In the latest episode of YellowChat we sit at the table with none other than former colleague Bram Koster. Today he has his hands full at Randstad Global, where he is involved in the development of the intranet. Six months before Bram joined Randstad, the global roll-out of this internal communication platform started. Bram’s mission? Ensure that more than 46,000 colleagues get the maximum benefit from this platform.
Bram takes us back to the beginning and he talks about the challenges of activating sucha large and decentralized user group. And of bringing uniformity to an intranet where 39 business units have left their own mark. But why is that important, that uniformity?
Curious about Bram’s story? You can read the abridged version in written form below. But of course you can always listen to the podcast, then you can be sure that you haven’t missed anything.
Of listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
Bram, tell me, what are you doing now?
“Since June 2022, I have been working at Randstad Global as service Owner of the intranet within Global IT. My job is to make sure that the organization makes the best use of the platform. In practice, I am not building pages, I am more the one who maintains contact with suppliers, for example.”
What can you tell us about the Randstad intranet?
‘Randstad has had Happeo as a platform for more than two years now. Happeo was developed on the basis of Google Workspace, which Randstad also uses. In 2020, it was decided that there should be a global platform for internal communication; an intranet. And actually, that has only been in use since January 2023.”
‘Until that time, the OpCos (Operational Companies) worked decentrally on Google Sites and LumApps. That complicated global communication internally. One of the things that was urgently needed was to make it easier to inform employees about what is going on worldwide. Such a desire is increasing in importance, as more is decided and regulated at the global level. As a result, the need arose to implement such a platform. Until then, it was an email that went to all employees.”
“So far, we are mainly
dealing with this decentralized reality.”
I can imagine that, with more than 46,000 people on an intranet, you can’t control everything centrally and that you should be able to do things decentrally easily?
‘Yes, centralization is an important theme since there is a new CEO. Now we are looking more at how we can do things together. But so far we are mainly dealing with this decentralized reality. Because rolling out and embedding a platform in the organization takes time. As a result, it is still a fairly decentralized platform, despite the centralized backbone. So we still see in practice that each OpCo has its own presence and the cross-links are not really there yet. There lies a nice challenge.”
‘The great thing is that the intranet is the first
global platform for Randstad.”
But Bram, then you get there, then you have a platform and then they say, “Go roll it out.’What do you do then?
‘I actually got on a moving train. The rollout was already underway and a deadline had been set that this had to be done within two years. That is why an approach was also chosen in which each OpCo was given the proverbial keys, along with a short training. It was then said, ‘ go ahead.’That has the advantage of ‘speed’.“
‘But what has not been applied, because of that speed, is a tight central control on which pages are needed and how they look. As a result, everyone has their own formats for homepages and other pages. and one page looks more beautiful than the other. So there is still a nice task to bring more uniformity through, for example, templates and things like that.”
You’re talking about 39 OpCos, that’s quite a lot. We often see that working on an intranet is low on the priority list. Why did all those OpCos get started with this?
‘The executive board just issued an oekaze. This is the platform and we all need to be over before the deadline. That’s what they had to do with. That is, of course, a good stick behind the door. But it also saves that many people in the organization see the added value of such a platform.”
‘Actually, there are three things that were on the agenda for this year:
- The first thing was to make it uniform. So ensure that when pages are built, they comply with the brand guidelines and the user experience guidelines.
- The second was that we wanted to get a better grip on the statistics. What is happening on the platform? And how can we better provide people with data about what is happening on their part of the intranet?
- The third had a lot to do with maturity. We want to support organizational units in activating their employees. So we help by looking at what it takes to be well present and what the involvement of the management is. In the intranet and in discussions, but also in news services, etc. For those kinds of aspects, we have developed a scan that we can plot on the OpCos. there then rolls out a score that helps people realize what it takes to bring such a platform to life.”
Often the role of making an intranet a success lies in communication, or perhaps in HR, but not so much in it. Shouldn’t it be somewhere other than IT?
‘Fair question, but the question is where it should be. That’s also something I run into at Randstad. It doesn’t always feel like a responsibility, so who do you talk to? Very simple example: if I have to come up with a KPI, it has to come from the business. But I have no idea who to ask for that.”
“Incidentally, this is partly because a new strategy is being developed that has an impact on how the organization is organized. Among other things, that has also led to the fact that I have not been able to achieve my ambitions this year. We are now in a situation where we have to wait a while. Because the intranet will soon be overturned, because there is a different structure of the organization. So it’s kind of a weird time in that sense.”
‘On the desk side, you often come in at the moment that a budget
has been released and that a decision has been made to do something.”
What is the biggest difference you see between being on the desk side and being on the customer side?
“Of course, I made a very conscious choice. Because I didn’t just want something different, I also wanted to join an organization. An intranet makes an impact on so many levels and there are so many stakeholders, which makes it interesting to be in an organization. This allows you to have better contact with all those levels in an organization and hopefully get the best out of the platform.”
‘The funny thing is that when I called a number of clients that I was going to make the Switch, one said that they were just looking at a switch to the desk side. Because you are always in the action. And she said that on the desk side you often do not realize that you come in at the moment when a budget has been released and a decision has been made to do something. That is when there is a need for capacity, knowledge and expertise. On the customer side, of course, it is different. Then you are preparing for that decision. Waiting for a budget to be released.”
