The largest Municipality in Denmark
The district employs approximately 5,000 people across eight administrative buildings and an extensive list of institutions. The large size of the municipality gives their citizens the benefit of some of the most beautiful and untouched nature, which is a great asset for the Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern. However, the size also creates vast distances between the employees at the municipality, making internal communications challenging.
Project manager Jette Rask was asked to find a digital solution that could bring the employees closer together.
Provide information for people working remotely
Working with people from different educational and professional backgrounds can create great synergies and innovative solutions that will benefit your business or organisation. For this to happen, the organisation must make it possible by creating the right working environments. In the Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern, the largest obstacle for interaction between colleagues was the great physical distances between the different departments. Jette Rask, explain:
The size of our organisation means that there is a great distance between our departments. Therefore, we experience a massive challenge when it comes to cross-functional collaboration. We’ve had a hard time reaching our external employees in the different institutions – teachers, daycare workers, and our employees at our nursing homes, etc. At the same time, we had difficulties finding specific employees with certain professional skills and communicating information to employees through our previous intranet.
It was evident to Jette Rask that the solution to the problem was an intranet that could create a digital workspace, where the employees at the Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern could meet across geographically diverse locations. To find the right solution, she and her colleagues at the Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern gathered information about a variation of intranet providers that could support their needs. Jette Rask tells:
Our vision was to find a user-friendly and manageable intranet that reaches out to all employees. The employees in the different departments need easy access to information and collaboration. They need to feel like part of the organisation so that the unity around our organisation is strengthened.
Colibo ensures that the intranet is relevant to everybody
The Municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern found that Colibo met their requirements for an intranet that could unite the employees of the organisation. With Colibo, all staff at the municipality can log on to the intranet and have the same options in the system – even if an employee doesn’t have access to a computer. Jette Rask sums up:
Employees who aren’t stationed in the headquarters can still access relevant information and collaborate in workgroups. Moreover, Colibo is an intuitive and user-friendly intranet platform that makes it easy to find relevant colleagues with specific skills. Displaying the members who are nearest to you is incredibly relevant, and the notification feature provides an overview for the individual employee. Uploading profile pictures was something we did immediately. It increases the recognisability among colleagues and makes it easier for everyone to contact each other.
The new intranet platform will help the employees at the municipality get a sense of belonging to the entire organisation and strengthen the collaboration across departments.
To ensure that the new Colibo intranet was implemented successfully, the employees were involved in the development of the intranet. The intranet project group visited different departments in the organisation to talk directly with the end users of the intranet. This way, they gained valuable insights into the wishes and needs of the various professional groups. This process ensured that the intranet was designed for everybody and not only a limited group of people.
