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Editor's Notes

• #2: Our team launched an entirely new digital workplace to 22,000+ global employees.��We’ve learned a lot about how to transform our employees’ experience with a user-centric workplace.​ And we’d like to share those learnings with you.
• #3: My name is Anthony Jones. I’m the Internal Digital Communications Manager at Rockwell Automation.��​ I’ve been with the company for just over 10 years and my experience spans Internal Communications, Corporate Communications and Marketing.��​Currently, my team is passionate about giving our employees the best possible experience through technology and design that’s engaging, informative and inspiring.
• #4: Haven’t heard of us before? That’s okay – we mostly work behind-the-scenes to help industrial companies and their people be more productive. Our lifeblood is technology and innovation. Our employees deliver productivity to customers every day, and they expect that same innovation from the tools and systems at work.
• #5: Our journey is about launching a new intranet globally. And not just any off-the-shelf intranet – we implemented an entirely new, digital workplace. And by doing so, we’re transforming our employee experience.��
• #6: When people ask me about why we made this investment to change platforms, the answer they really want to know is, “Was it worth all the change management work we had to do?” The answer is yes. But before I jump ahead to the answer, let me talk about the journey. �� We started two years ago because – to be honest – we had to. Our environment was 15+ years old and was failing frequently. Soon, the entire system would collapse.��​ �� Not only was failure imminent, but the system was horribly time-consuming to maintain. We identified significant security vulnerabilities and the user experience was beyond dated. We needed something new.��​
• #7: Beyond these immediate needs, there were 5 key drivers for making this change…​ 1: Support changing��work styles.​ People can work from anywhere, at any time. We need to support that productivity. ​​
• #8: 2: Unify offline and online communications.�� ​Before introducing our new digital workplace, our employees had no way of accessing our intranet except from the office or on VPN via a work computer. ​How frustrating is that? Especially if you’re in the field, where most of the day is spent traveling and working from a phone.��​
• #9: 3: People deserve (and demand) choice, flexibility and personalization.​ We needed to provide employees with a similar user experience they have outside the firewall.
• #10: 4: Support virtual work environments. Come into the office every day? Don’t think so. ​Employees need to stay connected in distributed and virtualized work locations.​
• #11: The last reason – and perhaps to leadership, the most important: Productivity and spend. This was important to our leadership (and I’m certain it’s important to all leaders and people who care about budgets). Research firm McKinsey estimates a potential improvement of information worker productivity by up to 25% when fully leveraging modern intranet/digital workplace technology (see next slide).
• #12: Research firm McKinsey estimates a potential improvement of information worker productivity by up to 25% when fully leveraging modern intranet/digital workplace technology.
• #13: Now you know WHY we changed. So let’s talk about HOW we started our partnership with��our vendor of choice, QueryNow.​
• #14: We call our modern digital workplace Epoch. (Go ahead and Google the term. We’ll wait.)
• #15: We talked to employees and learn about what they wanted and preferred. We coupled feedback from our focus groups with industry best-practices to inform our product design. We partnered with our marketing UX Team to conduct usability labs with feedback and discussion. This part of the process was incredibly informative and helped us drive enhancements in our design that improved the user-interface and feature prioritization. From here, we started building Epoch.​
• #16: Your digital workplace is more than just a door to the intranet. It shapes how employees feelings about your company and their jobs. It fosters collaboration and connects employees around the world or across teams. We want our employees to see themselves and each other through Epoch. And to discover content, resources and stories that are meaningful and drive productivity. �� We focused on four ways the digital workplace helps employees stay:​ ​Informed & Inspired: News & Media Center​ Connected: Yammer, People Directory​ In control: customization (MyApps)​ Productive: Integrated search, Office Tools, Filtering and meta data​
• #17: ​Informed & Inspired: News & Media Center​ Employees who are informed and engaged will be inspired to do their best work, so we wanted employees to see how their job contributes to the goals of the company and helps customers. That’s why we dedicated a large portion of the home page to news and media.
• #18: Using targeted profile capabilities, we’re delivering relevant news stories directly to the employees who need it. Employees can see content that’s targeted by Region, Business Unit or Role. Our people managers are critical communicators and help employees stay informed and engaged, so we introduced a manager indicator in profiles that allows us to target content to them.​
• #19: Sometimes a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Our media center lets employees share photos and videos (often photos link back to news stories or other resources to help employees learn more). When employees see each other doing great things, great vibes spread around the world​.
• #20: Social platforms connect people and teams together across business units and regions. Most companies have some type of social platform – ours is Yammer. We put Yammer on our home page because we recognize the business value how it can help employees communicate and connect – it surfaces important information real-time and directly from the source.
