Viva Connections brings together 8,500 hospitality workers

The challenge

Previously over 8,500 frontline staff accessed news, insights, and operational information through a custom-built mobile app. However, with the pandemic putting pressure on operating costs, the app was expensive to operate, limited in its ability to enable two-way communication and had poor integrations with third party systems.

Alongside these challenges, our client’s SharePoint 2010 intranet was also approaching end-of-life.

With an existing investment in Microsoft 365 already in place, there was an opportunity to leverage this and launch a new seamless digital experience that was designed for their predominantly frontline workforce.

Against the backdrop of operational challenges presented by the pandemic, what started as a mostly technology-led project, quickly became mission-critical for broader business operations. With tight deadlines looming, it was important the solution was designed to remove technical hurdles, met business needs and ensured the business was prepared for the upcoming change.

The solution

With 70% of the workforce being frontline, human centered design was key to ensuring widespread uptake of the new experience.

The first step in our journey was to run a series of discovery workshops to understand business needs and challenges. Through this discovery phase, we identified several challenges through employee feedback that was crucial to be considered from a technical, UI and design perspective when creating their new digital employee experience.

The results included:

• Time wasted due to information stored in different systems, making it difficult to know who to speak to or where to get help
• Rostered staff did not have access to dedicated computers and access to shared devices was limited
• There was poor Wi-Fi coverage in some areas
• Staff were time-poor and would typically spend only short amounts of time on a device. The need for quick and mobile-friendly access to important information, such as pre-shift briefings and general company updates was critical

With their challenges understood and employee frustrations clear, our approach was to deliver a series of connected solutions through M365 to modernise their systems and transform their overall digital employee experience.

This included:

• Re-designing their SharePoint 2010 intranet on SharePoint Online
• Building a new mobile app to their frontline, leveraging Viva Connections
• Developing an Enterprise Social Network strategy and launching Yammer

The result

Reduced operational costs

By decommissioning the legacy mobile app, our client no-longer has a highly customised or bespoke platform that is costly to operate or support. Our client has reported operating costs have significantly reduced, with an estimated $65k of savings reported between November 2021 through to June 2022 alone.

Improved usability and access for all staff

• The move to SharePoint Online has been well received by the frontline workforce with an immediate positive impact being felt. Over 3000 additional users accessed their new intranet in the first full month of its release with a total number of 24,023 visits in total. Whilst page views remained consistent at 366k within this period, users have found the site easier to navigate and information quicker to find.
• For the first time ever, team members are now able to access everything they need through the mobile app with a single sign-in. This has improved efficiency as employees can access information whilst on the go.
• With our client’s previous intranet only available on desktop, having a mobile app is changing the way employees access information. 69% of visits now come from mobile which is overwhelmingly the device of choice.

Saved time in administrative overhead

• Previously, the internal communications team would spend multiple days monitoring, administering, and moderating the Facebook Group. Switching to Yammer has removed the need for this. By launching Yammer, the time to source, curate and distribute org-wide news updates has been reduced from 22 hours per week to just 1.5 hours.
• Within the first 30 days, Yammer had half a million interactions with 5k people joining the Sydney Community alone.

Opened lines of communication

Critical information can now be distributed and “boosted” to a ‘Top News’ card on the dashboard, which has provided the communications team with the confidence that the right audience is being reached.