Since December 2018, legal problem solver ARAG has been using AVI, an Embrace social intranet. With the arrival of AVI, ARAG responded to the increasing need among its employees to be able to communicate more with each other via a communication platform. Successfully! Three years later, it's time to take another look at AVI. How can the platform be further developed and optimized so that the intranet continues to meet the needs of ARAG employees? To do this, ARAG had Embrace carry out a check-up.
Optimal facilitation of colleagues with a social intranet
What logical next steps are there, if you, as an organization, have been live with Embrace software for a while? That's what a check-up is about. Together with an Embrace consultant, we will identify how the intranet is used, what users encounter and what ambitions there are within the organization — and how the intranet can play a role in this. This is also the case with ARAG.
“When using AVI, it was decided to use AVI purely as a communication platform, to connect, and not (also) as a collaboration or knowledge platform. Other applications have been created for this purpose. However, employees are now faced with the fact that they are not sure where to get their information from,” says Maartje Koelewijn-Sluijs, internal communication advisor and community manager at ARAG.
In consultation with Jacqueline van der Laan, account manager at Embrace, a check-up was carried out. One of the main objectives is that AVI should be user-friendly and convenient for the user. Maartje: “For me, that comes first. I really want my colleagues to feel connected to each other and to the organization through the platform and also be able to find all the important practical corporate and HR-related information.”
“This check-up was a great way to make the step towards optimizing the user-friendliness of our platform concrete.”
Check-up: intake and desk research
The intake before the check-up went very smoothly. Embrace's questions were immediately provided with clear answers. All the preliminary work has helped a lot with that. “What ARAG does really well,” says Jacqueline, “has been measuring every year, consistently, to see how they're doing since AVI started three years ago. Actually, a very simple baseline measurement and repeat it over and over again. This allows you to keep a close eye on the pulse and you have an overview of what is happening. There was a lot of useful material.”
In addition, earlier that year, a group of students from Utrecht University of Applied Sciences investigated how ARAG can score an even better grade with AVI, which was also included as input for the check-up.
Clear goal in mind
During the intake, it turned out that ARAG has clear what it wants to use AVI for and what it does not want to use:
“A place where the employee feels involved and informed, where employees find each other quickly and easily, and a place where all corporate information is easy to find. A communication platform and not specifically a knowledge platform.”
This helped Embrace to further carry out the analysis and, of course, to provide advice.
Check-up: quick wins for a clear search path
After the preparatory work, it was time for an Embrace consultant to really dive into AVI. What does the platform look like? Where does what say? What stands out about the use? And what do the metrics from Analytics Pro, Embrace's comprehensive user statistics dashboard, say?
Many findings lead directly to suggestions for short-term improvements. The full homepage, for example, lacks a clear call to action. Embrace's advice: calm them down and create clear choices for users. Make sure there is one clear entry per category for finding information instead of offering it in different places. This prevents employees from losing sight of the forest for the trees. Other quick wins that come up include restructuring the A-Z pages (and renaming them to Know & Control to make it clearer what you can find there), adding keywords to content pages to increase discoverability, using widgets more flexibly and changing the naming of search filters.
After the check-up, an Embrace consultant can also support this, if this is desirable.
What next?
In addition to relevant improvements in the short term, the check-up also provided long-term input. For example, by giving advice on how to improve the management organization, activating users and reloading the “brand” AVI. In a way, a confirmation of what ARAG already knew. In addition, the check-up also provided input to the project that is working on the (re) design of the digital workplace and integration with MS365. This also looks at the long-term positioning of AVI.
Maartje: “We were ready for the next step in the further development of AVI. Colleagues know how to find their way to the platform. The platform has truly become a place of connection. Now it was time to further optimize user-friendliness. This check-up was a great way to make that step concrete. It was important that Embrace would relieve us of this so that we would actually take steps and not (due to a lack of time) that it would take too much time. The first steps have been taken; together with a consultant, the next steps are also planned. Towards an (even) more user-friendly platform!”
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