An Intranet That Empowers Employees, New York Times Case.
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To align their new human resources vision, The Times wanted to rethink their intranet. Our goal was to identify useful features around internal tools, while making it useful for employees.
Reorganizing The Times' Intranet for Improved Communication
To start, we had to understand how the intranet was currently organized and how it reflected the current organization.
We found that historically, the Newsroom was separated from the other teams.
However, The Times wanted to change the communication flow to increase communication between all teams.
Our challenge was to figure out how to transform their current space radically while still making it feel natural for employees ?
Creating an Empowering Intranet Experience for the Employees
One of our sub-challenges was to "empower employees" with this new intranet.
We put a lot of energy into answering the question, "How can an intranet, from a company, really empower employees?"
Our suggestions included:
A Search tool, starting with its label itself : “How can we help ?”
Categories highlighting the key issues for people, like health insurance questions, or “feeling stuck in your career?” questions.
Days off you can benefit highlighted clearly
Company’s position on diversity and inclusive writing as journalists
Each category led to evergreen content to help employees with those daily struggles or questions. By displaying those categories as a company, we sent the message that "those questions are okay, and yes, we can talk about it."
Simplifying Onboarding with a Checklist-based Intranet System
Another challenge was creating an easy onboarding process for new hires. We wanted to avoid the overwhelming process of setting up internal tools like email address, internal authorizations, and joining Slack spaces.
With our new intranet, we created a checklist page to keep track of the set-up process.
Personalizing Employee Experience with Customizable Intranet Dashboard
Finally, we created a customizable dashboard where employees could select useful resources and specific tools they use often. We wanted something simple enough to be done in a few seconds, so we decided to go with a "switch" element for each link.
This quick access system allows employees to have access to the tools they need without being overwhelmed by unnecessary information.
Overall, our team was able to create a new intranet for The Times that was useful, empowering, and easy to use.
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Posted Feb 27, 2023
Main goals were: Empower employees through the intranet, easy onboarding for new hires, change their current stream of communication (150 hours of work)
