T-Mobile shakes up its intranet with a new mission: engaging employees

The very notion of an intranet is evolving as the world becomes more mobile and communication occurs more naturally in channels outside the traditional news hole on a home page. T-Mobile’s newly redesigned intranet reflects these trends (which you might expect from a mobility company), and has embraced them wholeheartedly in its design. The result: T-Mobile is the winner in the “Intranet Design” category of Ragan’s 2016 Employee Communications Awards.

The intranet’s name changed from OneVoice to T-Nation. Gone is the one-way, top-down broadcast of messages. Instead, the intranet strives to engage employees and inspire enthusiasm. Articles of interest or importance to employees are still there, but so are Twitter and Instagram feeds from senior leaders, an Instagram-like feed populated with photos shared by employees (including a “Photo of the Day”), unfiltered industry news gathered from third-party publications, and the organization’s internal social network. 

Employees can tailor what they see to their interests. Given that most of the employees work in retail locations, T-Nation is also designed to be accessible on mobile devices. Integration with tools employees use to get their work done has been well thought out. 

Equal care was given to the rollout of the new design, which was accomplished in phases with early adopters getting a first look. T-Nation’s introduction was treated like a marketing campaign and included special communication to facility managers so they could promote it with their staffs. If any proof is needed of the intranet’s success, consider that 35,000 employees per month used to visit the old intranet. The same number visits now . . . per week. 

Congratulations to the communications team at T-Mobile for creating an innovative and informative intranet.