Change Communication Strategy Supports Successful Intranet Launch

THE SITUATION

A leading global biotechnology company had grown largely through acquisition, resulting in multiple, disconnected internal websites full of stale content and mismanaged pages. On top of that, poor search and navigation capabilities made it challenging for the company’s 55,000 employees to find what they needed, when they needed it, let alone know if it was up to date.

The company envisioned a digital workspace that would connect colleagues around the world, help them to work smarter and innovate faster, and support the company for future growth. They set out to create a single, next-generation intranet platform and prepare employees for a significant change in the user experience.

WHAT WE DID

Blue Beyond partnered with the client to develop a comprehensive Change & Communications Strategy & Work Plan to engage stakeholders while transforming their disparate intranets into a cohesive collaboration tool.

We worked alongside the project team to establish credibility early into the process by not only leveraging the company’s formal process improvement approach as they planned their roadmap, but also rallying executive sponsors – with representation from Communications, HR, IT, and Finance – to champion this work and help remove obstacles throughout its development.

The client recognized the need for a robust – yet agile – plan, allowing room to flex to changes in their environment. The detailed change and communications plan successfully engaged stakeholders early and ultimately drove adoption by changing the way employees work. With Blue Beyond, the project team successfully:

• Designed a strategy for how to engage leaders to support the change and inspire others to embrace the change through their behaviors
• Created a plan to identify and engage early adopters and “ambassadors” to help build support for the tool, cascade information, and conduct basic training
• Facilitated a risk assessment/analysis to identify potential obstacles and possible impacts, and created an action plan to prevent or minimize any risks from occurring
• Established baseline metrics and designed a measurement strategy for monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and reporting results

OUTCOME AND EARLY METRICS

The effort was praised as one of the company’s most effective technology change initiatives in years. After several months of impressive results following the new intranet launch, the company’s senior director of employee communications, and senior manager of intranet solutions, were invited to speak at the Advanced Learning Institute’s Annual Intranet & Digital Workplace Summit to share their strategic execution plan as a best practice for success.

“We wanted a robust change plan and we got one.” — Senior Director of Employee Communications