Matthew Petch Cooper, Head of Digital Communications, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
As one of the UK’s largest and busiest NHS Trusts, it is imperative that our staff are connected and can access key information quickly and on the go.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust employs over 13,500 staff – alongside external partners and contractors and has five key hospital sites across South London and Kent. We are one of London’s four major trauma centres and treat thousands of seriously injured patients in our critical care units. Our staff regularly requires access to key clinical information and operational updates, so communicating these messages in an effective and timely manner is vital.
Effective communication is vital to ensuring operational efficiency and supporting frontline staff in providing outstanding care. The Trust’s previous intranet was outdated and inadequate and only accessible within hospital buildings, limiting staff access to critical information. We needed a new connectivity solution.
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a light on our staff engagement offer, highlighting what worked well and what required improvement—introducing a more reliable and slicker intranet platform was the single biggest ask.
No sooner had the dust settled from the pandemic, than we began the process of researching and building a new platform. Working alongside leading intranet provider, Interact, our objective was clear: we wanted to create a modern, mobile-accessible intranet that redefines communication, engagement, and efficiency for one of the UK's busiest NHS Trusts. Our goal was to overcome the limitations of the outdated legacy system and align to bring the Trust’s BOLD vision to life.
We took our time with the research – understanding what staff required from their new platform – and how it might ultimately make their life easier. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews helped to shape the functionality, as well as the look and feel of the platform.
To achieve an employee experience platform that was accessible and engaged by all, we introduced several new features, namely:
Despite operating within NHS procurement constraints, we delivered a vibrant, responsive platform.
Not without its hurdles – including technical ones that took time to overcome and implement – the platform has been live since the end of 2023 and has become a pillar of our staff engagement offer.
Our Communications team worked closely with Interact to translate research insights into practical and sensible solutions across our varied geography and hospital sites.
With hundreds of departments, sub-departments, and pockets of different care across the Trust, there was a great deal of information to migrate and create. We wanted to ensure our staff took ownership of their pages, and with the platform easy to use, over 600 content authors (so far!) were trained to migrate their existing content and create high-quality content in a consistent house style.
We were also clear during the implementation phases that we wanted the platform to talk to our existing systems; including seamless integration with existing Trust ICT systems – like the Active Directory (AD) – which will help to optimise workflows and reduce administrative burdens.
Enabling sign-on was also non-negotiable, with the user experience at the forefront of every step of the build. Quick and easy access was imperative, with staff able to quickly visit Kingsweb on ward computers, for example, without the need to waste time signing in.
Challenges, such as resistance to change and technical complexities, were addressed through robust stakeholder engagement, training sessions, publication of ‘how to’ guides, and ongoing support from the Communication team, ensuring a smooth transition for all staff. Despite its obvious advantages, we knew the switch from an intranet that was over 15 years old would have its challenges, and managing that change took time and understanding.
Our phased implementation of the platform helped to ensure minimal disruption and allowed for user feedback to be gathered – and, most importantly, responded to. We didn’t want to go ‘big bang’ from day one and instead, launch in a steady and responsive manner that our users have embraced.
Since launch, the platform has achieved some staggering results: over one million monthly page views, 350,000 average monthly searches, more than 65,000 daily users, over 5,000 ‘Thank You’ messages submitted by staff… and much, much more—which I’d love to tell you about.
Come and find out more about Kingsweb, our journey, and some of our successes so far when I present our case study on 22nd May at the Employee Engage Summit.