Designing an award-winning intranet: 6 key takeaways

"Baker Hughes went through many changes of brand in recent years, and in 2019 we launched a new identity, purpose, and brand, both in the market and internally. Because of the different changes, we actually had three intranets originally, so you can imagine the challenges. We needed a system that would help us build a sense of belonging within the company, that would engage and connect the whole workforce – including the 30% of workers in the field – and that would be a single source of truth for all resources, information, and platforms in the company. Essentially, we needed a way to consolidate the three platforms into one single one-stop shop."

"Our previous intranet was a basic Sharepoint ‘Frankensite’ – it had basically taken on different aspects over the years and had become a resource dumping ground with no room to expand. It had limited functionality, no clear content ownership, it was unresponsive, had one-way communication, no functional search or tagging – it just wasn’t serving the needs of our employees, and we found they were actively avoiding the site unless it was absolutely necessary."

"We put the user and their needs at the center of the intranet. We wanted a solution that could give freedom to the user, where they can decide what content they want to see, rather than having communicators pushing content they are uninterested in in front of them. We were drawn to Unily due to its personalization features, which allow specific topics of interest to be chosen, meaning every employee gets their own unique experience."

"We wanted to make sure that the user interface was friendly, as we have a varied demographic and so varied levels of user comfort with technology."

"The key thing is cross-functionality. It can be done by a single function, but in our case, we had three functions working together and collaborating seamlessly, as well as corporate affairs. We had IT helping with the technical aspects, the commercial excellence team bringing the digital excellence expertise, and two communications managers to help develop the top-level pages and content."

"We had a solid team for what we were doing. Our digital transformation team was made up of four people and the product owner. We also had senior leadership buy-in, which proved to be critically helpful. With our technology partners, we had more than just tech support – there was creativity and ideation on the content side of things, as well as the employee experience side of things."

"We actually hired a third party to work with us to design the intranet, and they split our employees into focus groups for people that represented the different needs for what they needed from the intranet. The third party was not just beneficial for their expertise and to aggregate the responses, but also to give our employees the ability to be honest and feel listened to. What would they want their dream internet to be?"

"MyBakerHughes was born from its users. We listened as much as possible to their needs to design a solution that fit, and so a huge body of work was conducted at the onset of the project. We interviewed ten leaders from the company up to AVP level, 50 users from different functions and roles, including remote and non-remote workers, and then 5000 employees on a global scale. With this feedback, we wrote a whitepaper that detailed exactly what our employees wanted from an intranet, and we frequently got feedback from users on formatting of the new platform so that we made sure to keep the features that they likes, and changed those they didn’t."

"First and foremost, our workplace intranet needs to evolve, grow and change with the company as we are evolving quickly. This was one of the biggest setbacks from our previous intranets and is one of the reasons why they became so outdated."

"I wanted an intranet that could grow with us. We took a phased approach with Unily – it was a solid out-of-the-box solution that could be a solid offering once we went live. We had the Frankensite before, so we needed something that could transition over time and continue to develop as we do."

"The feature that was most requested through the interviews and surveys was simple and easy-to-use navigation, so we kept this front of mind when designing our intranet. On our homepage, employees can easily access the key resources they use on a day-to-day basis at the top menu. Company updates, career compensation and benefits, daily managements, and IT and HR help and FAQs are all easily accessible from this top menu."

"Design-wise, a priority for us was having a custom experience for each user, so we made sure that people understand and are able to customize the different applications that they access on a daily basis. This is different from field employees to office workers, so it was critical they were able to get the experience they need. Also, we need to make sure the look and feel of the intranet translates well across all devices."

"Our mobile application really speaks to our focus on the roadmap – we weren’t reaching our engagement goals at all with townhalls and emails, so now we have the opportunity to engage employees with real-time information through the mobile app. The knowledge hub is the source of truth for all the tools they need. It’s all bucketed in one area that is regularly updated. The content is rich, having not just text but also video content. We have a news home that is kept freshly updated, meaning those field workers that would have used to have waited to log onto a computer at the end of the day can now access it from anywhere at any time, meaning they are able to do their work more efficiently."