Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea and continental breakfast as you meet your fellow attendees. Sign-in, pick up your materials and enjoy a continental breakfast before we start the day.

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors!

Welcome to 9th Annual Modern Intranets for Employee Communications
In this fast-paced forum, you'll get to know your fellow peers, their biggest intranet challenges, and a few fun facts.

How do you boost and maintain engagement in a workforce with countless items competing for your team's attention?

How do you develop a sense of pride in the organization through inclusion and effective communication?

Give them a variety of content and continue evolving your modern intranet and try new features that put the spotlight on them. Keep thinking fresh and never consider that you've reached the finish line. Make your communications channels the first place people go in the morning and make it worth their while. Your team is what makes your company run – without engaged team members, you're going nowhere. Team members want to be in the know and they like the spotlight to occasionally shine on them. Get their attention through compelling content and drive them to your digital platforms. Now you have an audience to communicate important, company-wide information. The best content is organic content – for your team, by your team. Keep introducing new initiatives where your team can actively participate in the discussion.

You’ll learn:

• How to create content that will get attention NOW – no waiting for money for costly campaigns.
• Strategies for sustaining growth in team member engagement and making them feel comfortable communicating.
• Success is when team members feel that internal communications is on their side, interacting with them and answering questions vs one-sided communication that just tells them what to do.

When your intranet system isn’t ideal—but your employees still need a centralized, reliable resource—how do you build trust, engagement, and visibility? At Huntsman Cancer Institute, we faced unique challenges with our intranet, including platform limitations and user experience issues. Yet in just one year, we nearly doubled homepage traffic, rising to become the third most visited intranet site across the University of Utah system.

In this session, we’ll explore how intentional content strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and a commitment to employee needs helped us turn our intranet site into a valued communications tool. Attendees will walk away with practical ideas for driving adoption—even when the technology isn’t perfect—and lessons learned that can be applied across any organization navigating intranet transitions, governance challenges, or system upgrades.

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.
Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors and be sure to fill out your evaluation forms.

WSSC Water is one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the nation serving two large counties in Maryland for over 100+ years. Our current three-year strategic plan guides our organization with a strong focus on workforce development and culture as a priority. A goal of improving internal communications and employee engagement were identified as key components of this priority.

This case study explores internal communication challenges at WSSC Water with a 1700+ workforce comprising two-thirds "Boots" (frontline workers) and one-third "Suits" (office-based employees). The organization is spread over various facilities, plants, and depots in two counties presenting an initial challenge for getting a better understanding of the needs of both. The Communications office of WSSC Water set to work on evaluating current internal communication practices in late 2023 and early 2024, through face-to-face informal conversations off-site and online surveys. One of the takeaways from this data collected was frontline workers engage minimally with email and technology daily. What became apparent is not only what kinds of information they want to receive but how they want to receive it.  So, the question became “how do we reach the boots with accessible, relevant, and timely communications wherever they are working?”

In response to the identified limitations, a new intranet platform was purchased to replace an outdated, expensive intranet platform in use for over seven years. The main criteria for this new platform centered around the data gathered from all employees, mainly an improved search functionality, a mobile component, and compatibility with M365 products. The result – a fresh modern-focused intranet platform that enhances mobile accessibility, improved search functionality, and integration with Microsoft 365 tools. It delivers location-specific information more effectively to frontline workers, streamlining communication and ensuring alignment across the entire workforce. The insights gained from this study have significantly reshaped the design of the intranet, making it more attuned to the needs of all employees, particularly those working in the field.

Discover how to use analytics to identify gaps in intranet performance and make data-driven improvements. This case study provides insights into collecting and analyzing usage data to enhance user experience and maximize engagement.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn methods for gathering and interpreting intranet usage data to inform design and functionality updates.
• Discover how to use analytics to tailor content strategies and improve employee engagement.
• Gain insights into setting measurable goals and tracking progress over time.

Reservations have been made at several local restaurants.
Don't miss this opportunity to have lunch with your peers at a local New York hot spot!

**Everyone is financially responsible for their own lunch.

Explore the power of storytelling to enhance internal communications and build stronger connections across teams. This session highlights creative strategies to use multimedia, interactive content, and employee contributions to make intranet communications more engaging and impactful.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to create compelling storytelling campaigns tailored to your organization's culture and goals.
• Discover creative tools and formats that resonate with employees, such as videos and podcasts.
• Gain insights into measuring the success of storytelling initiatives and iterating based on feedback.

Learn about how a team of two designed and built an enterprise-wide intranet from scratch in Sharepoint out-of-the-box. This session covers the tactics to engage the right stakeholders and keep user-experience at the forefront from start to launch, even with a short timeline and no budget. We’ll take a deeper dive into the smart use of integrated tools, like PowerAutomate that connect the communications editorial calendar and approval processes. This session is great for those from small but mighty teams who need to execute on a small scale to make a big impact.

Key takeaways:

• Discover strategies for turning critics into champions
• Blank paper exercises can help even fully mature sites scale back
• Approaches to content design to make your launch or re-launch a success

• Boost productivity by integrating business apps into your intranet
• Identify key tech shifts reshaping digital workplaces
• Modernize and future-proof your intranet

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.
Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors!

Explore the power of storytelling to enhance internal communications and build stronger connections across teams. This session highlights creative strategies to use multimedia, interactive content, and employee contributions to make intranet communications more engaging and impactful.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to create compelling storytelling campaigns tailored to your organization's culture and goals.
• Discover creative tools and formats that resonate with employees, such as videos and podcasts.
• Gain insights into measuring the success of storytelling initiatives and iterating based on feedback.

Don't stop the conversation!
Join us at the lobby bar as you network with your peers and sponsors in the adjacent at the #ALIcomms.

Want to keep the conversation going? Join a group of attendees for dinner at a local New York hot spot.

Sign-up at the registration desk or during the networking reception to join a group at tonight's dine-around. Reservations have been made.


**Dutch treat.