• #21: We made is super easy to find people and location information quickly, and from anywhere. Investing in an easy, visual and intuitive way to find contact information, reporting structure and people is delivering big results (and immediate connections as you can start a Skype conversation right from the search results). These are just a few of the ways that our digital workplace is helping employees stay connected.​
• #22: A user-centric digital workplace puts the employee in control. The ability to customize is crucial to the modern digital workplace.​ ​ One of our most popular features has always been the directory of websites and resources. In the past, this was a static list with no search capability, meta data or mobile access. And with hundreds of links, it can be cumbersome to navigate to a link you use often and need to access quickly.​
• #23: We reimagined our directory and introduced the App Center to Epoch, which includes a customizable ‘My Apps’ feature. Employees can now search for sites based on relative key words. From the App Center, employees can add favorite apps to their personal ‘My Apps’ section and will see only the apps they’ve selected (plus a few apps pinned by administrators because everyone need them).​ ​ We’re adding more customization including integrated app modules and layout configuration options. A customized workplace, that you can access from anywhere at any time, is a more valuable workplace.​
• #24: Everyone wants to do their best work, every day, and that means being productive. That’s why productivity is a big deal. And constantly searching is not productive (in fact, it wastes time and frustrates people).​ ​ We deployed an integrated search feature that allows employees to search across many parts of our Microsoft Office 365 environment in one query. Right from the home page employees can enter a keyword search and immediately see a drop-down set of results from People, Locations, Sites and Files without hitting enter. Employees can click directly to a resource from the menu, or hit enter to go to a robust results page organized by category and with filters and a features to help narrow results where needed. Each category includes a link to expand the results to show all matches with that content type. And, the results are displayed based on each employee’s unique permissions providing a personalized experience for search results.​ We are always looking for ways to improve and optimize the search function. We’re already working on new enhancements to search as well as ongoing programs to help promote search optimization for content and data quality for profile records.​
• #25: In addition to ‘My Apps’ we’ve added a second tab to the drawer feature in the top left corner. When employees click on the “waffle” icon, they can browse to a tab containing a selection of the most used Office 365 Apps available to employees. Having a quick way to access office tools is important to helping employees stay productive.​
• #27: And we’ve only just begun. Launching Epoch was our first step to realizing our vision for the Rockwell Automation digital workplace. Your digital workplace is never “done”. Like the world around us, we must evolve with technology and user expectations with natural and progressive changes. �� Change can be tough for employees, but when change is part of a continuous evolution, it’s easier for employees to adjust and helps promote confidence and adoption of new features and changes.​ �� We constantly seek employee feedback that helps inform new features and changes, and we have received lots of great ideas that are both essential and innovative. A few of the things we’re planning to bring to Epoch in future releases are:​ More home page customization​ Themes and style preferences​ Application integrations with other systems​ Chat Bot and AI​ A true mobile application​ Push notifications and more​
• #28: Change management is extremely important! Make sure your employees know what to expect.​ ​ Our biggest surprise came with the deployment of integrated search. Because search spans across multiple office environments, including SharePoint and OneDrive… some employees were surprised to see content and files that were either restricted or personal private files. While we ensured that security permissions were inherited for all search results, employees were not used to seeing this type of content in home page search results and this created some initial confusion over who could see what. �� We learned very quickly that we needed to inform and assure employees that private and restricted files would only show up in results for those who have permissions to see them. In a short amount of time we were able to cascade messaging to employees around this capability and resolve the confusion. But we definitely know we could have approached this differently, and early, to help avoid that confusion. Today employees are now realizing the benefits of this “smart” search capability and some have even taken extra precautions to ensure that confidential information is protected, which is great!​ ​ It’s also important to recognize that your solution will not please everyone. Long-tenured employees can prefer familiar systems, and may resist change. Some features of your digital workplace may not appeal to everyone. And, feedback from these employees may feel negative. Don’t be discouraged and make sure you weigh negative feedback against the positive experiences most of your employees will enjoy. Don’t be afraid to take risks and avoid compromising your strategy based on a minority, sometimes outspoken, group of haters. Listen, and consider all feedback, always. And stay the course with a focus on enabling your users with more customization to achieve the goal of providing a user-centric digital workplace.​
• #29: The possibilities are endless as we continue our journey to evolve and enhance the digital workplace. Whether you are already on your journey or just getting started, remember to keep a focus on user experience to inform decision, design, features and your roadmap.​ ​ If you have questions or want to learn more, just reach out directly to us.