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NFU MUTUAL A SOCIAL INTRANET TO ENGAGE AND INSPIRE EVERY EMPLOYEE

NFU Mutual is the UK’s leading rural insurer, providing insurance, investment and pension products to more than 900,000 members.

With over 3,800 employees and a network of more than 300 local agency offices, the intranet is a crucial part of the company strategy to streamline business processes, promote employee connectivity and make applications accessible.

With its intranet jam-packed with old, disused content and a limited search function, NFU Mutual chose to revamp its intranet from top to bottom to support the complex requirements of its modern digital workplace.

The vision for MutualnetNFU Mutual approached their intranet project in a strategic way, looping the project in to their wider business initiatives to support three key goals: to deliver sustainable, profitable growth, to be a great company to do business with and to be a great place to work.

With these business intentions clear, the specific vision of the platform was easier to define, focusing on delivering an engaging, easy-to-use intranet for all employees, Agents and their staff, helping them to connect, collaborate and do their jobs quickly and efficiently.

To ensure they could measure the impact of the intranet, this vision statement was broken down into specific objectives, with related activities that could be measured and reported on after launch:

Replace the current platform with a reliable, fit for purpose, modern solution

Make information easier to find and improve search experience

Improve publishing and content management to ensure information is accurate

Drive opportunities for improved communication and collaboration

To deliver sustainable, profitable growth

To be a great company to do business with

To be a great place to work

THREE GOALS

The new intranet has significantly improved the way we communicate. The intuitive and easy-to-use content management system has allowed us to train people across the business to upload and manage content that is relevant to their business area with the result that we always have relevant and timely content representing all business areas.

Rebecca White Head of Delivery, Wiggle

NFU Mutual A social intranet to engage and inspire every employee

LEADING RURAL INSURER

IN THE UK

300LOCAL OFFICES

900,000MEMBERS

3,800EMPLOYEES

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A contemporary intranet transforming usability NFU Mutual chose Unily to transform their intranet into a dynamic digital workplace, providing a high-performing platform and comprehensive customer success services to drive value and adoption.

1. Dynamic smart feed

2. Targeting and personalisation

3. Commenting and liking

4. Social networking

5. Centralised people directory

6. New profile pages

7. Centralised content management system

8. Site and page templates

KEY FUNCTIONALITIES

NFU Mutual A social intranet to engage and inspire every employee

The intranet is constantly monitored to ensure optimum performance and an innovative roadmap ensures the platform is always contemporary, relieving pressure on internal IT teams.

Unily’s content management system and publishing process was also a key selling point, as it empowers business users to manage and maintain all types of intranet content, without support from IT. For every-day users, the experience is dramatically improved with intuitive features that make it easier to be productive and stay connected.

The intranet is constantly monitored to ensure optimum performance and an innovative

roadmap ensures the platform is always contemporary, relieving pressure on internal IT teams.

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Improving communication and collaboration

The previous intranet had no content targeting and limited social features, which resulted in a huge reliance on email due to a lack of relevance. Now, a combination of company news, employee insights, events, announcements, social channels and more are intelligently organised in articles and on sites.

Internal communications content is front and centre on the homepage, with certain areas of content targeted based on employee group or job role to ensure relevancy and effectiveness. This intelligent use of targeting and personalisation

helps every employee to get insight into global company news, but also news that is specifically relevant to them, making the homepage the one stop shop for information. As content is displayed in dynamic widgets, it has a natural content lifecycle, automatically displaced by the latest or featured piece of content. This keeps the homepage fresh and vibrant with minimal effort from the communications team.

NFU Mutual A social intranet to engage and inspire every employee

A centralised people directory, profiles and social networking capabilities have helped to improve collaboration across the business, giving employees a place to connect. Employees can feed back on company news either through commenting and liking or by posting directly onto the company-wide social feed, powered by Yammer, which is accessible from any device. From there, connections can be made, conversations can start and ideas can be shared. It also empowers users to start the conversation from the bottom up, rather than relying on communications from the top down.

