Announcing our Intranet Superstars: Best of Simpplr 2024 contest winners

We are so thrilled to announce our Intranet Superstars — the winners of our Best of Simpplr 2024 contest! Dedicated to our customers, we created this contest to celebrate the achievements and innovations on intranets powered by Simpplr across the globe. And wow, did our customers deliver!

We received entries from customers spanning myriad industries — all demonstrating how internal communicators and employee experience professionals go above and beyond when it comes to driving innovation, fostering engagement, and strengthening company culture for their organizations.

A tough challenge for our judges

It wasn’t easy for our judges to select winners from among so many outstanding entries. We’re grateful to our phenomenal judging panel for tackling the tough task of choosing the best of the best.

• “As soon as I started to dig into things, I realized I made a huge mistake. How could we ever distinguish between so much top-tier work? One thing I did notice in each and every submission wasn’t just the quality and creativity of work. It was the strategy measurement and dedication to the employee base that reminded me that we’re not just order-takers. We are fundamental and virtual parts of our companies.” ~ Julie Miller, Internal Communications Manager, Internal Events at GitHub
• “It was exciting and an honor to be a judge for the Simpplr awards. All the submissions were really creative. Some of the videos stretched the imagination a bit and used some creative tools, communication and engagement practices.” ~ Scott Ashen, Director of Digital Workplace Experience at Integral
• “I love seeing the creativity that comes out of our industry, and your entries did not disappoint. I loved looking through all of them and having a sneak preview of what some of you spend countless hours working on. Kudos to all of you for making magic happen at your companies and truly caring about the employee experience.” ~ Kristin Hancock, VP of Community & Engagement at ICology
• “It was an honor (and a challenge!) to be a judge for all your amazing entries — they were all so good! The focus you placed on connecting your employee experience to the essence of your unique brands and company cultures is admirable. I loved the passion on display for each of your organizations. It was clear how much the employee experience is valued in your organizations!” ~ Barbara Massa, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at NightDragon

Best of Simpplr 2024 contest winners

And now, without further ado, here are our winners by category!

Best employee engagement

Winners for this category illustrated how their intranet isn’t just a platform but a digital workplace where culture, community and engagement flourish. Our judges chose the intranets with the highest “% contributors & participants” metric. The winners for this category are:

• Agero
• CooperSurgical
• TEAM Marketing

These winners demonstrated that their employees keep coming back to the intranet for organizational news and to get immersed in company culture, sharing a steady stream of comments, likes and new posts. A big round of applause to these organizations for raising the engagement bar with their intranets!

Agero

Agero hosted a virtual “Give-A-Thon” for call center employees on their intranet, the HUB, to increase engagement via the platform. Employees could win prizes by engaging with intranet content in various ways, including uploading images to Open Albums and commenting on specific pages. “By utilizing different engagement forums, we were showcasing the different ways that employees can engage with content, in an effort to get analytics increased throughout the year,” said the Agero Culture and Communications team. “By providing them a fun and engaging way to explore the intranet, we helped to create the behavior of how they should be navigating the intranet outside of the competition to find content that we want to put in front of them.

Agero created the dedicated HUB site to serve as a one-stop-shop for all things “Give-A-Thon,” which made it easy to track analytics and group related content. Managers, senior leaders and others shared the HUB content via Slack and email and encouraged call center employees to “like” it — and even associates outside the call center participated in the fun. “So many people coined the phrase, ‘we broke the HUB,’ because of how much traffic was driven to it,” the team said. “This was definitely the most monumental HUB engagement activity that our call center folks have ever participated in!”

CooperSurgical

By modernizing their intranet technology, CooperSurgical hoped to connect employees within all units, locations, countries and time zones and establish a strong company culture by fostering employee engagement. They succeeded. Their intranet adoption rate hit 94% across 123 departments in 45 locations.

“At a global company like ours, it’s important that we ensure employees feel connected to their peers in different regions and parts of the organization through our shared mission,” said Kristel Alliaume, Sr. Director, Integrated Marketing Services. “At CooperSurgical, we have an employee highlight series that calls out the successes of different team members globally, so that we all may feel empowered by living true to our values and ‘accelerating what’s possible’ every day.”