“It is fascinating to see how the intranet is viewed within the organization. What kind of questions come in and that one is further than the other. The nice thing is to see how we can facilitate those teams in the use of the platform. I find it very interesting to have that role, even if it is very different. In addition to the intranet, there are also other services that I will manage. Then I get a wider network in the organization and I can look at new possibilities, such as integration. So I’m not bored.”
You are now the owner of the intranet and that suggests that you are less dependent than if you were a consultant. What is it like to be one of them instead of just advising from the sidelines?
“I feel more like it’s mine. I really feel the ownership. So I try to get people to make good use of it. At the same time, it is interesting to be on the other side now. To see that someone who is hired and says exactly the same thing as me is heard much better than me. All the knowledge and skills that are attributed to you when you come in as an advisor are lost the moment you are simply in the same organization. People don’t even ask you the question anymore, but immediately ask the supplier or a partner. That’s funny, but sometimes a little frustrating. But every role and every function, I think, has that kind of downside.”
You are at a large international company, do you still see a difference in perception of an intranet in the different countries?
“What I mainly see in it is the way the activities around the intranet are organized. This has to do with capacity, budget, but also with culture. The main difference I see is that in the Netherlands and Germany, for example, the content management of all pages has been reduced to a team. And this is probably charged, but basically they have some kind of Content Agency that makes all the changes. If a new page needs to be created, they have to request it and see if it is really necessary. I love that. Because it is very good to have a tight control on a tool that is very loose, as we have.’
‘If you look at the United States, for example, there are countless page editors. It is very much invested in the business. Then you sometimes also see that Page managers are long gone again. This is a completely different way of organizing. And I don’t know if that’s better, but I can see the impact right away. And that it is quite difficult to keep all those frogs in a wheelbarrow. It requires a lot of coordination and that is of course much easier with a small team.”
“But I also see a difference in activation. Last year around this time, the Japanese OpCo set up an action. For this, three channels were established. Teams then had to make a minimum number of notifications in one of those channels to encourage the use of the platform. They were allowed to post anything.”
‘At some point, unbeknownst to us about those channels, we saw huge bumps in the global numbers. That looked good, but we were also curious why it went so well. Then we went to dig up the data and we found out that it was because of that action. And despite the fact that it was about things like weekend plans and lunch, it did lead a lot of people to get to know the platform. Of course, that’s partly because it was imposed; they had to post at least as many posts per week as a team. But it works. You really saw the huge success of that campaign.’
‘The other day we had a strategy day about what the new organization will look like. In the run-up to that day, a channel was also set up. It was called ‘Rise day ‘(from’ Rise and shine’) in which people show how they start their (work)day. What made me very happy was how many people started posting. We had days with as many as 30 posts. This shows that people need to contribute themselves. I believe that we can still make steps in this regard. That is why we are now also looking at whether we can use that channel as a permanent social channel worldwide.”
‘That shows that people need to contribute something themselves.”
Then you do an activity, but does that use remain?
‘This action was of course a very concrete question for people and it was very approachable. That makes it easy to respond. I think it, and this is a huge open door, comes down to community management. So what things are you going to do to activate those people? That is a conversation that we still have to have within Randstad.”
In the context of looking ahead: you are busy with intranets, but how do you look at the future of the intranet in general? Where do you see it going now?
‘The other day I had a conversation with a colleague from HR about the fact that their system actually has an intranet. Of course we see that more often. There are plenty of organizations that use AFAS, for example, with which you can actually build an intranet. And what platform doesn’t have that now? You now also get an intranet platform, so to speak, with a sliced bread.”
“But it’s an interesting question, of course, if all those tools can actually do that. You always have the ‘know and arrange’. So where do you arrange something and where do you put the knowledge on how to arrange it. Very often it is chosen to put the knowing on the intranet with a reference to the system to control it. In fact, that knowledge of course belongs much more in the system in which you also regulate it. There is probably a much closer integration and then you will be guided step by step.”
‘Actually, you don’t have to get that information to the intranet anymore. In this way, the intranet becomes much more of a connector of systems. In addition, the arrival of AI, in my experience, provides many opportunities in the field of search and understanding the natural question. If you use that, you no longer have to work with hashtags or synonyms of keywords. For example, AI can understand that when you search for payslip, you mean payslip. That gives a very powerful search engine. Of course, this is a picture of the future that has been outlined for 20 years, but let’s assume that someday it will really happen.“
“If you add that up, I think the intranet will have a much more ‘spider in the web’ function in the future. That it is much more focused on integrating all those systems and understanding what is there. You then put a good AI layer on top of that, so that people know how to find their way.”
‘Top-down communication is also important. It really conveys messages well. So then the intranet gets a bit of the function of a news platform. Then we just have to make it a little more interesting. Very simple, for example: highlighting a certain message on the homepage does not have to come back in the timeline with the other news. The simplest things that every newspaper does well are very difficult on the intranet. And I think we can put a lot more focus on that and on segmentation or personalization. So I hope it gets a little nicer, a little nicer. It could all be a little more fun I think.”
‘The simplest things that every newspaper does well
are very difficult on the intranet.”
And then you’re mainly talking about the connecting content about where and for what? And that with the help of AI you can focus that much more on the relevance for people and on what it means for them.
‘Exactly, but also how to get that news right. So just a CMS, but more advanced than any intranet I know. You can think of a headless CMS. Then you might get more into the situation as it looks on the outside. And this is not very strange, because in fact, internal communication often lags behind external communication. That’s how I see it in 10 years. But we still have steps to take for that time.”
Listen to the podcast here
Of luister via: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
