2014 SAVVY AWARD ENTRY

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign: Introducing COWnet See COWnet in action. Visit http://youtu.be/a87bjUQQ5c8 for a two-minute video tour of COWnet.

In September 2014, the City of Westminster was awarded the 3CMA SAVVY Award for best issue-specific website. Comments from the judges include: “A stellar project from start to finish. Good research and analysis that produced outstanding results! Survey results were impressive. Great navigation, easy to read, and customizable. Employees can interact and contribute to this site giving a sense of investment, ownership and community. Excellent job!”

More information: http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/News/NewsArchives/tabid/381/Article/2088/citys-employee-intranet-wins-savvy-award.aspx

Problem/Opportunity Statement

The first city employee intranet was launched in the early 1990s, and since that time its design and structure had

remained virtually untouched (appendix 1.1). The site was designed and maintained by the IT department, with all content

being updated and maintained by IT staff. As focus on internal communication grew within the organization, the decision

was made in 2012 to revisit the employee intranet and decide how it could become a more powerful tool for strategic

internal communications, as well as enhance the organizational culture. Preliminary research indicated employees desired

improved navigation, a better reflection of our organizational culture, updated aesthetics and remote or mobile access.

Intended Goals or Outcomes

The team conducted preliminary research before establishing project goals. This research included examining

international best practices for intranet design through Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annuals, taking video

tours of leading intranets through Ragan Communications and talking with other municipalities about their intranet design

processes and features. Additionally, extensive research was conducted with city employees including two city-wide

surveys, meetings with the city’s leadership, individual meetings and focus groups with potential content producers in

various city department and divisions.

Based on the research conducted, the following project goals were established:

Make the intranet a place where employees can contribute and take ownership in content development.

Develop a strong, intuitive navigation structure to make information-finding more efficient.

Update to a modern, clean look and feel.

Incorporate social features to foster community-building and better reflect our organizational culture.

Allow access from mobile devices as well as off-site access as requested by employees.

Document of Achievement

Make the intranet a place where employees can contribute and take ownership in content development.

We decided to move from a centralized, single-department approach to an open-source content management system,

where employees could manage their own content. This was a huge undertaking, as it required rebuilding the entire site

from scratch and migrating hundreds of pages and documents manually from the existing site. In addition to the migration,

it also became imperative to identify all employees who would be contributing content to the new site and make sure they

were properly trained on the new content management system. The team put together an extensive training calendar to

ensure more than 30 employees from various departments and divisions understood the city’s writing and style standards,

as well as the technical aspects of the new content management system. Additionally, the team created training manuals

with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials as resources for these employees.

The team also developed a calendar application for the site’s homepage, where employees can create events, register

online and add events to their personal Outlook calendars. Streamlining event registration into an online process has

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 2

made it possible for event organizers to no longer keep up with multiple email strings and registration spreadsheets,

increasing their efficiency and freeing up time for other projects. Additionally, employees now have a single place to look

for all internal events instead of navigating to various pages to find out what’s happening in the city.

Develop a strong, intuitive navigation structure to make information-finding more efficient

The existing navigation structure was difficult for people to navigate, many resorting to using the intranet’s search feature

or site map to find information. We decided to restructure the navigation completely and invited all employees to be part of

the process. Because the site navigation was critical to the success of the new intranet, we conducted many tests to

ensure the structure was intuitive for employees – after all, virtually none of the existing intranet navigation would be used

on the new site. We employed a software by Optimal Workshop called Optimal Sort, in which employees were provided

categories of information and asked to sort them into groupings and then provide names for those groupings. The test

was sent to all employees and 116 participated in the card sorting activity, which included 86 pieces of information sorted

into an average of 11 groups. We used this data to develop a preliminary site navigation and employed Optimal Sort’s

Treejack software to test the main (level 1) navigation structure. Employees were given 30 tasks to sort and 207 people

participated, with a success rate of 76 percent, showing the main navigation categories made sense to a majority of

people. We reached out to our employees a third time to test the sub-menu (level 2) navigation, with 165 people

participating and a 79 percent success rate. These tests gave us valuable, in-depth data that guided us in developing an

intuitive navigation architecture (appendix 2.1-2.5).

In-line with our research on best practices to make site navigation easier, we employed a mega-menu, which reveals the

entire navigation to the user without clicking on sub-menu items. This was extremely well-received by users and increased

their ability to navigate the site efficiently, despite the reorganized structure.

In addition to the new navigation structure, we also added a MyLinks section on the homepage, which can be

personalized by each employee. This serves as their own “quick links” section on the homepage, and employees can add

both internal and external webpages to their lists.