A centralised people directory, profiles and social networking

capabilities have helped to improve collaboration across the business,

giving employees a place to connect.

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Making information easier to find

The old intranet had a complex navigation and unsatisfactory search function, making it a challenge for people to find the information they needed to support their jobs. The new intranet set out to solve that, restructuring tools, sites and information intelligently to signpost people around the site.

Key intranet functionality such as the Conversations feed, Stories (news articles and blogs), Sites, People Directory and Documents are accessible through the global navigation, with Office 365 workloads such as SharePoint, Yammer and Skype for Business seamlessly integrated. Employees can then dive deeper into intranet sites and pages through the Workspaces dropdown, organised by: Agency, Customer Services and Sales, Central Services, People, Support Desks and Facilities, and Followed SharePoint Libraries.

New search functionality supports findability, empowering users to search for keywords which surfaces results across documents, sites, people, pages and content.

This simplified user experience means employees are spending less time searching for things which should be readily accessible, improving satisfaction and productivity.

A brand new apps and tools directory makes the intranet the gateway to other tools and services around the digital workplace. Split by Office 365 and Company Wide apps, users have an understanding of which tools are mandated by the business, giving them the option to personalise the apps and tools section by saving their most accessed apps as ‘My Apps’.

This simplified user experience means employees are spending less time searching for things

which should be readily accessible, improving satisfaction and

productivity.

NFU Mutual A social intranet to engage and inspire every employee

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Empowering publishers to own the intranet

Improving the content management and publishing experience was a key driver for updating the previous intranet platform, with no natural content lifecycle or ownership and a clunky content management system that hindered timely communication.

The new intranet has completely transformed this, providing a modern and intuitive content management system that empowers business users to manage and maintain content and sites, while ensuring compliance and security. To make site and page creation as simple as possible, Unily worked with NFU Mutual to create custom page and

site templates which editors can utilise for different purposes. These templates not only make the publishing process clearer for editors, it ensures that all sites and pages are consistent, understandable and uncluttered with unnecessary content.

This streamlined process continues when publishing communications such as news articles, with the ability to quickly compose, target, publish or send for approval if necessary. This increased usability has significantly reduced pressure on internal central support, who previously had to support business teams to manage and maintain content.

Another highlight has been the increased number of conversations on Yammer, with more people across the business willing to contribute and share ideas. The result of this is a much more connected workforce who are engaged with the work they’re doing.

Anne Holland Senior Online Communications Officer

NFU Mutual A social intranet to engage and inspire every employee

Strategic governance to drive adoption

A comprehensive governance plan has been put in place to manage the new content capabilities, but also to ensure the solution remains aligned with business objectives and continuously delivers value.

To keep each channel on the intranet working efficiently, clear guidelines have been developed to advise on what type of content should go where. For example, specifying that the New Starter Process or Social Media Guidelines should be posted on a Site rather than on the Newsfeed or on Yammer. This complete clarity has helped NFU Mutual’s channels to thrive, with content editors and employees clear on the purpose and value each can add.

To keep each channel on the intranet working efficiently, clear guidelines have been developed

to advise on what type of content should go where.

1. An average of 114,194 unique visits to the intranet every month.

2.335 news articles created averaging 11,470 views a month.

3.Consistent engagement with communications through social tools.

A platform that’s proving its valueFrom the start of the project, NFU Mutual set very clear objectives and goals for the new intranet, including reducing the total number of pages. A year since launch, they’ve seen some fantastic results including:

The platform will continue to evolve, keeping up with new technologies and new developments in Internal Communications.

4.Increase in number of conversations started on Yammer.

5.An average of 3,566 employee blogs views a month.

6.A reduction in IT resources supporting the BAU operation.

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Unily’s Digital Experience Cloud is an award-winning enterprise experience platform, that empowers modern businesses across the globe to communicate, collaborate and be more productive.

Intranets, Extranets and Portals built on Unily’s Digital Experience Cloud drive engagement; support values and culture; nurture knowledge and help drive the overall digital transformation strategy.

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