Devon County Council – Bringing internal communication into the public domain

Faced with the task of breathing new life into their intranet, Devon County Council decided to integrate it into its public website. Internal Communications and Stakeholder Relations Manager Paula Miles explains why they did it and why early indications suggests it could be the solution to a more open, transparent and collaborative way of working. This case study forms part of our internal communications toolkit.

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Although internal communications is a big focus for Devon County Council our intranet needed a significant overhaul. Over time, behind the landing page, it had become largely more of a document repository rather than a useful tool for engaging employees. Lots of the information contained within it was also out of date and wasn’t being ‘owned’ by service areas. We needed to find a way of refocusing the content and structure on the things that mattered to colleagues and would help them do their jobs more effectively, while also keeping them informed about key developments.

Parallel to this was the fact that the way we were communicating with partners and communities was starting to change. Many of the messages we were sharing with staff were also relevant to colleagues across the public sector but we were using different channels to reach them. This was often an unwieldy process and not an efficient use of our resources. It also didn’t reflect the more collaborative approach we were trying to embed across the council.

We realised that integrating our intranet onto our public website could help us tackle both of those issues, while also proving our commitment to open, transparent and inclusive communication. We knew it could be a good idea, we just had to find a way to deliver it.

The plan

We started by looking at other organisations who had successfully adopted this approach. It is still a relatively new idea in local government so we looked for examples from the private sector, including the Royal Mail and Asda Walmart.

We took the positive examples we had found back to our digital communications team to look at the issues in more detail. We knew that taking traditionally internal information into the public domain could be controversial and that people may be concerned about the possibility of sensitive information being publicly available. We invested a significant amount of time in thinking about what information would be suitable for public consumption and what absolutely had to be protected. We explored which platforms would be best at protecting this information and created a very clear flow chart to help illustrate how we would decide on what information to share. We also developed a clear set of messages for use with our internal audiences to explain why we were exploring this new way of working.

Central to this was helping people to understand that in modern communications there’s much less distinction between internal and external communications than in the past. The lines are becoming increasingly blurred and publishing something on the intranet is no guarantee that it won’t find its way into the public domain. People talk about their jobs and what is happening in their organisations all the time so there is very little that that couldn’t become public knowledge.

Perhaps more importantly, we wanted to explain to people that there isn’t a great deal of information that shouldn’t be public knowledge or at least publicly available for people who are interested. As a council we’re responsible for delivering services that directly affect people’s lives so it’s only right and fair that they have access to information about how we operate and what sort of an organisation we are. This doesn’t mean opening up our channels so that anyone can access sensitive information; . Iit is essential that that remains protected. But information about our values, activities and stories about the brilliant people who work for us should be shared and celebrated with our partners and communities.

We took our delivery plan to our leadership group for input and approval. While there was understandably some nervousness about this new direction, they are an incredibly forward thinking team who are hugely supportive of communications. Our leadership group recognise the importance of being more open and transparent so they empowered us to start developing a test site.

The execution

Working closely with colleagues in our service areas, we started with a thorough audit of the content on the intranet to decide what we needed to keep and what we could delete, and to identify information that needed to be kept behind password protected SharePoint sites and what could be shared.

We also used analytics from our existing intranet to help identify the information that was regularly used and the pages that were not. This helped when there were differences of opinion about what information should be migrated and also informed  our design for the front page as it allowed us to make sure the information that was most useful to staff was clearly visible.

Our digital communications team worked on the technical build of the test site, using a word press structure on the govintranet platform.

Once we had a structure in place we launched the test version across the council and have shared it widely with partners and colleagues across local government to capture as much feedback as possible. We want to make sure that this new approach is as effective as possible so we are capturing feedback from everywhere to help us create a platform that really works.

The impact

The test site has been live for a couple of few months now and all of the anecdotal feedback has been extremely good. People are very positive about the fact that it is fully mobile  responsive, meaning employees meaning colleagues who are not desk based can easily access it on the move. We will be analysing traffic to the site over the next few months to see how people are using the site it in reality and we’re also working closely with a colleagues across the council who are helping us to roll out the test phase to capture their feedback. We are positive about the start we have made and other organisations have also expressed their interest in the work we have started doing so it is all very positive.

Why it worked

I think that fact that we were bold and just gave this new approach a go is a key part of its success. While we obviously invested significant time in assessing the pros and cons and working out solutions to the challenges, we could have become weighed down by that. Instead we decided to be proactive and address lots of challenges if and when they arose. So far, we’re not seeing a great deal of resistance or problems with delivering what we have set out to do so that confidence is paying off. We also had great levels of senior leader buy-in which helped enormously.

Lessons learned

The fact that everything has been going so well has made me think that we should have started earlier! The other lesson has been about how important it is to make sure that you’re communicating about the changes to internal channels clearly and effectively. I think we avoided lots of potential problems by thinking about the answers to questions people may have, particularly in relation to information security, early on. This meant that we could reassure people and continue developing the the ‘Inside Devon’ test site without being side-tracked. by needed to deal with staff confusion or worry. Although we are still in this test phase and want to now make sure we can fully respond to feedback following a full launch, which we hope will be soon. we’re hopeful that if things carry on the way they are we’ll be ready to set the platform live early next year. It’s a very exciting time.

Want to know more?

For more information please contact Paula Miles, Internal Communications and Stakeholder Relations Manager at Devon County Council.