Employee engagement is the picture of health for Benenden Health

We partnered with Benenden Health in 2018 and in 2022 Bnet underwent a complete overhaul, which has seen engagement skyrocket. Bringing intranet champions on board has been instrumental in this transformation and success.

The challenge

With many different departments, sole ownership of content became a challenge for the internal comms team. People across the business were still reluctant to push their own updates through Bnet, leaning on blanket emails to share comms with employees.

The goal of the intranet revamp in 2022 was to ingrain Bnet into the company culture and empower employees across the business to utilise its features to improve their day-to-day employee experience. 

The Solution 

“Oak Engage has transformed how we connect with our people at Benenden Health, with Bnet being a cornerstone of our colleague engagement. It empowers colleagues, enhances our values, gives everyone a voice and has driven engagement across the business.”

- Emma Keef, Internal Communications Specialist at Benenden Health

Empowering colleagues as Bnet Champions

To share the responsibility of updating different areas of the intranet, Benenden Health launched their Bnet Champions strategy. Over 40 people from across the company represent each department and are trained up to be designated content creators and area managers for certain parts of the intranet that fall within their remit.

In-depth half-day training sessions are held with each of these content managers to ensure they are confident using the platform. Monthly drop-ins are held with the internal comms lead for refreshers and to showcase any new features or tools launched within the platform. This group of Bnet Champions have now become a keen advocacy group who are instrumental in getting more people from their teams active on the platform. Plus, they also act as a helpful focus group when planning and testing new campaigns and ideas. Linking this up with a competency framework has enabled people to really thrive in areas where their skills lie, as part of development within their roles.

“Bnet champions have their own areas and we have our own testing area which is really useful for trying out different features and applets. Often, once they have been trained, the Champions will go and play around in the testing area and come back with suggestions for how to use Oak features differently to make more of an impact.”

- Emma Keef, Internal Communications Specialist at Benenden Health

Emma continues: “Funnily enough, some of our content has decreased because they will contact me and say, "Oh, I found this from six years ago," and I say, "Great, get rid of it!” It's certainly taken some of the pressure off me from the day-to-day.”

Driving colleagues through Bnet

Bnet is a central hub that all colleagues can come through to get to wherever they need to be. Whether they’re heading to the HR system or the LMS, it is all accessible through Bnet, meaning all employees have a reason to access the platform regularly, where they will see the most recent updates and important information.

“Even when people are accessing third-party platforms, they all come through Bnet to get there. The idea is that they should be able easily find anything they need, so we make really simple for them to access it.”

- Emma Keef, Internal Communications Specialist at Benenden Health

User friendly navigation and tailored homepages

With the revamp of the intranet came a change in the navigation. Creating a new horizontal mega-menu has made searching for information so much easier with a layout that is more intuitive and user-friendly.

Emma explained: “Simply changing the menu actually made a really big difference, because when we had the side bar, it just became a giant list. Now, it’s much easier to navigate.”

Homepage banners and news articles are among some of the most often used elements of Oak, with news articles used for weekly updates that go to all employees and some which are tailored just toward people managers.

Tools are personalised to each user, with the third-party platforms they use most regularly just a click away. Plus, the most regularly used tools are prioritised at the top of the tool bar for even easier access.

Emma said: “We use audience segmentation to personalise tools within Oak. For example, everyone wants to book a holiday, so that’s always on the homepage, but our Bnet Champions also have their own menu with further options.”

Oak Engage enables teams to recognise and reward employees and create a positive workplace environment. It’s another huge draw to get employees onto the Bnet platform. 

Emma continued: “We have a pre-recognition phase where we get lots of nominations each month, then each quarter we review each of the entries to create a shortlist. We have created a process within Oak where people can vote, so everything is kept within the platform.”

Gathering feedback and analytics for continuous improvement

The team at Benenden Health are always keen to gather feedback to help with the development of engagement and communication initiatives. This has been made easy with their surveys which are built using Forms within Oak.

For in-the-moment feedback, Polls are helpful for gathering sentiment which all feeds into the wider analytics to understand what works well or identify new opportunities. 

Emma explained: “What we’re really interested in is how employees are interacting with our content. We want to know that once we’ve sent out an update, even if only one person comments but fifty people filled in the thing they were asked to fill in, it’s a success.”

Further insights have been gathered through the creation of listening rooms to identify gaps to be filled. 

Emma said: “I introduced listening rooms, which are not quite focus groups, but small, select conversational channels with sets of questions all based around the employee experience. We've been able to streamline our manager comms a lot, we're identifying gaps and deciding whether we need to set up new channels or just maximise our existing ones. It’s all about feedback, testing and trying new things out until we get to a place where everything is being used to its full potential.”

Campaign spotlight: DE&I

DE&I has been a big feature at Benenden Health in recent years and Oak has provided a platform to unite and engage the dispersed workforce over causes that matter. From International Women’s Day to Ramadan, giving colleagues a voice to tell their stories and educate their peers with videos, articles and live talks has been really powerful with a significant impact on engagement from people at all levels throughout the organisation. With a dedicated DE&I homepage, all useful resources and information can be found in one space.

Emma said: “I have been particularly involved in the employee voice aspect where we do regular ‘Let's Talk’ sessions and set them up as events in Bnet. We invite external speakers for colleagues to talk to about their lived experiences such as the influence of Pride, their experience of transitioning in the UK, race and domestic abuse. Recordings are available on Bnet with feedback forms and comments. People are still watching the sessions from 18 months ago; these stories get really high engagement and it’s clear to see that they add value.” 

Bnet has been a pivotal channel to engage colleagues with this initiative and their recent survey data found that 99% of employees now know what DEI means. Using Bnet to showcase impact and involvement in company and community initiatives means that awareness is a lot higher across the board. 86% of colleagues now agree that Benenden Health takes steps to reduce its impact on the environment and 88% agree that the organisation goes above and beyond to help its local community. 

Results

Transforming company culture is no mean feat, but seeing those changes in real time is what makes it all worth it, with 92% of employees believing they make a valuable contribution to the success of Benenden Health.

Emma commented: “When I started, people would send blanket emails and not engage with our internal channels.I used to tell people to publish things on Bnet and they’d say ‘nobody uses Bnet’. Now, nobody says that, and it's second nature to most people.Visibility on access and readership allows us to target the right people directly to remind them to visit Bnet for updates.”

The results for Benenden Health have really come from aligning their internal comms strategy with the wider business strategy.

Emma continued: “A few years ago, the business objectives would be  printed and shared at the beginning of the year. Now, I’ve moved them all onto Bnet. Each quarter I create a scorecard of all the results and successes from different departments which are explored in our update meetings to shout about the successes, hear feedback and remind people why we do this in the first place. This provides transparent accountability and is accessible to everyone throughout the business.”

The new and improved Bnet has created a very supportive culture, especially when incorporating the employee voice. People are very inclined to show appreciation for their colleagues. Bringing employee recognition front and centre is a regular reminder for people to celebrate and recognise their peers. 91% of colleagues state they are proud to work at Benenden Health and the culture they have been able to nurture makes it clear why this score is so high.

Top tips

We asked Emma to share her top tips to success for other internal communicators and here’s what she said.

“Having the testing areas has been really useful. I use them all the time! Be open to pilot and try new things and if something isn’t working, stop it. Rather than spending 6 months planning something and wondering if it will or won’t work, we just give it a go. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. That kind of buy-in for me has built up to now being able to try quite a few new different things and having excitement about trying them.”