TEAM Marketing

“Giving all employees a voice and a platform goes hand-in-hand with building community and promoting transparency — two key strategic pillars that help TEAM achieve its vision to ‘be the best place to develop a career in the sports marketing industry’,” said Stephanie Strigenz, Sr. Corporate Communications Manager. “We sought to streamline internal communications by adopting an intranet-first approach and providing an intuitive home for knowledge sharing”.

In the seven weeks since TEAM launched their new intranet:

• 99% of colleagues have logged in at least once
• 97% have viewed content
• 87% are actively creating and/or engaging with content
• Consistent 70% reach for content promoted on the home dashboard carousel, with must-reads achieving up to 94% readership

“Our previous intranet platform was over 10 years old and really limited two-way communication and engagement. With Simpplr’s platform, features like audience targeting, rich analytics, notifications for ‘must read’ content, a master event calendar, sites for every department and photo albums have allowed us to communicate more effectively, while simultaneously creating a much more engaging and positive user experience,” Stephanie adds.

Learn best practices to raise employee engagement

Best intranet usage

The best intranet usage winners showed a continuous effort to create content that users view and find valuable. Our judges chose the intranets with the highest “% of users who viewed content” metric. The winners for this category are:

• Bond Brand Loyalty
• IAA
• Workiva

These organizations demonstrated that their intranet is the go-to place for employees to discover compelling, up-to-date content. Congratulations to these winners for offering intranet content that keeps their employees coming back for more!

Bond Brand Loyalty

Shared responsibility for intranet ownership and governance, paired with a stellar support experience for site owners, have propelled Bond Brand Loyalty’s intranet usage to 99% of users who have logged in and viewed content over the past 12 months. “We launched Simpplr with 20 sites and 20 site owners from across the business and provided training to ensure they were set up for success,” said Natalia Predko, Content & Communications Specialist. “Our rigorous content governance process includes regular meetings, content review processes, communication calendars, as well as a dedicated Intranet Standards and Templates site with resources on site development, management, and content development.”

Other strategies to increase intranet usage have included:

• Quarterly meetings with all site owners to analyze their site analytics, highlight bright spots and uncover areas of opportunity
• Optimizing content searchability through effective categorization, keyword usage, and assigning strong topic tags
• Regular intranet content planning and publishing cadence, including must-read content like client wins and organizational news and announcements

“We also leverage Simpplr as our centralized employee communications hub, making it crucial for employees to check Simpplr regularly, or else they’ll be out of the loop with what’s happening in the organization,” Natalia said. “Overall, we ensure that Simpplr provides valuable, up-to-date, and engaging information driving user engagement — which is evident through the adoption of the business to use this as the place to go for all things Bond.”

IAA

IAA launched its new intranet, Inside IAA, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as the organization’s virtual HQ to connect a global, dispersed workforce during a critical time. “Inside IAA is a success story for the strategic use of an intranet to support an organization that continues to grow and thrive while managing great change,” said Laura Marchiafava, Internal Communications Manager at RB Global.

Strategies to drive intranet usage include:

• Weekly newsletters that guide home carousel content
• Regular use of tiles to center specific information (specific events, employee recognition, strategic news)
• An internal communication strategy that connects emails back to intranet sites and resources, defining Inside IAA as the location for timely and relevant news and resources
• Regular syncs with site owners and content creators to align on the best flow of information for their projects
• A focus on keywords, simple language, well-known phrases and common needs
• Empowerment of site owners to promote and share their pages from in-app notifications as well through integrating their sites and pages into their communications

By taking a strategic approach to centering Inside IAA in communications and across teams, intranet usage metrics have skyrocketed over the past 36 months:

• 5,100+ users, 28 active sites, 6 sites in development
• Demonstrated YoY growth
• More than 1 million content views
• 15,100+ content likes
• 2,100+ comments and 1,100 comment replies
• 86% average content engagement
• 96.3 average content views per user
• 2,000+ pieces of content delivered
• 39% of users actively contribute or participate

“In 2023, we were acquired by RB Global and today, we continue to use Inside IAA to support over 5,000 of our employees. Not only has it become a source for news and communications, but strategic sites owners also leverage our intranet to host their collective knowledge on how best to do business and deliver for our customers,” Laura said. “Simpplr has elevated the way we communicate, engage and connect. Through the dedication of our application managers to train and guide our site owners, as well as the enthusiasm of our site owners to drive their teams to Inside IAA, we’ve created a proven intranet that continues to attract engagement, growth and integrations.”

