Personalized newsfeed is based on sites employees follow

Both externally and internally, people want personalized content delivered to them. Marketers use tools like artificial intelligence to aid in the personalization effort, but such tools are generally not available to most internal communicators. Cox Communications has demonstrated that even organizations using SharePoint can deliver personalized content through a corporate intranet. In doing so, it’s won first place in the “Personalization” category of Ragan’s 2018 Intranet Awards.

CoxOne starts with the newsfeed that appears on the company’s homepage. Here, employees see the latest updates to the pages and subsites they have opted to follow. The featured news also achieves a level of relevance by including not only national content, but content specific to employees’ location.

The most popular page on the site is the myHR Dashboard. While most HR pages feature only general information and links to follow to personalized content, the myHR Dashboard provides personal data on its homepage: Employees see, for example, a Paid Time Off widget that shows PTO balances. Employees can move a slider to see potential accrued PTO. (The previous intranet required employees to click nine times to get to their PTO balance.)

One employee responding to an intranet survey said, “Access to HR information on CoxOne is probably the best I’ve ever seen in 35 years of being in the business world.” The innovations have led to a 160 percent increase in visits.

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