inIDEX: A Mobile Digital Workplace Supporting Employees From Day One

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Idex Group specialises in environmental and energy services and supports its clients in optimising their energy model, from energy production to consumption management. Operating as a partner to its industrial clients, Idex offers solutions designed to be incorporated into their sustainable development policy. Idex ensures sustainable management of public- and private-sector buildings. Idex is equipped to handle all energy types across France (biomass, geothermal energy, recovered energy, etc.) and provides long-term support for local authorities in developing their energy infrastructure plans.
Employees:
3,000-10,000
Services:
Internal Communications
Human Resources
Industries:
Energy
Manufacturing

The Challenge

Idex Group is a major player in the energy transformation sector that is constantly striving to evolve its services. Over the last few years, the group has undergone significant expansion following the acquisition of numerous local companies and international businesses like Go4Green in Belgium and DanPower Baltic in Lithuania.

In this rapidly growing environment, support functions such as communication, human resources and security are confronted daily with major challenges like:

1. Sense of Belonging

Building a group with shared values and ensuring all newcomers are well integrated into the group. Being a core value, the management team is committed to fostering equal opportunity, diversity and career development.

2. Attractiveness & Recruitment

Similar to any growing company, Idex is faced with recruitment challenges. It is essential for the company to make itself visible, attractive and, above all, to retain its employees in order to stay competitive in the market.

3. Onboarding & Training

As a high-risk, field-based business, Idex employees must be quickly and effectively trained to ensure the seamless execution of activities.

To address these challenges and align with the group’s strategy, in 2018, Idex decided to completely revamp its internal communication platform. Previously available only to support functions and on desktop computers, the purpose of the new intranet solution was to unify all communication for all employees, both in the office and in the field.

Idex’s goals were to offer its employees an intranet that stands for:

  • The face of the group: Given the numerous activities of the company, Idex sought to highlight specific professions and employee profiles in order to unite everyone within the group.
  • Unique collaboration hub: many employees work in the field and are located in different parts of the country. Therefore, the company envisioned a platform offering a space for both collaboration and networking.
  • Source of business information: all useful documents and security procedures are united in a single source of truth.

That’s when Idex and LumApps began their collaboration in 2018 and created a digital workplace that connects more than 4,900 employees, of which more than 2,700 are frontline workers.

Sharing strategic information on our markets is essential for the sales force” Thanks to the monitoring Community created with Lumapps, the sales force has access to the latest useful and up-to-date information thanks to its advanced information qualification and research functions.

Alexandre Bouxin
Marketing Manager at Idex Group

The New Mobile and Agile Digital Workplace

Launched in October 2018, “inIDEX” – the new intranet platform of Idex – consists of four key features designed to meet the above-outlined business needs:

News

Thanks to the contributions of an in-house journalist, the intranet is updated daily with news and articles, so-called “hot” content that highlights talents and innovations by putting Idex’s employees in the spotlight.

Mobile Access

inIDEX is accessible on both desktop and mobile devices. The mobile application allows employees to access all their documents and the latest company news wherever they are.

Useful Information

The creation of static pages and rubrics, so-called “cold” content, enables the easy distribution of useful documents, such as HR and IT, but also allows Idex to support its employees in their high-risk functions, with relevant content on health and safety.

Communities

All employees have access to collaborative spaces thanks to LumApps communities. Here, employees can exchange knowledge and best practices or interact on more informal topics. Employees saw positive effects on productivity, well-being and their commitment to work.

Adoption Best Practices

Default access

A default setting to employees’ browser is set, which automatically opens inIDEX’s homepage (alongside their inbox and calendar). To engage everyone even when they are on the go or work in the field, the mobile inIDEX application is installed by default on all professional mobile devices.

Management support

In December 2019, a new president joined Idex, marking a tipping point in the platform usage. With a focus on new technologies, they helped make inIDEX the single point of entry for all corporate information and news by urging departments to adopt it as their primary communication channel.

Smart launch and employee recognition

Idex chose to involve regional departments as well as certain end-users from the beginning of the project. The launch of a two-month pilot helped Idex gather feedback, which drove platform improvements and to obtain numerous testimonials for the promotional campaign of the new intranet.

