In this episode of The Workgrid, Rebecca O'Reilly joins Rob Ryan to explore the pivotal role of a well-defined digital workplace vision and strategy. They discuss:
Explore the pivotal role of a well-defined digital workplace vision and strategy
Dive into how application owners can maximize their technologies
How Professional Services can set the foundation for success
How Igloo sets itself apart based on product offerings and nuanced approach to using intranet as a catalyst for change
Tell us a little bit about yourself, Igloo software, and primary intranet services you offer
I have been an Igloo employee for 5 years and started as solutions consultant, now VP Professional Services. At Igloo we work with our customers as they implement and help support them in setting up their digital workplace based on their goals and what they are looking to achieve from an employee engagement perspective.
Our focus is on a unified platform for desk and deskless workers, no matter where you work and what you do, you have the knowledge you need to access – making sure what you find on the intranet is meaningful to you, easy to find, engaging. We are constantly evolving and listening to what's important to customers.
Igloo offers services across mid-market, SMB, full spectrum is that correct?
We have customers across any size from 100K+ to 250. Ultimately whether you come from an enterprise or a smaller org, we’re all looking for the same kinds of things, just at different scale. Everyone wants employees to feel engaged, supported, and have the knowledge they need.
Our team can scale up and down through a variety of implementation packages to support organizations across different sizes and industries. We rely on purpose-built solutions that Igloo then works with the customer on implementing and configuring for their specific needs.
What is your perspective on some of the changes in the intranet market over the last few years?
A lot has happened in the last few years as far as how work has shifted. Maybe organizations transformed to hybrid model successfully, but a lot of quick solutions were stood up as a fast way to maintain contact and communications with former officemates, and this has led to a lot of friction.
Questions like “What system and where?” have led to cognitive overload, that exhausted feeling at the end of the day not because of our jobs but thinking about how to do our jobs. When organizations can guide and direct employees, and create a digital culture or digital home, it’s invaluable to the overall employee experience.
What are some of the expectations that have changed with the move to hybrid work?
Last minute quick moves to certain technology has come at a cost - digital friction. While it is useful to use chat tools to fire off a question, the benefit of an intranet is that it does still carry brand and tone, a sense of authority. Part of our team at Igloo is visual design. That branding and theming that aligns to the customers tone, internal employee or external brand. It lends authority and brightens culture, something that gets lost in communication conduits like Teams or Slack.
Content on an intranet should have sense of gravitas. It’s published, verified, important, official... It’s the home of the company and culture.
How do you begin to build trust in the process when it comes to professional services?
It’s different for everyone but starts with listening, empathy, and understanding that this might be the client's first time moving from A to B, or even implementing an intranet overall. Often, they might think they know what they want and how to get there, and we might disagree, but part of it is understanding why they are feeling the way they are. Typically, it’s more probing and conversational flow rather than verbal questionnaire.
We try to learn from our own experiences – how can I make this situation better? There is no cookie cutter template but we like to have a guideline or a framework because it helps to show we have a plan, but we also want our customers to know we understand they are not like everyone else.
Sometimes it's good to ponder things with customers, especially at the beginning we try to ask questions like “what is good going to look like a year from now?” If your digital workplace is working now that’s great! But we need to consider the actionable plans we can put into place long term. This builds customer trust.
Why do digital workplaces/ intranets fail and what are the differences you see between successful intranets?
It’s hard to go through the change management process in your mind. It’s also important to unlearn things you might have done previously. Some people go into the process saying “I need xyz features in order for this to work” but every vendor is different, with different terminology and technology. So to succeed, we need have a clear idea of what outcomes they are looking for and then trusting implementation specialists and experts to say this is what that solution will look like in Igloo.
It’s not just about features but who’s going to run this digital workplace long term. Sometimes stakeholders are not the same as the people who will be managing long term and so we need to be able to make recommendations to support resourcing.
Organizations who trust an outcomes-based approach flourish because they can think about launch and strategically plan for success on their roadmap.
