Winner: Workiva - CONNECTS with Employees
Workiva’s CONNECT was created to empower employees by providing a forum for interaction and the dissemination of valuable resources. Unlike other corporate intranets that simply broadcast company information, CONNECT creates a community where users collaborate and engage with each other through blogs, customizable profiles and topic forums. Workiva is a rapidly growing company with over 1,200 employees in 16 offices. CONNECT links all employees in all locations together in real time. CONNECT is scalable and has evolved with the company.
The site is unique because it fosters a culture that is open and accepting of differing ideas and opinions in profiles, blogs and forums. It makes for a friendly user experience, allowing each employee to customize their homepage, and it streams a wide variety of internal and external news sources. CONNECT integrates aspects of traditional intranets by providing the resources employees need to do their jobs, but it has taken the company intranet to a whole new level by becoming a social site that appeals to a younger, tech-savvy demographic—a large part of Workiva’s employee base.
CONNECT is built in-house by Workiva’s web development team in collaboration with its internal communications team. A site built from the ground up and maintained internally allows for constant improvement, customization and growth as needed by the company and employees.
In 2016, the CONNECT team worked alongside Workiva’s user experience team to improve the overal user experience of the website. Along with focusing on how users interact with the site, the CONNECT team created “Workiva Weekly” videos to report on company news. Since the campaign was launched, video views have increased by 30% each week with users spending an average of 7.5 minutes on the page.