Mobile Gamification

More than 50% of Idex’s employees are working in the field. That’s why the adoption of their mobile intranet application was crucial, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic. Idex introduced a game to encourage app usage and increase visibility. Employees earned awards by engaging with mobile-only content, driving more and more app downloads and activity.

As HR, inIDEX makes our daily life easier.” From the onboarding of our employees, through all the HR news, the communication of processes, access to the training area, or the possibility for everyone to see in real time the job offers of the group to boost their mobility, our employees are at the heart of HR thanks to LumApps.

Caroline Millard
HR Development Manager at Idex Group

LumApps Support for Success

A year since the launch of the platform, a satisfaction survey was conducted to identify some points of improvement and evolution of inIDEX. To respond to the needs of users and the new leadership, at the beginning of 2020 Idex together with the LumApps Customer Success team began implementing various changes to enrich the platform’s user experience.

With the increased adoption of the platform, more and more people expressed the need for greater visibility on the group’s news and activities. This inspired the digital team to redesign and adapt the inIDEX’s homepage. To bring clarity, the structure and layout were revised with a more purpose-oriented approach, giving better visibility to both group and regional information. By introducing multiple rubric sections, the homepage followed a logic similar to popular news websites. That allowed Idex to break the existing communication silos and create a more personalized experience.

To organize in the most pertinent way and give the necessary accent to each rubric, LumApps provided guidelines on the layout and design of the homepage. With its expertise and know-how, the Customer Success team helped Idex create a seamless flow between their rubrics, static pages and collaborative spaces.

Heading inspired by the press

Dedicated news rubrics like security and health, business sales, jobs and professions, rules and regulations, innovation, CSR (corporate social responsibility), internal mobility and others highlighting key information have a special place on inIDEX. The format and visibility of all news rubrics are personalized according to user profiles allowing for optimal information distribution.

Safety and Security

Ensuring employees safety at work is a key focus at Idex. Working in a high-risk environment employees need to be well prepared, hence key information is always at their disposal on the homepage of their digital workplace. Dedicated security pages and communities are built to ensure that employees across the organization have quick access to resources, can ask questions directly and exchange in case of emergencies.

HR and Outbound Strategy

+500

+220

23%

Successfully onboarded employees
(since January 2021)

Employees have benefited from internal mobility opportunities
(since 2019)

Decrease in the number of incidents
(since 2019)

HR Page

Idex Group has grown significantly in the past few years through multiple acquisitions, emphasising the importance of employee integration and cultural adaptation. To cope with these challenges, Idex digital and HR teams worked together to build an HR hub for announcements and updates. It’s also a space where they can highlight people’s professions, experiences and success stories.

Internal Mobility

To offer better visibility on the existing career development opportunities within the group, Idex’s team decided to move away from their outdated HR tool and leverage their new digital platform. Employees can now find relevant job opportunities by region, department, etc. on the new “Internal Mobility” page. A rubric with inspiring employee stories and the latest internal promotion news is regularly updated to encourage career development projects.

Onboarding

With the increased recruitment effort comes the greater responsibility of successful employee onboarding and training. To support managers in their actions to integrate new arrivals into the team, an “Onboarding” page regroups all information and initial instructions. Furthermore, a dedicated onboarding track pre-set on the mobile application, is designed to instruct employees on their first steps in Idex. The track guides users through key pages like “Integration”, “Safety and Security”, “First day in Idex” to the “New Arrivals” community while ensuring they get all the essential information before diving deeper and exploring the rest of the platform.

New Arrivals Community

Due to the sanitary restrictions in 2020, new arrivals couldn’t benefit from the offline integration days to get to know the business organization and their colleagues. That’s why together with the onboarding page, the team set in place a “New Arrivals” community dedicated to answer all newcomers’ questions and allow them to share their experiences from day one. In addition, to show solidarity and employee recognition, interviews with workers from the field were shared once a week in a dedicated COVID community.

Key results

88%
Active users
+600
New pieces of content
13,607
Reactions (likes, comments, shares)
46
Communities
1067
Community posts

Idex Group digital workplace vision is clear – give the right space for collaboration and exchange to everyone! To achieve that they are constantly working on growing the contributors base of the platform and improving the platform to serve the needs of all teams. No matter if it’s Sales, Marketing, Support Operations or Digital Transformation teams, Idex wants to give visibility to all business units and regions.

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inIDEX: A Mobile Digital Workplace Supporting Employees From Day One