Corangamite Shire Council simplifying work-from-home by increasing intranet engagement to nearly 100%

Corangamite Shire Council began planning for a remote work reality well before the urgency of COVID-19 forced many organisations’ hands. With nine towns within its boundaries and more than 275 distributed staff members, Corangamite had a team engagement challenge. Roughly 60 percent of staff work outdoors or in the field, making it hard to keep everyone informed of important updates, urgent notices and new policy information.

Corangamite’s existing intranet fell short on many levels—mobile accessibility, outdated content and poor communication capabilities, to name a few. Employees were left disconnected and unable to self-serve. Inboxes flooded with irrelevant emails—or worse, critical communications could not be prioritised for urgency and went unnoticed.

Clearly, there had to be a better way. Corangamite project leaders knew a smooth transition to a new and improved technology required collective organisational ownership. As with any change in process and tools, there was sure to be an adoption curve. But the transition would be much easier with early involvement from staff and stakeholders.

The Council went so far as to champion an internal naming competition for the new intranet, and that is how CHESTER was born. CHESTER (Corangamite’s Handy Electronic Shared Treasure-trove of Essential Resources) reflects the staff’s enthusiasm and genuine sense of ownership in the naming, planning and implementation process.

As users continue to discover the full capability of Corangamite’s intranet, staff engagement has grown to nearly 100 percent.

The intranet has a mobile responsive design that ensures Council staff in the field have a user experience that is as equally accessible as it is for those on desktop devices. More than 30 OpenForms have replaced inefficient PDFs, saving as much as 40 hours/week and allowing all staff to easily complete new hire forms, timesheets, creditor/debtor forms, media requests and more.

CHESTER is now the default Corangamite staff homepage, featuring single sign-on to make access incredibly fast and easy. As the hub for internal Council interaction, staff now have a single source for Council announcements, notifications and informational content. The mobile-friendly design makes sure all users have a clean, functional experience regardless of their device.

Fortunately for Corangamite, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the intranet project was already in active use across the organisation. This made for rapid response in standing up an internal COVID information page, to keep staff up to date with one source for the latest in emergency policies, procedures and resources.

Neeson explains “Too many emails or alerts and staff may start tuning it out. But CHESTER lets us keep the stream of information focused and serves as the one source of internal communication and guidance.”

It has also been a welcome source of connection and teambuilding for staff feeling distanced from colleagues and missing daily interaction. “Using the message board, we started weaving in human interest stories that help break up the constant stream of serious data and crisis communications,” said Neeson.

It’s provided a platform for teams to strengthen the organisation’s culture and inter-department relationships by sharing personal or professional content and insights. “A great example is the recent exchange between staff regarding homeschooling challenges,” said Neeson. “The message board plays an important role in building camaraderie.”

“When you close the Council office doors, it makes difficult for residents to get business done,” said Neeson. “We’ve seen a 20 percent increase in website use since… COVID-19 closures began.” And because Corangamite has optimised the quality of communication and collaboration on its intranet, those benefits extend to how staff are able to serve the community.

In addition to the expected crisis communications on the Council’s public site home page, they have expanded the use of the business page to provide information and steps regarding grants available for small businesses. There is an effort to educate residents about how to access available digital services, with a greater emphasis on the ease and speed of doing business online. The hope is for residents to take advantage of these online channels given the temporary office closures. But also, to encourage them to embrace a shift to digital services as the “new normal.”

As remote work models continue to expand, forward-thinking local governments will be ready. Effective intranets are a key part of making that happen. According to Neeson, the shift is not about if but rather when. His advice to fellow Councils making the transition to a more robust intranet is to keep three core factors in focus.

OpenCities’ Emergency Hub, our intranet “lite” offering can be set up in a matter of days. Provide staff with a single, secure home base for staying informed, engaged and productive.