Meet the Winner: Best Use of Technology in Employee Engagement

Following the 2024 Engage Awards, we’ve had the privilege of sitting down with our winners to uncover the stories behind their award-winning strategies. Our ‘Meet the Winners’ series aims to provide valuable insights into crafting a winning entry while inspiring success and innovation across the industry.

Today we meet Matt Cooper, Head of Digital Communications and Intranet Project Manager at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, who were our worthy winners in the our ‘Best use of Technology in Employee Engagement’ category.

1. Congratulations on your Engage Awards win! Can you tell us a little bit more about the project that shaped your entry?

Thanks very much! The launch of our new staff intranet, Kingsweb, was the focus of our entry. Our new intranet was launched in November 2023 after a year of research, build and implementation. Since being live, our intranet has been hugely popular and achieved some staggering statistics (more on these below).

Our old intranet was becoming increasingly unreliable and was no longer fit-for-purpose for our organisation. We felt that the project used technology in an innovative way to enhance communication and engagement across our large, diverse workforce. Kingsweb exemplifies how technology can foster collaboration, streamline workflows, and strengthen organisational culture.

Alongside our providers, Interact, we have delivered an employee experience platform that we are incredibly proud of and continues to evolve.
We made a short video about our journey and highlighted some of the features of Kingsweb in this video: https://vimeo.com/1003595262.

2. What motivated you to pursue this initiative, and why do you think it stood out?

Kingsweb has revolutionised the way King’s communicates, supporting staff with a reliable, mobile-accessible platform that aligns with the Trust’s vision of being BOLD: Brilliant People, Outstanding Care, Leaders in Research and Innovation, and Diversity and Inclusion.

With staff spread across five key sites, we are a leader in patient care, research, and innovation. Effective communication is vital to ensuring operational efficiency and supporting frontline staff in providing outstanding care. 

Our old intranet was only accessible on Trust computers within our hospital walls, and this was a huge blocker for staff who worked remotely or offsite. We now have an intranet that can be accessed anywhere, on any device – and is also available as an interactive app.

3. What were the biggest challenges you faced during this journey, and how were they overcome?

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. 

One of our biggest challenges was working through getting Single Sign-On (SSO) enabled, which enables staff to access the platform without logging in. Having to login to the platform would impact engagement with frontline staff, and we did not want to launch until SSO was enabled. Our ICT team worked diligently with Interact to get this functioning and working as expected.

4. How has this initiative impacted your customers and employees?

Kingsweb has transformed our internal communications offer to our staff across our hospital sites. We now have an intranet that provides two-way communication and is a pillar of our staff engagement. Staff can submit their stories, engage with content and share each other’s successes.

Kingsweb has delivered exceptional results, both quantitatively and qualitatively:

• Over 4,000,000 desktop and 60,000 mobile logins since launch.
• Over 1,000,000 monthly page views, 350,000 average monthly searches, and more than 5,000 daily users, reflecting high engagement and activity.
• Over 5,000 appreciation messages submitted to the ‘Thank You’ widget, enhancing staff morale and connectivity.

Qualitatively, Kingsweb has transformed the organisational culture, building a sense of community and aligning with the Trust’s vision and values. Forums, for instance, have become invaluable spaces for collaboration, while tailored content delivery ensures every user has a personalised experience. The platform’s advanced analytics also enable continuous improvement, ensuring Kingsweb evolves to meet future needs.

Embedded within the platform, a pulse survey was launched to discover what was working well and where improvements could be made. This received over 1,600 responses, revealing that 75% of users liked Kingsweb’s look, feel, and the new homepage the most; users found Kingsweb user-friendly, enjoyed the varied aspects (i.e. the interactive calendar and ‘Thank You’ widget, where employees can recognise each other), and said that it felt modern and fresh.

Kingsweb has seen a significant ROI, enabling higher workforce efficiency through upgraded search, overhauled information structure and governance methodology (i.e. decommissioning of old servers housing our old intranet).

5. What does winning this award mean to everyone at KING'S COLLEGE HOSPITAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST?

The award is huge recognition for the hard-work and dedication of our Corporate Communications and ICT team. The project team left no stone unturned in their pursuit to deliver an employee experience platform that meets the needs of a busy and diverse Trust like King’s. 

It was fantastic to be there on the night and pick up the award. Up against some big hitters in our category, it felt like a truly defining moment for the project, and it has inspired us to grow and develop our employee experience platform even further. 

6. What advice would you give to other companies striving for similar success?

To be patient and to set yourself non-negotiables. We were very clear from the outset that we didn’t want to launch without Single Sign-On being enabled, and for our Active Directory (the electronic staff listing) being synced. These took time to implement and set the project back a bit, but we were very glad we waited and ensured we launched something that was bold. 

It’s also important to be ambitious and we were determined to launch both the web-based platform and the app at the same time. Teams within the Trust that do not have (or require) access to a PC, have found the app an integral addition to how they find content on the go.

To view all of the our 2024 winners, visit our website.

To find out more about the Engage Awards programme, click here.