Rather than rely on surveys, we visited around 100 staff across the entire organisation to get a first-hand account of their pain points and expectations for communication.
A working party was formed with representation from different business segments. A list of goals and key requirements for the intranet was established and developed into a Request for Proposal. Working Party members assessed responses on an individual basis across a key set of criteria. A decision was then made by the group for Elcom as the preferred vendor due to functionality, the ability to tailor the product to suit our needs and the fact that it was a more sophisticated solution offering.
To embed the intranet into our culture, we appointed intranet champions who are key to sharing the benefits of the intranet to staff, good news stories and feedback to us. Staff from a diverse range of areas were selected for a 12 month leadership course, and training leveraging on our intranet has become integral to certain components of this course and these staff have become intranet champions.
We launched Archi, our new intranet, to internal staff. When designing the home page, we were conscious of incorporating features which would attract staff to utilise Archi on a day to day basis to assist them in their jobs. For example, we have incorporated three separate calendars shown via tabs, for committee meetings, training and events. This is particularly great for training, allowing staff to access information on training being conducted across the organisation.
We also wanted to customise Archi for different staff roles as much as possible. Quicklinks to key programs that assist staff to do their job have been tailored for different business segments. User data including group memberships is sourced from Active Directory and Preceda, which is matched to groups in Archi. For example, we have set up a team for our WHS Committee, which consists of a wide variety of staff from various geographic locations, where they are able to access Committee meeting minutes and other relevant information.
Because we’re in such a regulated industry, compliance is king and staff often have to read important updates. With the acknowledgements module, we can add a box at the top of the page with the update, a link to more information if needed and a button to click to acknowledge they have read the information. We can then track who has and hasn’t acknowledged the update.
It was very important for us to give staff easy access to policies, procedures and forms. We previously used Laserfische which staff found difficult to navigate. In Archi, we use taxonomy when uploading our documents. This allows for a user friendly search engine and the ability to add document lists throughout the intranet.
One of the exciting tools that hasn’t reached its potential yet is the customised calendar feature. We offer a huge amount of training programs for our staff to enable them to provide the best care possible to our residents and consumers. Our educators used to put it into a hard copy which would be sent out to our different services and printed out. The ability to go to a central calendar with all the details required, that can be updated in real-time, is another bonus for us.
We’re still in the early stages and have a list of content and enhancements on our intranet roadmap. We’re working on adding more quick ‘go to’ resources. We're in the process of adding a Chemical Register which is going to be a massive improvement to access that in a simple, easily accessible manner. We use a lot of different chemicals in cleaning and it will house all relevant information such as safety guidelines. We’re also working with one of our clinical team members to upload accreditation resource kits for staff.