The City of Lahti wanted an intranet platform that could unite its diverse workforce, where everyone, even those working remotely or in the field, could use it.
- Industry: City region
- Country: Finland
- Company Size: 1001 – 5 000 users
Starting point: The City of Lahti handles local government responsibilities including environmental planning, land use, building permits, health care, and education.
As part of a project to migrate its IT infrastructure to the cloud, the city wanted to update its intranet to meet the needs of its digitally-minded, 2,500-strong workforce.
Solution: They chose Valo Intranet, a new, cloud-based intranet service because it can be easily accessed by all of their employees on mobile, and it has useful features including Yammer, a social media tool, and a blog.
Benefits:
- Valo Intranet, along with the ‘Fresh’ subscription, has saved the City time and money
- It has brought colleagues together, fostering a cohesive internal communications culture
- It has encouraged greater collaboration between departments
A collaboration tool for varied workforce
The City of Lahti was looking for a new intranet solution that could cater for its diverse workforce.
“We have many mobile workers, including the musicians from the city’s Symphony Orchestra, that needed access to our internal communication and intranet,” said Ilona Reiniharju, Web Communications Officer.
The City chose the Valo Intranet solution because it is a cloud-based service, which meant that the intranet could be easily accessed by all of their employees, even those who work on the road, on mobile.
Having mobile access makes the life of the city worker easier because there is no need to be in the office to log in to the variety of systems available. Instead, everything is now conveniently accessible and can be run on a mobile phone. Colleagues can access all the tools including email, calendar and intranet in one place.
Encouraging collaboration with a better search function
The City of Lahti was not only looking for a collaboration tool, they wanted a platform where they could publish the most important content such as news and press releases, blogs, internal training and events, quick links to HR services and applications, weekly peer-to-peer notes, and unit-specific guidelines.
“I can see us using it for a wide variety of communications, including to publicise internal jobs and even to ask questions to colleagues” said Mirva.
One of the requirements of the new intranet was that it must have a search function to help colleagues locate members from other teams, that were perhaps based off-site.
“We wanted a solution that would make it easier for our colleagues to search for other team members based on their expertise. We knew this would help to foster an environment where teams could share their learnings with each other and would encourage them to collaborate,” said Ilona.
Valo Intranet, together with Office 365, helps to create an environment where our employees can collaborate with teams and experts both within and outside the organization
Versatile, and visually appealing in-a-box solution
Rather than opt to buy a bespoke and tailored intranet, The City of Lahti decided to have an in-a-box solution instead.
After comparing several ready-made intranet solutions, they chose Valo because of its versatility, structure and visually appealing user interface. They liked Valo’’s useful features including Yammer, a social media tool, and a blog.
“We chose a ready-made solution because these products have improved a lot over the years. Plus, it was an agile and much faster way to renew our intranet,” said Ilona.
Enhancing teamwork and cross-departmental engagement
Since Valo Intranet was launched staff at City of Lahti have reportedly been really engaged with each other.
“Almost 400 workspaces have been created within the platform, and the new digital environment has encouraged colleagues to support each other. This principle of openness has encouraged our colleagues to tell other team members about their projects. This has really enhanced our internal culture within our organisation,” Ilona tells.
Valo’s services and tools are intuitive to use and resemble the mobile and social applications people are used to using in their free time
Goodbye to lengthy system updates
Another reason they chose in-a-box solution was because it comes with a ‘Fresh’ subscription, which automatically updates, refreshes and releases new features every three months.
“We wanted to get rid of the large platform updates that previous intranets required us to do. The Valo product simplifies this process, and saves us time and resources. Now our daily operations run smoothly, and we don’t have any of the extra hassle that our old system gave us,” tells Ilona.
Watch the City of Lahti Case video:
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