Transforming employee engagement: How bolttech increased intranet visits by 104% with Viva Connections
bolttech is an international insurtech with a mission to build the world’s leading, technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance. Headquartered in Singapore, the insurtech serves customers in more than 35+ markets across four continents, North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. With a full suite of digital and data-driven capabilities, bolttech powers connections between insurers, distributors, and customers to make it easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance and protection products.
Client
bolttech
Industry
Insurance; Financial Services
Organisation Size
1600 employees
Country
Global
Technologies
SharePoint Online & Viva Connections
Context
As ambitious, fast-growing leaders in the insurance and technology space, bolttech understood the critical role a seamless digital experience plays in their success. However, their existing intranet wasn’t cutting it. Employees wanted more than the static homepage, and they wanted to easily find relevant and up-to-date information, including important news, leadership updates and events.
bolttech were aiming for a dynamic and connected digital workplace that would support their ongoing growth and equip their employees with the right tools and information to foster a sense of belonging.
As experts in employee digital experience, Engage Squared was thrilled to kick-off their transformation journey with Viva Connections and a refreshed intranet homepage. And just like their business goals, their timeline was ambitious – deliver both in time for their next Global All Hands, just 6 weeks away. Challenge accepted!
The challenge
The challenge for bolttech wasn’t simply implementing a new intranet homepage and the Viva Connections dashboard. It was about setting the right tone for a larger digital transformation journey.
First impressions matter and the pressure was on to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience that would not only meet their current needs but also represent a new, more connected and inclusive employee digital experience.
A unique challenge with this project was working across two tenants. Whilst all employees had access to the one bolttech intranet, some employees would have a different Viva Connections desktop experience. A key objective was to make the Connections desktops as similar as possible, whilst not overloading the Communications team to duplicate content.
The main areas of concern they wanted to address included:
- Connecting employees to organisational updates
- Creating a sense of belonging within the organisation
- Access to relevant information and resources whilst on the go
- A scalable solution that could grow with the company.
Our approach
A strong vision is key to the success of any project, regardless of size (or in our case, a tight timeframe). Therefore, we started the engagement by defining bolttech’s goals and guiding principles which acted as our north star and determined the prioritisation elements of the solution.
Their guiding principals were:
- Is the solution scalable?
- Will employees feel more connected?
- Is the solution inclusive?
- Does it support compliance?
From here, we explored the art of the possible in Viva Connections and SharePoint Online. We encouraged bolttech to think about what could be achieved with out-of-the-box (OOTB) functionality, as well as its future potential. An example of this included the “Hot Jobs” which opens in a new tab today, but in future could dynamically display vacant positions, and the HRIS quicklink could evolve into a custom tile, enabling employees to view and book leave without leaving the dashboard.
Our approach to managing the secondary tenant Viva Connections desktop experience was to use news links rather than posts, which would still support a dynamic OOTB news dashboard card and publish news items in the news carousel – but with minimal effort from the Communications team. We also decided to use web links to a central events list on the bolttech intranet, so the team would not have to maintain a duplicated event calendar.
As the team geared up for launch, we provided training and support to the M365 team and the project team so they could prepare for success and feel confident in maintaining the experience going forward.
Result
We were delighted to deliver Viva Connections and the refreshed homepage 10 days ahead of schedule, giving the team time to build out content before its official launch at their Global All Hands.
In the first month, the new bolttech homepage experienced:
- A 104% increase in visits
- 525 new unique viewers
Key features included:
- Events card displaying upcoming global holidays and days of significance – key for understanding when colleagues may be on leave but also for those employees who are on the move.
- People search helping employees find colleagues and explore their org chart.
- Centralised quick links to all key systems and resources that were previously scattered and hard to find.
- A sleek and vibrant homepage design which reflects bolttech’s brand and values.
- Seamless access via the pinned bolttech Connections app in Teams.
We wrapped up this engagement with a little add-on for bolttech: a recommendations roadmap, not just for Viva Connections and the homepage, but for their whole digital workplace. This included guidance on improving their information architecture, reviewing, and creating dynamic groups to target content, and best practices for content governance, Teams, and the rest of the Viva suite.
There’s no challenge too big or too small for Engage Squared. Whether you’re looking for a quick win like implementing Viva Connections to better engage employees at every level and location, or you to overhaul your digital workplace – we’re ready to work with you.
