Canadian grocer Loblaw reinvents an intranet

Loblaw, Canada’s largest food and pharmacy company, employs nearly 200,000 people, most of whom work in one of the company’s 2,500 corporate, franchise and associate-owned stores. Tasked with an update to its decade-old intranet, the intranet team opted to take an innovative approach. That decision has led to Loblaw’s intranet, fl!p, winning first place for “Best Overall Intranet” in Ragan’s 2018 Intranet Awards.

The homepage of fl!p is different for each employee, based on the division they work in and their role (such as store managers, who see a store resource link and a recall section); “Quick Links” are also unique to division and persona. Yammer feeds are integrated on the homepage as well, integrating the intranet and Yammer to boost engagement and collaboration. An intake form empowers employees to reach audiences in stores.

Of particular interest are “message cards.” Employees who have been identified through the intake form as recipients of a message can mark content as read, removing it from their homepage view and archiving it on the message center page. Each message card also features running counts of users who have read the message (and those who haven’t).

Store managers can also report a recall as complete right on the page (or on the mobile version because, of course, all this is mobile-friendly). Also on the homepage, employees will find “My Schedule.”

Just one week after launching fl!p, readership skyrocketed and Yammer engagement grew 352 percent;  community growth reached nearly 300 percent over a six-month period.