With diverse products and services across many industries, ATCO is a one-stop provider of integrated energy, housing, transportation and infrastructure solutions. Fuelled by a team of approximately 20,000 people throughout ATCO and its subsidiary and affiliate companies worldwide, they provide customers with innovative, sustainable solutions in the sectors that are fundamental to global growth and prosperity.
“There are seven different business units within ATCO, so there's lots developments and organizational changes happening all the time,” says Genesta Fletcher, Manager of Internal Communications at ATCO. “What unifies ATCO is the people – it's a very driven, welcoming and innovative organization. We’re always looking for ways to do things better.”
The company has big ambitions. With their sights set on becoming a truly global brand by 2030, ATCO required a strong, reliable platform to support their path forward. In partnership with Habanero, their internal communications team embarked on an intranet modernization project to build a solution that breaks down information silos, streamlines communications and brings employees together.
Building the case for a new intranet
Launched in 2015, ATCO’s previous corporate intranet had fallen behind the technology curve. The site was built on classic SharePoint, which was reaching its end-of-life cycle and would soon be unsupported by Microsoft. It had a slow operating system, an unreliable content management system and was not accessible on a mobile device.
Frustrated with classic SharePoint’s lack of functionality, many business units had begun creating their own sites. In total, they had 65 intranet sites active across 7 business units.
The ability to publish rich news stories on their previous intranet was limited. Pages took a long time to load and lacked formatting options. Instead, the internal communications team relied heavily on email using a third-party platform. They managed several distribution lists to be more targeted, but they lacked the consistent employee data to understand engagement, change or culture shifts.
The result was low engagement, a siloed organization and difficulty in accessing important information. In addition, their channel management strategy was unable to support ATCO’s global brand and the growth they had set forward.
When building their case for a new intranet, they identified a few essential requirements:
- Built on SharePoint – ATCO is a Microsoft company, so their new intranet had to live on SharePoint. They wanted it to be integrated with the digital workplace and to be able to push communications to Microsoft Teams.
- Mobile friendly – Their workforce comprises 65% desktop and 35% mobile users, so a mobile-friendly solution was essential. With their previous corporate intranet, they had no way of reaching mobile workers, except by email.
- Audience targeting – ATCO employees work across different business units all over the world. The communications team wanted to be able to reach specific audiences, delivering relevant information without all the noise.
- Trusted partner – Genesta wanted a vendor who could function as an extension of her team and in-depth knowledge SharePoint and Microsoft to guide the process.
They chose to partner with Habanero to create their new intranet on GO Intranet, an out-of-the-box platform built on modern SharePoint that enhances and extends its capabilities.
Understanding the employee experience
The project kicked off with empathetic research that explored how ATCO employees work, make decisions, communicate and collaborate to understand their goals and help build organizational alignment.
Habanero digital workplace consultants conducted interviews with strategic leaders and interested parties, as well as listening labs with a variety of participants, including frontline workers. In these 50 sessions, they gained both broad and deep insights into employees’ perspectives and experiences.
Consolidating 65 sites to 1
Habanero also conducted a comprehensive audit of ATCO’s existing content, engaging content leads from all of ATCO’s intranets to understand the current state and strategize for the new corporate intranet.
They discovered that the current intranet lacked a clear content strategy. From site to site, the audience, intention and the user experience were all very different.
Defining a new information architecture and content strategy for a corporate intranet that would bring all the sites together was an interesting challenge. They had to figure out how to tease apart information from 65 siloed intranets and merge them effectively into one integrated solution that creates a cohesive experience for employees, with an intuitive navigation.
Identifying jobs-to-be-done (JTBD)
To understand the priority and purpose of the core pages and components of the new intranet, Habanero facilitated a series of jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) workshops with ATCO.
For each element, they asked:
- Is this a job for the page?
- Does this serve the business objective and audiences of the intranet?
Through these workshops, they developed strong rationales for design and content decisions, which helped throughout the rest of the process.
Features to unite a global company
One of the goals for ATCO’s new intranet was to unite their enterprise. They wanted to make sure that all employees felt connected to ATCO without losing the identity and subculture of the individual business units. They achieved this by making intentional design choices and leveraging the following features within GO Intranet:
- Employee recognition – The “Celebrating Our People” recognition feature allows employees to celebrate the work of their coworkers. In addition to sharing their personal comments, employees can also select from a list of qualities that incorporate ATCO’s values. Recognition can be sent privately or posted publicly, and recipients have the option to print a paper certificate if desired. This feature spotlights both the person giving the recognition and the person (or people) receiving them.
- User-submitted photo gallery – The “Life at ATCO” photo gallery showcases the culture and work of all the business units in a shared space. Employees can upload and share their own photos of happenings in the office or in the field. Photos appear in a lightbox view, with integrated social features.
- Storefront sites – Storefront sites are a place for each business unit’s brand to come to life and communicate who they are to the rest of ATCO by sharing news, showcasing projects and highlighting their leadership or teams. Each storefront features an accent palette for the business unit and uses their graphic patterns and photography, so it reflects the unique identity of that brand while remaining aligned and cohesive with the ATCO corporate brand.
News that resonates
Insite is the foundation of ATCO’s communications strategy. Genesta wanted a platform that could support ATCO’s focus on innovation, growth and continuous improvement. Their new intranet delivers:
- Richer, more engaging news – GO includes design elements like feature photos, videos, pull quotes and accordions that structure content, so it’s easier and more enjoyable for employees to consume. Social features allow employees to like or comment on the story if they’re moved to do so.
- Personalized communications – Employees can set their preferences, so they see news that’s relevant to their interests. This means that Genesta’s team and other communicators embedded in ATCO’s businesses can take a strategic approach to internal communications, confident that they’re reaching the right audiences.
- Multi-channel publishing – Even though the intranet is one solution, it’s generated multiple different ways to communicate. Announcements can be pushed to Microsoft Teams or connected through Viva Engage, depending on the message.
- Robust analytics – ATCO's previous intranet did not have usage analytics. Their new GO Intranet provides insight into site-wide user behaviour, plus in-depth analytics specifically related to their SharePoint news through Helm Insights.
Successful adoption and increased engagement
To support broad adoption of the new corporate intranet among employees, Genesta and her team took a targeted, meaningful approach to communications – one designed to meet employees where they are. Their strategy has paid off.
Adoption and employee engagement have been high. In the first month of use:
- 88% of the organization visited the intranet.
- Total page views were 150,000.
- Reach was 37% (significantly above the industry standard of 7%).
- The recognition feature was used to praise 85 employees.
- Employees submitted over 100 photos to the company-wide gallery.
In the energy industry, engagement on an intranet channel is benchmarked at 12%. That means that 12% of employees at any given organization read, comment, like or contribute to the intranet during their daily work life.
Since the launch of their new site, ATCO has reduced email communications and newsletters by approximately 50%, and they’re seeing engagement rates on Insite news of about 13% to 15% above industry benchmarks. Candid employee feedback is all very positive; employees tend to feel more seen, have a better understanding of their global operations and feel as if they’re a part of a bigger organization. The new site is also reaching 35% more of their global and field workforce who previously could not access the site.