Workiva

Workiva’s intranet, CONNECT, benefits from a steady stream of content to keep employees engaged and informed. “Last year we published over 1,100 pieces of content that kept our audience engaged and in-the-know with all things Workiva,” said Chris Worrick, Sr. Internal Communications Specialist. “We were able to secure a ‘99% of users who viewed content’ stat!”

Explore 10 types of essential intranet content

Best improvement metric

To win the best improvement metric, organizations had to provide metrics that showed a remarkable improvement when they moved to Simpplr from their legacy intranet. Our judges chose winners with the best improvement metrics. The winners for this category are:

• Ares Management
• OPTrust
• TriNet

There’s nothing more exciting than implementing new technology that benefits your entire organization. These winners demonstrated improvement in metrics such as the number of employees visiting the intranet, sending fewer emails since employees can easily find important information in one centralized hub, and even the ability to track metrics that were out of reach before. Fantastic job to these winners for implementing a new easy-to-use intranet that’s been proven to outperform their legacy intranet.

OPTrust

OPTrust replaced their legacy intranet with “the Cube” to support culture, collaboration and community — and with about 90% of users viewing content monthly, it’s clear the Cube is doing just that. “We said goodbye to an outdated intranet and organization-wide emails and said hello to a more curated, centralized, and social intranet for all our latest news, information, events and more,” said Natalie Geley, Manager of Digital Media. “We went from zero metrics to over 96% of team members visiting the Cube within the first few weeks of launching and that number has held steady every month to date.”

Within the first year of launching the Cube:

• 99% of users logged in at least once
• 98% of users viewed content
• 75% of team members contributed or participated in 906 published content items
• Users gave content a total of 3,484 likes, 386 comments and 227 replies

To date, content on the Cube includes:

• Eight community sites supporting inclusion, diversity and equity, and charitable efforts
• Four initiative sites supporting strategy and recognition
• 13 corporate sites
• Four department sites
• 1,257 published content items across all sites
• 69,539 unique content views
• 5,107 likes, 614 comments and 283 replies

TriNet

“Prior to adopting Simpplr as the news and information platform for our company intranet, TriNet relied primarily on email to deliver company-wide communications to our colleagues. With so many emails, it was too easy for some critical information to get lost in the noise,” said Ira Gottlieb, Divisional Vice President, Corporate Communications. “We saw an opportunity to launch The Source and enhance the effectiveness of our internal information-sharing at TriNet – while building increased engagement with our colleagues.”

A provider of full-service HR solutions for small- and medium-size businesses, TriNet’s goal with utilizing Simpplr was to significantly reduce mass distribution emails to their colleagues, which was achieved in 2020 and has held steady ever since — even as the number of pages published on The Source has significantly increased.

“Leveraging The Source has enabled us to focus mass distribution emails on those which are a top priority or urgent, which helps our colleagues focus on the information they need most,” Ira added. “TriNet colleagues know that spending just five minutes a day on The Source enables them to get company news and information in one, convenient place.”  

Get insight into easier intranet implementation

Best leadership content

This category showcases leadership content that motivates, inspires and shapes company culture. Our judges chose what they considered the most compelling leadership content. The winners for this category are:

• AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah
• Cloudera
• Texas Mutual Insurance Company

Leaders at these organizations have gone above and beyond by leveraging the intranet to deepen connections with employees and increase alignment on shared goals and objectives. Bravo for creating leadership content that is fun and engaging!

AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah

“At the heart of our organization lies The AAA Way, a guiding principle that empowers our Team Members (employees) to excel in serving our Members and creating a great place to work,” said Sergio Avila, Internal Communications Manager, AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah. So how do you align more than 5,200 employees on that principle while showcasing the human side of the organization’s decision-makers? A compelling leadership content series.

The 2023 “Behind the Blocks” series features a captivating blend of informal interviews and strategic Jenga showdowns with the executive team, tackling authentic conversations in an engaging and relatable manner. “The series has been met with resounding success, as evidenced by enthusiastic feedback and engagement from Team Members,” Sergio said. The series drove a 41% increase in likes and 17% increase in comments compared to other intranet content.

