As a part of Simpplr’s ‘Work from Home’ Series – we wanted to hear from our customers and get insights for what communication tools are working best as they keep their workforce updated and engaged.
Halloran Consulting Group, a valued customer of Simpplr, shared how they had to shift their Simpplr intranet content strategy in the wake of COVID-19 to utilize the platform as their single source of truth.
The organization created and launched their intranet platform in January before the uncertainty of COVID spread 8 weeks later. In the midst of these unprecedented times, Halloran is trying to maintain semblance of their original plan while also keeping employees updated through this transition.
With the spread of the pandemic, the organization heavily relied on Simpplr as an important communication tool to get information organized and communicated to employees. The main goal for their intranet was to organize resources for people and make it easily accessible. Simpplr has enabled them to guide the narrative of what the content is, how it is to be used and link to where it’s hosted.
As a life sciences consulting group, Halloran has consultants spread throughout the US with two offices in Boston and San Diego. This transition forced the organization to increase communication and touchpoints to think about how they use the platform to engage remote employees to ensure they have the right resources. Timing worked out well as they launched the intranet prior to transitioning to remote work so employees knew where to go to find information that they were looking for. The responsibility was shouldered on the employees to seek information since the company had provided the content for them. A key stressor for organizations is overcommunication but by utilizing an intranet, employees are able to control what they’re seeking.
When Halloran launched their intranet, they had 4 sites and were placing initial COVID and WFH communication in the Resource Library but it soon became clear that it needed to be expanded. The organization is using the COVID site to share resources like WFH Best practices, HR updates, client communication as well as the feed feature for employees to share industry links and news.
To maintain a semblance of company culture, Halloran utilizes Slack for informal, daily conversations and launched Halloran Hangouts to keep employees connected and engaged. The various hangouts include themes such as cooking, running, crafting, parenting, books/podcasts etc. These groups are not work focused but do allow individuals to connect for 30 minute hangouts and interact with people across the organization that they may not talk to on a regular basis. The organization is slowly seeing the hangout groups shift to the intranet to help streamline conversations and house resources and expect this to evolve as the groups grow.