On the previous site, a site search feature was only available on the homepage; however on the new intranet, a Google

mini site search function was added to the header of each page to make searching from anywhere on the site more

efficient.

Similarly, the phone list on the previous site was only available by clicking a link on the homepage, and it consisted of a

full page of various search options (appendix 3.1). On the new site, we implemented a people finder on the header of

each page so searches for names (first and last), phone numbers, email addresses and job titles could be done from

anywhere in the site. The various search options were condensed into drop-down menus to make it easier and more

efficient.

Update to a modern, clean look and feel.

To update the look of the site, we purchased a template skin created for our open-source CMS (DNN) and then the team

customized it for our needs. We built a preliminary wireframe showing the importance of employee news and events,

photos and enhanced aesthetics with clean lines and limited use of colors to avoid distraction (appendix 1.2). Graphic

design of all icons, logos and other site elements were all conducted in-house by the team. The site’s logo was designed

after a city-wide naming contest identified the new intranet as COWnet (COW is short for City of Westminster, as well as

the employees’ love of our internal cow mascot).

Incorporate social features to foster community-building and better reflect our organizational culture.

Social features had not been used on the intranet before, but with the advances in technology and rise of social media,

our employees were asking for opportunities to use the intranet as a collaboration tool to complete tasks, to get to know

their co-workers and to foster community-building. By moving to the content management system, content producers now

have access to department or division blogs, where they can share information, answer questions and engage with

employees who may be miles away in other city facilities (appendix 4.1-4.2). We anticipated very low usage of this new

social feature upon launch, but forecasted a few employees would gradually embrace it. We were surprised when multiple

blog entries were being posted almost daily and comments on some blogs reached as high as 28 only three months into

launch.

We developed a new “Community” section of the intranet where employees can share non-work-related stories. Housed

here is our employee newsletter, employee birthdays, employee classified listings, information about employee volunteer

opportunities in our community and discounts for employees at local businesses.

Allow access from mobile devices as well as off-site access.

Mobile and remote access remains an important goal for our intranet, and we continue to work with external vendors to

upgrade all necessary software to ensure the transition is seamless with all of the external applications used by city

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 3

employees. The template chosen for the site is mobile friendly, and as soon as work with our external vendors is complete

we will roll out mobile and remote access to our employees, which is slated for summer 2014.

Budget and Use of Outside Resources

A team comprised of eight city employees from the Public Information Office and the Information Technology department

worked for more than 14 months on the intranet redesign, completing nearly 100 percent of work in-house and eliminating

the need for outside vendors. Approximately $440 was spent for navigation testing software, and less than $1,000 was

spent on a template skin and several content modules created for the DNN platform. Along with several apps (people

finder and event calendar primarily) developed in-house, this allowed the team to stay on a very tight budget of $2,500

while delivering a high-quality, successful product. The new site launched in January 2014.

Data

In the first 4 months of COWnet, the site received more than 320,000 page views, with the average viewer spending

8 minutes and 25 seconds per page. This time spent increases to 12 minutes and 33 seconds when assessing only

the homepage.

Three months after launch, we conducted an employee survey to determine progress toward our goals. The

feedback was overall very positive, as we initially predicted much resistance from employees who were comfortable

with an intranet that had been in place for more than two decades. We continue to survey employees and monitor

usage data to ensure COWnet is meeting the project goals.

Serves as the city’s hub of information: 92.85% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Presents easy, intuitive navigation: 78.56% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Increases work efficiency: 81.12% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Ease of adding/updating information: 80.02% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Provides a personalized experience: 74% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Allows employee participation and content creation: 88.9% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Drives employee engagement: 82% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

Has an appealing aesthetic design: 84.21% of employees believe COWnet meets or exceeds

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 4

Appendices

(Appendix 1.1) Screenshot of the previous intranet site homepage.

(Appendix 1.2) Screenshot of the new COWnet homepage

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 5

(Appendix 2.1) An example of results for one task, showing where people expected this task to fall in the proposed navigation.

Site search and

people finder

appear on the top

of every page.

Employee news is

prominent on the

homepage.

MyLinks can be

customized by

each employee.

Employees can

see all internal

events in one

location and can

submit events to

the calendar to

share with others.

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 6

(Appendix 2.2) Results from navigation testing which showed which tasks people had difficulty placing into the proposed navigation structure.

(Appendix 3.1) Screenshot of the previous intranet’s phone list (see Appendix 1.2 for a view of the new phone list)

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 7

(Appendix 4.1) Screenshot of the new blog option available to all departments

City of Westminster Employee Intranet Redesign 8

(Appendix 4.2) Screenshot of the comments feature, allowing employees to engage with blog posts and news items.