Cloudera

Cloudera’s human-first approach to leadership communications shines through in the company’s recent series of e-staff interviews. “In Cloudera, usually the leadership content that receives the greatest attention is in the ‘fun’ content category,” said Dora Feher, Sr. IT Project Manager. “We have a strong, core culture of leadership interviews, which includes not just business but personal successes, achievements, interests and fun facts.”

The recent series of interviews with leaders including Cloudera’s CEO, CFO, CISO and CMO combined business and personal insights to paint more vibrant, accessible portraits of each featured leader. “I often hear in the company — especially from people with long tenure — that it’s the people in Cloudera who always keep them going,” Dora said. “I think this is a great indicator that we truly care for and about each other, not just as colleagues, but as individuals, too.”

Texas Mutual Insurance Company

To share the exciting news that Texas Mutual Insurance Company’s longtime employee, Jeanette Ward, was named the company’s first female president and CEO, the internal communications team created the “3 things with Jeanette” intranet series to help employees get to know her better and stay in the know on company initiatives. Texas Mutual posted three episodes of Jeanette sharing what’s on her mind and encouraging employees to connect through a fun engagement challenge. For example, in the first episode, Jeanette shared two truths and a lie. The first person to guess the lie in the comments won a YETI.

For each short episode, the internal communications team recommended three focal topics, provided talking points to Jeanette, filmed in less than an hour, and delivered quickly. “This approach made for a light lift on the part of our new CEO from a time perspective and a content perspective,” Jimmy said. And engagement has soared, with the episodes garnering 2,588 views, 95 likes and 77 comments and replies.

“Employees shared in the comments how proud they are to work at Texas Mutual with Jeanette leading the way,” said Jimmy Daus, Communications Specialist. “In addition to the positive engagement from employees, Jeanette also jumped in and responded to comments within the post. This helped create a sense of community on our intranet and gave employees an avenue for connecting with our CEO.”

Take the leadership engagement challenge

Best video content

The intranet superstars for this category shared video content that’s helped drive business outcomes, boost engagement, or elevate the employee experience. Our judges chose what they considered the most compelling video content. The winners for this category are:

• OneSource Virtual
• Silicon Labs
• Solarity Credit Union

The internal communicators at these organizations know how to make employee communications shine through video content. With videos that put a hilarious spin on their intranet launch to reels that showcase the impact of employees’ efforts and what it’s like working in different locations, congratulations to these organizations for their creative use of video content to enhance the employee experience.

Silicon Labs

For a global company like Silicon Labs, a modern intranet is critical to keep employees everywhere informed, connected and engaged. And few content formats are more engaging than video. That’s why Silicon Labs created a video to announce the launch of their new intranet, The Circuit. “The Circuit is a crucial element of a semiconductor. It provides power to the semiconductor, giving it the energy it needs to function — so we named our intranet The Circuit accordingly,” said Regan Zuege, former communications manager.

Leveraging the Native Video capability within The Circuit, Silicon Labs also created a World Tour of all the company’s offices. “We showcased a Day in the Life video to give everyone company-wide some insights into what our various offices are focused on, how business is conducted there, and what the culture in their office is like, including the various perks,” Regan said. “It has been HUGELY successful!”

Solarity Credit Union

“At Solarity Credit Union, members are the center of our universe,” said Pamela Shaw, Training and Development Coordinator. “They are the reason we exist.”

Solarity created the four Measures of Member Obsession (MoMOs), “non-negotiables” expected from employees every time they engage with members, to ensure that each interaction is extraordinary, Pamela explained. “We’re so passionate about this that we’ve done extensive training on the MoMOs. But we were also looking for a way to help make the MoMOs more real for our employees, which was the genesis of a site on SIMON, our Simpplr intranet, called ‘My MoMO Moments.’”

The video series showcases employees sharing their stories. They describe a time when they used the MoMOs to go above and beyond to create a connection with Solarity members, solve a problem, address a need and ensure the member was taken care of. “These stories are inspiring! They cover a gamut of situations and scenarios and help highlight how to use the MoMOs in everyday interactions to make a difference in the lives of our members,” Pamela said. “We’ve had outstanding adoption of the 4 MoMOs as a result.”

Please note: Due to the sensitive nature of member information shared in the videos, Solarity preferred not to share the video content publicly.

