Wellways Australia, a leading not-for-profit mental health and disability support organisation, has launched their new intranet on the Elcom Digital Employee Experience Platform. The intranet will provide its 2000+ staff members across 97 work sites and remote working with an effective way to support a positive and collaborative organisational culture.
Over the past 5 years Wellways expanded rapidly, significantly increasing its number of staff, office locations and states of operation. With this growth came silos between offices, teams and states, leading to difficulties sharing information and knowledge across the organisation.
Wellways built an intranet on SharePoint 2013, but it was no longer fit for purpose. Most of their casual workforce didn’t have an Office 365 account which was a requirement to access the intranet. The staff who did have access couldn’t find what they needed. Email was the only way to mass communicate with their workforce.
Kiel Hall, Digital Producer at Wellways, explains, “There was a saturation of information coming through to people’s personal inboxes, including top-down communications, cross-team updates, and peer-to-peer communication. There was no hierarchy of importance, and we weren’t sure people were reading our emails. A modern intranet could provide an organised space where people could go to get the latest information and business updates.”
The Wellways team first looked at what their staff needed from an intranet. Front of mind was that the intranet had to be responsive and work across all devices since approximately 60% are ground staff who use handheld devices. It was also important that the platform allowed users to be created directly in the intranet to help cater for those who do not have Active Directory accounts or user logins.
The vendor selection criteria went through platform, experience, cost and support provided after the project deployment.
Hall explains, “Elcom had worked with other NFPs, and the cost compared to a lot of the other vendors was quite reasonable as well, particularly as they offer an unlimited user licensing model. Another reason we chose Elcom was that their servers, data and hosting are located within Australia, which is one of the usual requirements for grant applications we apply for.”
“We needed a lot of support from a vendor to implement the platform and ensure that it was easy to use after deployment. So far, the support Elcom have provided has been substantial. I don’t think I can speak highly enough of the Elcom team. The implementation has been smooth, and I’m really pleased with the intranet. It is easy-to-use and does not rely on technical users to make updates and changes. At its core, we wanted an intranet that works for people and lets them find the information they need to do their jobs – and that’s what this intranet does. It serves everyone in the organisation,” continues Hall.
Josh Anstey, Customer Solution Director at Elcom comments, “It has been a real pleasure working with Kiel and the team, helping them build a new modern intranet on our Digital Employee Experience Platform. We’re grateful to know we played a part in supporting the wonderful staff at Wellways who make a difference to the lives of individuals living with mental illness. We look forward to continuing this partnership and ensuring it meets the needs of their staff in the many years to come.”
The new intranet will assist Wellways in the following ways:
- Ensure all staff and volunteers have access to the intranet. Security permissions will be used in a later phase to provide different views to different groups.
- Improve internal communications across all offices at all staff levels, delivering the latest business updates, news and content in a central interface that can be viewed on mobile and tablets.
- Ensure staff read critical updates via an alert function and reporting on how many have or haven’t read the communication, broken down by group data.
- Make it easy for staff to access up-to-date organisational knowledge, policies and procedures using taxonomy, user-friendly navigation and optimised keyword search.
- Improve business efficiency and simplify processes. For example, streamlining the onboarding and orientation of new staff via induction packages hosted on a central interface that is easy to find and reference as needed.
- Support and promote a positive culture for all Wellways staff through sharing cross team news, highlighting successes, and facilitating discussions in social communities and social feeds.
- Support connectedness with a Staff Directory integrated to Active Directory and Office Locator. There will be additional fields managed by staff for expertise, skills, interest and pronouns.
Read the Wellways success story.
About Wellways
Wellways Australia is a leading for-purpose mental health and community services provider dedicated to ensuring all Australians lead active and fulfilling lives in their community. They work with individuals, families and the community to help them imagine and achieve better lives.
Wellways advocate for change to make sure people can access the best possible care and information when they need it. They provide a wide range of services and assistance for people with mental health issues, disabilities, youth, those requiring community care and carers.
About Elcom
Elcom partners with organisations to build meaningful and productive intranets and digital workplaces that empower staff to perform their best, anywhere and on any device. Elcom’s out of the box intranet built on the Elcom Digital Employee Experience Platform comprises over 100 modules of functionality, together with multiple third-party connectors that can easily be activated depending on your organisation's requirements.
The platform can also be extended for portals (board portal, client portal, member portal and supplier portal), and has a built-in learning management system for online training, eLearning, staff onboarding and compliance. Elcom is used by organisations across all industries including Transport for NSW, Inner West Council, Ascham School, Kia Motors Australia, Forty Winks and Orica.