Three-year plan results in hub for knowledge sharing and collaboration

While many organizations implement some changes based on the results of their engagement surveys, feedback from Aon’s 60,000-plus employees revealed frustration over the difficulty involved in finding specific expertise hiding among the company’s many business units. 

Employees also wanted the ability to more easily find content and company resources, and to collaborate with colleagues, teammates, and other members of the consulting company’s staff. 

With a focus on knowledge sharing as a driver, a cross-functional Aon team—assisted by an outside adviser—crafted a three-year plan to introduce a new intranet with social functionality woven through it, designed to address the issues employees voiced in the engagement survey. Fifteen tactical steps guided the execution of the plan, from developing a roadmap and designing the intranet’s information architecture to choosing elements to include in the Activity Feed and rolling out team sites. 

The result features personalized home pages, advanced social capabilities, easy-to-consume news and other company communication, and a collaboration network that has attracted a large swath of the employee population. 

More than 42,000 of the company’s 66,000 employees have completed their profiles, making it easy for others to identify them based on their expertise and experience. The culture is following along, with widespread adoption of the social software that breathes life into the network. 

It is an honor to recognize Aon’s intranet development team with Ragan’s 2014 Employee Communications Award for Best Value to Employees. Contributing staff members include Neeru Arora, Arti Arora, Gunja Rastogi, Richard Bullock, Pam Parker, Camille Sanchez, Randy Bell, Lisa Yiu, Victoria Neff, Brodie Bertrand, Cassie Chen, Sian Power, Claire Smith, Rebecca Boyde, Cathy Gavin, Margaret Barrett, Doug Gilman, Ken Baker, Debajyoti Mahanta, Emily George Smith, Oriel Maxim, Kim Klenzak, Connie Mayse, Brian Wiemhoff, Steve Goldhaber, Jennifer Uyeda, and (from Rightpoint) Ross Freedman, Pernilla Peterson, Tim Stahl, Maria Phillip, Neal Rudnick, and Peter Walke.