Learn how to supercharge engagement with visual content

Best branding

For this category, winners illustrated how they’ve woven their organization’s visual brand throughout the intranet. Our judges chose what they considered the most brilliant branding. The winners for this category are:

• Infrastructure Advisory Group
• Samet Corporation
• Snowflake

These winners demonstrated that they have a keen eye for design — leaning into their brands’ unique graphics, color palettes and more to make their intranets 100% their own. Kudos to these winners for reflecting their brands on their intranets with such thoughtfulness and finesse!

Infrastructure Advisory Group

IAG launched their intranet, The Loop, in February 2023. “From the outset, we wanted to showcase our visual identity on the platform through the incorporation of our colour pallet and First Nation’s artwork, creating a vibrant, eye-catching and cohesive look and feel that translated across the homepage, sites and content,” said Kate Konstantinou, Manager of Business Development and Communications. “Effectively using IAG’s artwork and branding has helped to further connect our staff to the IAG brand and strengthened our internal culture. By incorporating a consistent look and feel on all our content, we have built audience familiarity and recognition.”

IAG Chief Corporate Officer Alex Taub said maintaining a strong and engaged corporate culture was vital through IAG’s recent period of rapid growth. “Enhancing our connection to IAG’s brand has been a critical element to maintaining employee engagement through a period of growth and change,” he said. “The look and feel of The Loop played a key role in defining who we are as an organisation and represents the vibrant and dynamic corporate culture we value so much.”

Samet Corporation

“We have an absolute design phenom who made it her mission to ensure Samet has a cohesive brand, and that is reflected in every design decision and graphic we produce,” said Sam Wroblewski, Internal Communications Specialist. “From graphics to color toning, the strength of our style rivals much larger companies.”

Snowflake

For the video to launch Snowflake’s intranet, The Fridge, “Our team wanted to lean into the blue hues that are iconic to our company’s brand and the cool nature of Snowflake’s name while differentiating ourselves from what employees would typically see at Snowflake,” said Sr. Employee Communications Manager Aubriana Muna.

Taking inspiration from brands like SMEG and Frigidaire, the team created a retro-style refrigerator packed with news and culture to keep employees full. They designed site icons to mimic fridge magnets, with wittily titled sites such as “The Crisper” to help content managers keep their content fresh. “The launch video of The Fridge demonstrates The Fridge brand perfectly, as well as the executive-level partnership from our CIO and CMO that made it a reality,” Aubriana said.

Please note: Snowflake preferred not to share their video publicly.

Best intranet name

This category represents the intranet names that truly reflect the culture and identity of their workplace, embodying their organization’s values and mission. Our judges chose what they considered the most captivating names. The winners for this category are:

• Avalara
• Missouri Employers Mutual (MEM)
• Sunrun

These organizations strategically picked an intranet name that echoes their values, has significant cultural relevance for their organization, and is catchy enough for their employees to remember. Shoutout to these organizations for coming up with such clever names for their intranets!

Missouri Employers Mutual (MEM)

Missouri Employers Mutual is a regional work comp insurance company with a focused vision to promote safe, healthy and injury-free workplaces. “Safety is an evolving subject; there are always new methods, innovative technologies, and improved ways to keep people safe. As a result, not only do our employees need to understand how we continue to evolve as a company to meet the needs of our customers, but also how we provide for their well-being as our greatest resource,” said Kayla Leach, Digital Content Coordinator. “We are always improving and expanding our educational resources, benefits and roadmap to a more successful future.”

MEM gave employees the opportunity to select the name for the company’s new intranet after they implemented Simpplr in 2020. “Employees overwhelmingly chose to embrace the name ‘WHAM’ — a name that reflected our bustling community,” Kayla said.

A team of WHAM “Power Users” serve as subject matter experts, site managers and brand champions — repping the WHAM name to new employees and leading new efforts, Kayla continued. The WHAM Knowledge Base provides new employees a centralized place to both learn how to effectively use the intranet and understand the culture behind it. And a weekly newsletter, “WHAM This Week,” ensures employees remain up to date on the latest happenings at Missouri Employers Mutual.

