The Problem: Communicating as a Single Group, Without Losing Local Identities
The group faced a challenge that goes beyond the simple absence of a digital tool, namely the need to communicate as a single entity, despite being made up of many different national realities, each with its own language and its own operational specifics.
This meant avoiding the approach, common in many multinationals, of completely separate local intranets, while at the same time maintaining the possibility for each country to have its own space, in its own language, managed by local editors.
A second challenge, less visible but just as concrete, concerned corporate culture.
This is a listed organisation with a particularly formal communication profile. Introducing even a simple emoji reaction system on the home page had been perceived internally as a small revolutionary act. This meant designing, from the very start, a tool capable of being modern and effective, without feeling out of tone with the organisation’s identity.
Finally, the company’s strong aesthetic focus led, in some cases, to going beyond intranet.ai’s standard components and building, with our team, custom solutions.
Home page of a pharmaceutical group's intranet
Our Solution: A Clear Architecture, and a Portal That Welcomes From Day One
The chosen architecture reflects exactly the group’s communication philosophy, with the creation of a main group site, managed in English as the lingua franca, flanked by a side panel that shows, based on the country the user’s account belongs to, the content of their own local site.
An Italian employee sees content managed by the Italian editorial team in their own language, while a colleague in another country sees their own.
Local sites were activated progressively, as each country was ready to launch its own editorial team. There was no fixed schedule, but a process that followed the organisational readiness of each country.
The most significant project carried out in this context is probably the onboarding portal dedicated to new hires.
From the very first day, every new person joining the company receives a welcome email with a direct link to this space, which opens with a short welcome video and a path explaining what onboarding truly means for the organisation. Moving through the navigation, users find information on benefits and local agreements, the possibility of booking spaces and meeting rooms, and the training opportunities available for those who want to start growing from their first days.
A section reserved exclusively for managers activates automatically based on the user’s role thanks to a dynamic content targeting system, so that even those joining the company with people management responsibilities immediately find the right tools to get their bearings.
On the engagement side, the company activated, on the home page, a daily mood tracking tool, an emoji-based voting system suited to the company’s internal standards, together with the publication, via Microsoft Sway, of a quarterly digital magazine that recaps the main updates of the period with a curated, almost journalistic layout.
The entire graphic side of the platform, from headers to icons, was custom-built by the intranet.ai team, using the brand palette and following the shared editorial guidelines on the use of colours, bold text, capitalisation and icons. This maintains important consistency between content published by different teams in different countries.
Mood in the intranet.ai intranet
The Results: A Tool That Carved Out Space in a Formal Culture
The project took between four and five months of work, a timeframe that reflects the intensity of the graphic support provided and some customisations developed at the client’s specific request, such as the “Welcome box” component to welcome every user onto the platform, or a widget showing the group’s stock market performance.
The numbers tell a story of solid adoption.
The daily mood tracking tool reached 759 unique users, a significant number, and the quarterly digital magazine, published via Microsoft Sway with a layout that resembles a magazine more than a company intranet, exceeded 700 views per issue.
The onboarding portal, moreover, represents one of the project’s most solid results. A tool that accompanies every new person from their very first contact with the company reduces the load of informal questions to colleagues and immediately conveys the message that the intranet is the reference point for working life at the company.
Engagement strategies in the SharePoint intranet
What’s Next?
The group is continuing to expand its network of local sites, with new countries being activated.
We are also designing a section dedicated to diversity & inclusion, intended to gather employee participation through a self-assessment path and an application form with status tracking: an engagement initiative designed to respect the organisation’s formal culture, without giving up the active involvement of its people.
Even in an organisation with a very formal culture, a well-designed tool, like an onboarding portal active from day one, can become the quiet point of reference that accompanies every person throughout their journey at the company.
Do you want to build an intranet capable of speaking to an international group, without losing local identities? Book a demo and find out how intranet.ai can support your organisation’s growth.