From the Igloo partnership element, we are digging in to understand organization and their appetite for digital workplace. Those who know what they want at a macro level are typically the ones who are successful. Once we know where we are headed, we can figure out what features and functionality will get you there, then we want to zoom out again and say okay what do the next 3 months look like, 6 months, 1 year – coming out of an inverse bell curve. It’s more than just okay it’s setup bye – which is a win-win for the customer to be successful and a long term partnership with Igloo.
What role do you see analytics playing in conversations with your clients?
This is by nature a broad solution that touches every point of an organization, not just a department specific solution, which means we generally need to work with executive stakeholders to bring onboard the rest of a company.
Igloo focuses on unification – desk and deskless experiences – acknowledging that the employee experiences are different but equal in importance. It’s an opportunity for orgs because traditionally companies used an either/or comms strategy for frontline vs desk workers. Having a solution in place to serve all populations provides a unique opportunity for analytics in the first place.
Typically, only analytics were set up for one group – ex. Deskless workers are engaging with xyz article. Analytics should help get insight into both groups, providing factors that will drive retention or productivity for employees.
Turnover is costly and things like onboarding or disparate experiences can lead to poor employee experience. Having a digital workplace helps drive standardization, push the right content to the right people, meaningful and targeted help drive down digital friction which negatively impacts ROI in terms of productivity and employee experience.
With analytics we can understand consumption and engagement, measuring the whole population you are trying to impact. Leveraging data and analytics also enables you to make targeted changes instead of broad brush doing something that may have no impact.
We can also identify hidden success stories such as user insights for application owners.
When it comes to analytics, it’s important to have KPIs to measure against and governance structure help take some of the mystery out of the process from the beginning.
Teach for America, a non-profit across the US, used the digital workplace makes the organization feel smaller in a good way. A lot of national and global orgs didn’t necessarily know everyone pre-pandemic. The digital workplace brought forth a more automated way of bringing people together. When there is a dispersed workforce, and you need to access knowledge, the digital workplace helps to boost productivity in a way that is super meaningful. It’s also allowed for more data driven decisions as well.
What do you see in terms of the future of intranets and employee experience platforms?
Bringing together the tools that are important to employees to do their jobs is really critical.
I would be remiss not to mention AI, it’s been coming up for quite some time, but it is just a buzzword until you make it meaningful. In our industry it’s meaningful in removing bias, looking at data and keeping things honest. With AI we can boost things people care about and notice trends without bias. Sometimes we might not want to think about how we can do things differently, but analytics and data driven by AI can make things clear, it gives perspective to digital workplaces overall.
“AI/ML is just a buzzword until you make it meaningful”
What’s one book you would recommend to someone who might be consultants or application owners that might serve them in program strategy?
The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford – a classic consulting book about getting to know stakeholders and what they’re looking to achieve so that you can gain their trust and provide advice.
In one sentence, what sets Igloo Software apart in the intranet and employee experience space?
Unification is what sets Igloo apart was we look at organizations who might have employees with different perspectives and bring them together under one umbrella, one culture, one organization, while being aware that their day-to-day experiences can vastly differ, to deliver unique but meaningful and equal experience.
What is one must have feature of a modern intranet solution?
A few – toss-up between the ability to target information and getting content to the right users. We are in a phase of information overload, deciding what’s important, those micro decisions are exhausting. If content is coming to me that I know is important and I’m not missing things, that makes my job and day a lot better.
What technology do you believe is going to be the most significant on intranets and employee ex solutions over the next 3 years?
I would say AI, but besides that, integrations. The solutions organizations are using outside the intranet that give context to where and how people work. Pulling it all together makes work a little bit easier, and integrations make it possible to respond to each organizations unique toolset and tech landscape.
About the Guest
Rebecca O’Reilly is the VP Professional Services at Igloo Software. In this conversation we explore how Rebecca and team cater to a diverse client base from industry to company size