Most creative use of intranet

The standout achievers for this category illustrated how they’ve taken their intranet to new heights in unconventional ways. Our judges chose what they considered the most creative use cases. The winners for this category are:

• Ivanti
• Nutanix
• Quantexa

It’s no easy task to transcend the ordinary and embrace the extraordinary on the intranet. These organizations devised creative strategies to drive engagement. Awesome job using the intranet in creative ways!

Ivanti

Inspired by a 2023 employee engagement survey, the Ivanti Vision Competition sought to strengthen the connection between employees and the company’s vision. Ivanti’s intranet, Ivanti Everywhere (IE), “serves as the epicenter for information and resources to help employees succeed in the competition,” said Tai Herndon, Senior Employee Engagement Marketing Manager at Ivanti.

The entire leadership team, including the CEO, kicked off the initiative by engaging in a creative vision pitch contest. “This activity encouraged interactive engagement while simplifying information and helping employees understand and embrace Ivanti’s vision,” Tai explained. The intranet provided employees with one-stop access to resources including executive leaders’ video pitches, a study guide and the official vision PowerPoint deck. “In creating an inclusive digital platform, we ensured engagement and consistent participation throughout the campaign.”

Employees engaged in a series of weekly team challenges designed to fortify their understanding and build knowledge of the company’s mission. The company updated the team leaderboard on the IE site at the end of each day to motivate employee participation. The weekly team challenges — such as a scavenger hunt, a game of visionlib, crossword puzzles and a knowledge test quiz — were also linked to the Ivanti Vision website.

“The campaign achieved remarkable success,” Tai said.

• Participation rate of 41%, a significant increase from the usual internal engagement rate of 18%
• 4,500+ views in Q4 2023 alone
• Overall intranet usage increase of 14%
• Vision intranet site was the second most visited among 108 total sites

“This campaign allowed our employees to perceive their roles as pivotal contributors to the vision’s realization,” Tai said. “The Ivanti Vision Story Competition illustrates the potential of interactive corporate storytelling as an effective tool in aligning and galvanizing an organization’s workforce towards a shared vision.”

Nutanix

What’s a creative way to drive employee engagement on an intranet? A virtual talent contest! “We were looking for a way to increase engagement globally and to help drive traffic to our intranet,” said Jacquie Garces, Sr. Internal Communications Manager. “We decided to run a virtual talent show using only the intranet to introduce and run the contest.”

The team launched “Nutanix’s Got Talent” with a fun Cameo video. They dedicated an individual intranet page for each employee submission and invited their colleagues to vote for their favorite performance/artwork by liking the page.

“We had more entries than expected, so we divided the voting into four categories over multiple weeks to avoid overwhelming employees with too many choices,” Jacquie explained. Talented employees with the most likes on their page moved into the final round of the competition. “We also took advantage of using the intranet to announce the much-anticipated winners.”

Nutanix’s Got Talent was a huge success:

• More than 130 entries from across the globe
• 1,900+ total views of the Winners Announcement page (the highest viewed content over the previous year)
• 2,331 likes/votes

“During the month of Nutanix’s Got Talent voting, there were more likes on the intranet than all prior months combined — going back to the introduction of the Nutanix intranet in 2019,” Jacquie said.

Most effective for recognizing employees

These organizations successfully highlighted how they leverage the intranet to appreciate and celebrate employees is a powerful way to reinforce a positive and supportive workplace. Our judges chose what they considered the most effective recognition use cases. The winners for this category are:

• Credit Acceptance
• Quartz Health Solutions
• Zembl

These organizations have unleashed the power of appreciation — using their intranet to recognize and reward employees for exceptional performance, demonstrating company values, even celebrating milestones outside of work. Congratulations for using the intranet to help employees feel valued and more connected to your organizations!

Credit Acceptance

“The way the Simpplr platform enables us to engage and recognize our employees has enhanced the culture of our company in such a positive way,” said Krystal Barrad, Web Content Specialist. “Before we had Simpplr our intranet was not user-friendly. We immediately saw a 30% jump in usage when we launched with Simpplr and our engagement continues to increase, as well as our employee response to our Fortune & Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey.”

At Credit Acceptance, every story is a people story. The company’s intranet bustles with content that “spotlights team members driving change and getting the work done to highlight business successes and reiterate our purpose and strategy,” Krystal said.

