We recently caught up with two of our most successful customers (both credit unions) to understand a bit more about the drivers behind their high intranet engagement levels; Frankenmuth Credit Union’s intranet “EARL” (Employee Access Reference Library) has around 400 users and LOC Credit Union’s intranet “Pulse” has around 80. We’ve been supporting Finance customers for over 20 years now, so what we discussed didn’t come as a surprise, but we hope sharing the similarities and differences between their approaches may help some of our other customers to achieve similar levels of success.
With over 100 pre-built applications, and almost 30 distinct widgets, the flexibility of the Intranet Connections platform is a big reason why our customers choose us, and why intranet success can be achieved in lots of different ways.
Form-based member processes
For both FCU and LOCCU, the most popular content on their intranet sites are key components of their member related processes. Common examples of member enquiries are things like requests for new credit/debit cards, loan applications, and lien releases on member assets like vehicles.
Both use the Online Forms application to deal with these types of enquiries, enabling their team members to complete pre-determined form fields and submit that information for other teams/departments to process. However, their use of this application is subtly different to account for the unique needs of their organizations:
Frankenmuth Credit Union intranet successes
One form to rule them all
Frankenmuth have one Member Services Form which is used for lots of different enquiries. When team members submit the form, they use radio buttons to select the type of enquiry it relates to.
Feed monitoring and submission picking
Once a form submission is made, it can be viewed in a feed along with all the other submissions. Team members from different departments monitor this feed and take ownership of the enquiries that are relevant to them as they arrive.
LOC Credit Union intranet successes
Specific forms for specific enquiries
LOC have individual member services forms for each type of enquiry, for example a Credit Card request form, a Debit Card request form, a Lien release form etc.
Workflow and notifications
When submissions are made on each of the forms LOC use, the custom workflows they have in place route the enquiry to the relevant team members, who receive a notification alerting them of it.
Both CUs saw success in increased visibility
For both of these organizations, the member services forms are key pieces of content for them and intrinsic to the way they deal with member enquiries. This important content is highlighted for team members, making it quick and easy to access. This is a great way to improve the experience for employees, and including them in the global navigation, in links on the homepage and encouraging team members to save them as intranet favourites are all examples of how this can be achieved.
Check out some form examples here
Segregated news
Sharing employee news is another key use case for both Frankenmuth Credit Union and LOC Credit Union, though again they use slightly different approaches to achieve success in these areas.
Both use the Storyboard feature to highlight the most important news in a visual way, right at the top of their homepages. They’re lucky enough to benefit from having some very skilled designers in their respective marketing teams, so the images they include on the storyboard are both visually appealing and quickly convey what the content is about, but any images can help to add some vibrancy to a homepage.
Both organizations have a high volume of news to share with their employees, and to help ensure items aren’t missed they separate news based on topic, but using different techniques. In both cases, news is posted to the Company News application within the relevant departmental sites, and is then displayed on the main homepage using the Application Feed widget.
Frankenmuth opt for one single news feed, using colourful and distinctive icons to help team members identify which category news falls into. LOC have separate news feeds for each department, meaning team members know where to look for different news categories.
Employee engagement
Another often overlooked driver for intranet success isn’t related to work at all and focuses more on the cultural aspects of the platform. Both Frankenmuth and LOC include social aspects to their intranet to increase engagement and make it a fun place for team members to visit.
Some examples of ways they dial up the fun include:
Quick Polls – Including fun polls on the homepage to survey employee opinions. These can be about anything from “Who is going to win the big game at the weekend” to “What’s your favourite Dorito flavour”!
Buy/Sell application – The Buy/Sell application lets team members exchange goods and services for cash. Think of it like your internal eBay. The application just connects team members, and no transactions take place on the platform.
Staff birthday/anniversaries – The Anniversary and Birthday widgets can be used to celebrate these milestones. Don’t worry, you can hide the birth year to retain some mystery around your employees’ ages!
Staff recognition/kudos – Depending how you want to run a staff recognition scheme this can take multiple forms. You can use the “Suggestion Box” application and corresponding widget to handle submissions and publish them or use Online Forms for submissions and a Message Box widget to update each month’s winner for example.
Get to know your team – Highlight an employee or team on a regular basis by creating a standard form they can fill out and promote their responses using the Company News application and/or Storyboard. You can include a mix of work-related and personal questions depending on your preference.
All Staff Share – You can create a specific Company News feed on your intranet where employees can share anything they like, work related or otherwise. Include some guidelines around what is and isn’t appropriate to ensure everyone’s on the same page – You can include an approval process as well if you would like to.
We work with a lot of our customers to help them optimize their intranets and achieve similar levels of success to Frankenmuth Credit Union and LOC Credit Union. Whether you’re a credit union or not, let us know if you want to discuss getting more from your intranet by booking a free demo or, if you’re a current customer, by emailing customercare@intranetconnections.com.
