Cox Communications finds sweet spot between employee requirements and great design

Whether employees spend time on your intranet or turn away is driven in part (of course) by the content, but if the design is terrible, if it’s not user-friendly, if it hurts your eyes to look at it, it could turn off employees even if the content is relevant and important. The importance of design is exemplified by Cox Communications’ CoxOne, which has won first place in the “Design” category of Ragan’s 2018 Intranet Awards.

CoxOne was designed to provide users with a “weekend user experience” during the week. “We wanted employees to have the familiarity and capabilities that modern websites offer while providing key company information in an engaging way,” according to Cox.

Elements of the design include a flexible banner area which greets employees by name with a welcome message; each day, it rotates with an eye-catching picture or custom artwork that promotes an initiative, corporate brand or product launch. There’s a featured news section, a customized newsfeed based on the pages an employee has subscribed to, a poll and intuitive navigation.

At the one-year anniversary of CoxOne, engagements have reached a half-million per month (and climbing) while 91 percent of employees believe the intranet helps them get the information they need (and 90 percent say it has exceeded their expectations).

Congratulations to Cox’s Chris Harrer, Jamie Stokes, Andrew James, Sandy Aguero, Scott Nelson, Brendon Schwartz and Deidre D’Asaro.