Employees are appreciated and celebrated each week through videos, podcasts and stories that highlight their successes to inspire others and build pride in the work being done both inside and outside the workplace. Via comments, team members support and celebrate each other and build a stronger, more connected culture of recognition.

• Recognizing team member milestones: Every month, Credit Acceptance recognizes team members who are celebrating a milestone anniversary and encourages them to tell their story firsthand. In addition, there’s a page dedicated to team members who reach 30 years of service.
• Recognizing the names behind the business success: Even business objectives are presented as recognition stories, with focus on a team member in each piece of content.
• Honoring altruistic team members: Team members who give back to their communities are recognized and encouraged to tell those stories in their own words.
• Top performers share their tips for success: Giving recognition another spin, Credit Acceptance invites team members to share why they are successful firsthand.
• Welcoming new hires: New team members are highlighted and encouraged to share a fun fact about themselves, with a link to their profile so people can reach out and welcome them.
• Employees sound off on new initiatives: Team members involved in a recent pilot program recorded testimonials about the program’s success, helping others see the pilot from their perspective while building a culture of recognition for stellar work.
• Dealer Obsession stories: A dedicated site recognizes employees who help the company’s primary customers succeed. Team members can submit their own stories via the Dealer Obsession Story tile and are recognized in the newsletter as well as in the home carousel.
• Unburied Life: Understanding that a fulfilling life means more than just work, Credit Acceptance encourages team members to pursue bucket list items and share their stories.

This people-focused approach to intranet content has made a big impact on engagement. Stories about team member milestones and achievements or with team members in the feature photos drive significantly more views, Krystal said. For example, views increased by an average of 112% when the cover image for the monthly leadership strategy post shifted from a branded group leadership pic to an image of a single leader in which their personality shines through.

“The way we have been able to use Simpplr’s intranet to recognize team members and support our communications strategy has had a huge impact on the Fortune & Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey and our position on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list!”

Quartz Health Solutions

Quartz Health attributes its notable intranet usage and engagement metrics — including 99% of users logging on, 99% viewing content, and 30% being contributors/participants — in large part to the “many ways we use our intranet to recognize our employees for a wide variety of things,” said Lori Devoti, Sr. Internal Communications Specialist.

From recognizing employees who excel at their jobs to those who’ve experienced special success outside of work, new hires to long-term team members, employees who embrace company values to those who engage with their coworkers, Quartz makes the most of their intranet’s features and functionalities to celebrate and appreciate their people.

Here are a few ways the company leverages myriad tools for employee recognition:

• Newsletter feature spots: Highlight recently promoted employees in the weekly Connections all-employee newsletter, and showcase employees new to leadership in the bi-weekly Leadership Link leaders-only newsletter.
• Home and Site dashboard tiles: Share tiles to welcome new employees and to celebrate employees’ work anniversaries and birthdays on the home dashboard, and include the New Employees tile on the dashboard of the New Employees site.
• Articles in weekly newsletters: Use the weekly all-employee newsletter and site to recognize individual employees, cross-functional teams and departments for retirement, innovation, learning and process improvement, and more.
• Articles featured in a special “Spotlight” section of home dashboard: In addition to important news and announcements, the Spotlight section includes shoutouts to employees who have been recognized in some way outside of work.
• Albums: Employees share images of team retreats, volunteer activities, company-wide “fun” and even personal news such as a new baby.
• Leaderboards on pages and tiles: Site managers create their own leaderboards to recognize employees who excel in specific activities.
• Videos: Use videos to introduce new leaders to the organization, share stories of employees (Employee Stories series) who exemplify our values, and celebrate employees both at work and away from work.
• People profiles: Use people profile pages to recognize both new employees and employees who have hit key marks in employment tenure, by greeting new hires with a custom welcome banner and adding custom Service Award Badges to those who have hit key marks in tenure.
• Other pages, tiles and carousel: Leverage pages on various sites to highlight employee accomplishments and build a sense of belonging through recognition, and highlight many of these pages in the main carousel.

“Many departments also use the intranet to profile team members, recognizing each person as an individual and building belonging within their teams,” Lori explained. “Our intranet is an essential tool for recognizing our employees’ success at work, in our communities and as individuals.”

