Step Two 2021 Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards: LumApps UK-based Customer John Lewis Wins Award

LumApps is excited to introduce its UK-based customer John Lewis as one of the 15 winners of the 2021 Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards.

Now in their 15th year, the 2021 Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards are global awards that recognise outstanding contributions to the fields of intranets, digital workplaces and digital employee experience. The awards uncover remarkable solutions that deliver business value, sharing them with the wider community.

John Lewis Partnership: Keeping the workforce engaged and involved

UK-based retailer John Lewis Partnership has created a new intranet for its 78,000 employees who work across two major brands. The John Lewis Partnership is one of the UK’s top ten retail businesses with 27 John Lewis department stores and 174 Waitrose supermarkets. It is also the country’s largest employee co-operative. John Lewis being employee-owned, the brief to LumApps was focused on the importance of transparency and involving partners in communications.

The Award recognized John Lewis’ ability to provide its staff with a well-executed platform dedicated to Employee Experience. Employees being the greatest asset to their company, it was necessary to make sure they were using the right tool to communicate, to engage with one another and that they were as productive as possible. LumApps gave John Lewis the opportunity to engage their hundreds of local communities through an experience platform, aligning and empowering each team member.

Targeted communication through extensive user research

An audit was carried out before beginning the project to thoroughly assess the existing content, how employees consume the information and what were the priorities. It has allowed LumApps to provide John Lewis teams with a high performing platform in just four months.

Teams easily navigate around the platform, helped by the simplicity of the search experience and the detailed discovery process. The carefully thought-through design was tailored to the brand’s image, enabling John Lewis to better communicate and engage with the teams. LumApps worked to provide John Lewis’ teams with a tool to fully become ambassadors of the brand, through “Gazette letters”, sharing projects, initiatives, and all the best practices of the various business applications’ communities.

Engaging employees during a time of crisis

Information is key during a time of crisis. LumApps’ Employee Engagement platform support was critical in that regard. There was a need for regular information updates, regarding the sanitary measures, the teams’ organization and the executives’ decisions, whilst resisting the risk of “infobesity”. LumApps successfully reduced the content from 7,000 pages to 700, allowing the collaborators to fully understand how different segments of the platform work, and be more involved in the strategy formation process.

LumApps also bridged the gap between active employees and furloughed partners, providing a ready-to-use tool to managers to frontline workers, regardless of their location and if they were currently working or not. The multiple key sections as the “Gazette”, an editorially independent intranet section, allowed John Lewis’ staff to engage during the pandemic, using Q&A’s and various posts on any topic, giving team members the opportunity to give their feedback on a new strategy, fostering corporate culture and collaboration.