoption and value.
At Irish retailer Woodie’s, a social intranet and mobile app engages retail employees through a mix of transparent communications, peer recognition, lively hashtag campaigns, CEO blogs, polls, celebration of Woodie’s culture, and operational information. The mix of strategic thinking and excellent execution has resulted in a large uptick in engagement over a number of years and spectacular levels of adoption.
The mobile-first approach has also been essential, as 70 percent of access is through the mobile app, mainly on personal devices. The result is a digital employee experience that has continually improved over five years.
The links page of NLMK’s employee app. Screenshot appears courtesy of NLMK.
Health and wellbeing has been on the HR agenda for a while, but it is now increasingly visible across intranets and digital workplaces, mainly in content, but also in features too.
The stress and uncertainly caused by COVID-19 has focused attention on the importance of wellbeing even more, and it is now at the heart of digital employee experience across many organisations.
At Adobe the project team working on the Adobe Life solution decided to place wellness at the heart of the mobile app, with a variety of content including information on mobility exercises, circuit training, health-related podcasts and even opportunities to cook along with Adobe chefs. Tips for effective working from home and information about returning safely to the workplace also focus on the wellbeing theme.
Other intranets are also surfacing wellness-related content in increasingly visible ways. The Monetary Authority of Singapore created an area on its homepage for the recreational club, promoting social events, wellness talks and related programs.
At MassMutual, the team took an imaginative approach to fill the space where the (currently closed) canteen menu would have been on their homepage, instead providing healthy recipes from their staff restaurant partners. Meanwhile at UK retailer John Lewis Partnership, a microsite was set up for furloughed staff that also featured content on wellbeing to help staff through a very difficult time.
Wellbeing is also a subject for innovation. At Russian housing organisation DOM.RF, the team created an advanced intranet which provided access to numerous digital services, including a series of advanced employee dashboards. One of these was a highly innovative employee burnout dashboard that uses artificial intelligence to examine digital interactions and identify employees who are in danger of “burnout”. Other HR dashboards provide context to see if interventions should be made to support employee wellbeing.
The full impact of this is still to be ascertained, but it is an unusual and exciting development that indicates the prominence currently being given to health and wellbeing across the world of DEX.
The innovative employee burnout dashboard at DOM.RF. Screenshot appears courtesy of DOM.RF.
The ability to be agile, flexible and adaptable to ensure a lightning-quick response to organisational and employee needs is now a critical quality for the teams who manage intranets and digital workplaces.
“Agile” as a methodology has been increasingly prevalent in digital workplace projects, but the importance of having an agile mindset and applying iterative approaches has never been so crucial for so many teams.
During COVID-19, teams have exhibited extraordinary levels of digital workplace “dexterity” in order to respond to a situation that remains highly volatile. They have proceeded with speed and imagination to make all the difference to help employees.
Cleaning services provider SERVPRO used the intranet to support essential business operations across a huge franchise network, stretching its intranet nearly to breaking point by using it to launch a new COVID-specific cleaning line. This resulted in US$300m of revenue and met high demand in response to an extreme weather event.
Equally impressive was the way the team used the intranet in inventive ways to deliver a virtual week-long convention for franchisees with live streaming, interactive chat, recorded events and commenting. With 98 percent participation, this was an excellent result!.
At Adobe, a team working on a campus app for the company HQ showed great spirit by quickly pivoting when the pandemic struck. The scope of the app changed to being global for all Adobe locations with a new emphasis on wellbeing and the ability to support “return to the office” processes that help employees stay safe. The addition of “home” as a location, with homeworking tips, was a nice touch.
Meanwhile at Irish retailer Woodie’s, the team is able to use the social platform and app to understand and respond to employee feedback. This helped to inform the company’s COVID-19 response, but also enabled the team to act on specific suggestions. For example, following a specific employee idea, they amended and updated a savings scheme, and informed employees of the change, all within half an hour! That is truly agile.
Equipment used by SERVPRO to deliver a virtual convention to franchisees via the intranet. Screenshot appears courtesy of SERVPRO Industries.
Successful and sustainable digital employee experience doesn’t happen by magic – it requires strong foundational work to create the right structures, roles, processes and standards that enable DEX. For an enterprise-wide DEX program to succeed, a huge amount of groundwork is needed to define and embed governance.
Governance is a term and concept that intranet