Get inspired by these employee recognition examples

Best employee onboarding experience or site

This final category is dedicated to organizations that make the most of the intranet to help get new hires up to speed and immersed in company culture. Our judges chose what they considered the best employee onboarding experience or site. The winners for this category are:

• Grafana Labs
• Option Care Health
• Sargent & Lundy

These organizations showed that they leverage the intranet to get new employees up-to-date with important news and information while immersing them in company culture starting on day one. Congratulations for creating intranet-based onboarding experiences that give new employees all they need to succeed from one central space!

Grafana Labs

“We put a lot of effort into organizing and setting up our onboarding site — and we’ve gotten great feedback and engagement,” said Grace Sharpe, Learning & Development Specialist.

The onboarding site has garnered some impressive engagement metrics, including:

• 83% adoption rate
• 93 pieces of content published
• 80% of users who viewed content
• 115 likes in past 30 days

The onboarding site has drastically streamlined the onboarding process for new hires by consolidating all necessary onboarding materials, resources and information onto one platform. “New hires can easily access everything they need without having to search through various sources or ask multiple people for guidance,” Grace said.

Intuitive navigation features make it easy for new ‘Grafanistas’ to find what they need quickly. And having dedicated onboarding sites for each area of the business has reduced confusion and frustration, allowing new hires “to focus more on absorbing information and getting settled in their new roles.”

Starting at day one, Grafana Labs’ intranet keeps Grafanistas connected, informed and engaged.

“Braintank serves as a repository for knowledge and resources, enabling Grafanistas to easily access relevant information, documents and best practices,” Grace said. “This fosters a culture of continuous learning and empowers team members to make informed decisions and perform their jobs more effectively.”

Option Care Health

Option Care Health takes an engagement-first approach to new team member onboarding, with the organization’s intranet, OCHO, playing a key role in the experience. “OCHO helps to provide a place for new employees to find a variety of resources, ultimately helping our new employees engage in their roles faster and support our purpose of providing extraordinary care to our patients,” said David Janz, Senior Project Manager.

In addition:

• Option Care Health hosts new employee training for 90 minutes weekly to help acclimate new team members, covering topics ranging from a company overview to benefits to culture.
• The Commercial team also provides in-person sales training twice per month to quickly ramp sales staff. “This team loves to break up the training content with games like Jeopardy. These training cohorts turn colleagues into friends,” David said.

Sargent & Lundy

“At Sargent & Lundy, we immerse new hires in our culture from the moment they first open their web browser,” said Brenda Romero, who oversees Sargent & Lundy’s Corporate Communications team. “Our intranet, The Loop, sets the stage for an interactive experience that makes new employees feel welcome, informed, and engaged.”

Positioning The Loop as “the central hub of our work lives” starts when new hires are greeted by The Loop as their default homepage. “This immediate exposure subtly integrates them into our company culture from the very beginning,” Brenda explained.

Onboarding training includes a dedicated session on The Loop and provides a detailed overview and exploration of the platform. It explains what The Loop is — a platform to equip employees with quick access to relevant information that helps them do their jobs, improve organizational agility, and connect them as one Sargent & Lundy — and how to navigate to critical software through multifactor authentication integration. “This hands-on approach ensures they have the knowledge and confidence to navigate and use The Loop effectively,” Brenda said.

Sargent & Lundy encourages new hires to start their journey with The Loop Challenge, a fun and engaging scavenger hunt. “New hires embark on a guided exploration, navigating the platform to discover key resources, connect with their supervisors and colleagues, and add skills and experience to their profile to enhance our intranet community,” Brenda shared.

Updated weekly, a welcome tile on the homepage also provides new employees with a warm greeting, along with their names, locations, and job discipline. “This creates a sense of belonging and appreciation right from the start,” Brenda continued.

“The Loop is more than just an intranet; it’s the foundation for a successful and fulfilling career at Sargent & Lundy. With its engaging onboarding experience, it empowers new hires to hit the ground running and become valuable members of our team.”

Prizes for contest winners

A huge thank you to all customers who entered our first Best of Simpplr contest. And more kudos to our winners for your exceptional use of our modern intranet platform to enhance and elevate the employee experience at your organizations.

All winners will receive an exclusive Intranet Superstar badge for their intranet and website, plus a virtual experience for their team worth up to $500 or a $500 charity donation.

Bookmark this blog post — we’ll continue to update it with content from the winning entries!