Two-year intranet makeover increases blog views by 644 percent

Developers and communicators took nearly two years to build and launch Quintiles’ new intranet, iQ, winner of Ragan Communications’ 2012 Employee Communications Award for best social intranet. And the culture change the intranet has kicked off—one where employees are not just allowed, but encouraged, to blog, comment, build wikis, post on forums and share what they’re doing—is an ongoing process.

“It’s an education and a change in communication that will take time,” says Laura Grover, senior director of Web strategy at Quintiles.

It’s working so far. Between the last quarter of 2011 and the first of 2012, the number of blog views on the intranet has increased by 644 percent. About five times more people have taken advantage of the Facebook-like features where they can follow colleagues.

Not only is the new intranet full of new tools, Quintiles made a concerted effort to make it look like a site people would actually want to visit. The company listened to employees, and gave them what they asked for.

Piece by piece

Quintiles began working on its new intranet in November 2009, not so much because the old intranet was bad, but because it needed some organizing.