Personal pages on PR firm’s intranet connect employees worldwide

Here’s what we liked best about Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s intranet: it tells stories about employees.

And that’s why people keep coming back for more. Lisa Koetz, who entered this submission, tells us that one of the main goals for the intranet is to make it a place where employees can understand each other better. And, in doing so, grabbed top honors in the Intranet: Best Value to Employees category in Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards.

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide is a global, integrated communications agency.

“With more than 800 employees worldwide, our intranet serves as a tool for sharing, story telling and providing resources that help our employees to better do their jobs,” Koetz says.

To do this, the intranet focuses on five topics: employee profiles, polls, personal pages for employees, story comments and a suggestion box for company executives.

Although it’s important to communicate news about the company, these personal touches make Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s intranet a go-to source of information for employees.

We were impressed by the MySites feature. This is a personal page for employees to share personal and professional information with global colleagues.

“The page automatically generates agency information—position title, contact information and cube location—but the employee is free to control the personal content on the page,” Koetz says. “Sections include fields of expertise, skills and certifications, shared documents and tagged intranet content. Employees can learn more about one another and connect on similar interests.”

Another highlight? It’s not afraid to have a little fun.

One of the most popular poll questions (with a 43 percent participation rate) on the intranet was: “Where do you get your coffee money?”

The firm also uses video, animation, text and photos to share with employees.

To help keep leadership informed about their competitors, the team publishes “The Daily Buzz,” an intranet blog-like post, which captures top stories and daily analysis of the agency and its competitors, Koetz says. Statistically, 87 percent of employees read “The Daily Buzz” and 82 percent said the content was valuable, Koetz says.

To view the winning work please click here.