Medvivo provides Wiltshire’s GP Out of Hours service as well as a range of other health and care services. The main office is based in Chippenham, with services being operated from bases across the whole of Wiltshire as well as from offices in Dorchester and Bexley. The services run 24/7, 365 days a year, with employees who work full time and part time to cover shifts as well as sessional clinical staff.

Location and a shift based workforce therefore provide two significant challenges for us to overcome to enable effective communication with our workforce.

For the past six months, we have been working with Interact to transform how the business communicates. We wanted to re-launch our intranet making it much more than a document repository. As a provider of health and care services, access to vital resources is paramount; but so is employee engagement and communication. The new intranet, webvivo, will become the place for everyone at Medvivo to “connect, collaborate and communicate.”

Simon Lucas, Medvivo’s Chief Information Officer, comments: “With having such a varied workforce and an extensive library of resources, we wanted to launch the new intranet with a plan in mind to get everyone on board and showcase the full functionality the new site had to offer.”

Working closely with Interact’s Project Management Team, we were able to really focus on creating an intranet strategy that would deliver on its vision and build a structure that would have everyone engaged from launch.

Tom Kharchi at Interact said: “The governance meeting we had with Medvivo was pivotal in developing their intranet strategy. From there, getting the technology and structure in place was straightforward. It was great to see the site evolve as ideas came to fruition and the intranet came to life.”

Webvivo has been live for two months now and we have adopted a number of useful techniques to ensure the new intranet begins to build staff engagement, including:

Publish “how to” videos

Although the new site is intuitive enough to not require any training, a quick overview of the key features for launch was helpful and also provided the opportunity for sharing useful tips for getting the most out of the intranet.

Nominate champions or intranet advocates

A number of user testers recruited prior to launch can help generate content and engagement on the site in advance. This can then be extended to a wider group so that once launch is imminent there will already be a large circle of existing users in place ready and willing to get involved and encourage other users to get on board.

Plan monthly or bi-monthly campaigns

In addition to general business news and updates or resources being added to the site, internal communications campaigns can be planned run to keep driving traffic to the intranet. Whether this is joining in with existing national awareness campaigns, or creating new ones, this activity encourages staff engagement on a different level to business as usual.

Use features such as quizzes and polls

Bring new pages to life by incorporating a quiz or poll relating to its content. This is a great way to demonstrate what has been published is understood and will be appropriately applied in the work environment.

Share and engage daily

Lead by example and use the previously recruited testers to ensure you engage with them (and them with their colleagues) post go-live and continue to do this as more and more people start to engage with the intranet.

Simon continues: “We really liked the social interaction functionality that Interact provided with the new intranet. Most people have engaged socially on one network or another, so we wanted to use this angle to motivate staff to get online at work. We have been really impressed with Interact’s approach and their expert knowledge in helping us build an intranet that we are proud of.”

The Digital Workplace is continuing to evolve, as does the technology that supports it which means companies like Medvivo must work hard to keep their workforce connected, regardless of their location or hours of work. With Interact, Medvivo has developed an intranet that supports an effective and productive workplace while encouraging a socially connected workforce.

To contact the Business Communications Team please call 0800 6444200 or email communicate@medvivo.com

About Interact

Interact is a global enterprise software company that serves intranet software to over one million users across more than 750 organisations. Interact specialises in solving internal communication and collaboration challenges by combining their sophisticated intranet software with outstanding professional services, focusing on developing long-term strategic partnerships with their customers.

For more information about Interact, visit www.interact-intranet.com