Health Insurance Fund
The Flemish and Neutral Health Insurance Fund (VNZ) is a health insurance fund with operations throughout Flanders. VNZ is a customer-oriented and social organization that aims to provide friendly, fast, and high-quality services. As a company active in the social economy, it primarily offers the mandatory health insurance, providing reimbursement and advice to its members on a matter of critical importance, namely health (reimbursement of medical costs) and/or the provision of benefits (replacement income in case of disability). In addition, VNZ offers a health insurance package with numerous additional benefits. Above all, the VNZ promotes a healthy lifestyle and preventive healthcare through educational programs and health-promoting activities.
With 42 offices throughout Flanders, members can turn to the VNZ for advice and support. Out of its total workforce of 160 employees, a considerable number of individuals working for VNZ serve as social workers or advisors, who are dedicated to providing remote or in-home assistance and support to people in need.
160
België
Ziekenfonds
Challenges
Before VNZ implemented Involv intranet, the organization used an outdated open-source intranet environment. It was difficult to update and maintain and not very user-friendly for end-users. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees often worked from home, there was a growing need for a more advanced solution to expand and optimize internal communication.
Additionally, there was a need to speed up the flow of information in order to respond more quickly to changes, emergencies, and other situations. This also helped to address the challenge of reducing email traffic and saving more time.
On the old previous intranet, the complete presence and representation of all departments were fragmented. VNZ’s ambition was to achieve better and more complete representation of each department on a future intranet. The goal was to enable each department to manage their own page and post their own content for their own employees as well as employees outside their own department.
Solutions
VNZ started with a thorough needs analysis in search of a solution for their challenges. This exercise involved consultations with all departments and management, as well as surveys administered to all end-users to understand why they use an intranet and what they expect from a future intranet. With these results in mind, VNZ searched for the most suitable solution and shared the needs analysis with various companies.
VNZ, being a Microsoft-oriented organization, needed their new intranet to be built on the Microsoft 365 platform. They also had to consider scalability and budget when selecting a partner. Ultimately, Involv was able to meet all the criteria and was chosen by VNZ to develop their new intranet.
It was of great importance to give the intranet a ‘social flavor’, so that employees would not only use it for serious matters, such as consulting the knowledge portal, but also for informal matters such as fun news and snippets within the organization. In short, a broader and richer flow of information for everyone.
Current situation
The intranet contains useful tools such as the classic “Who’s Who component” so that people can easily get in touch with each other. An events calendar ensures that everyone within the organization is aware of important activities and milestones.”
The intranet also provides detailed information about various processes, such as formalities for payments, printing processes, which have significantly reduced the number of internal emails and improved the information flow between the front office and back office. The incidents component has also contributed to reducing calls and emails to the IT helpdesk. It ensures that everyone is quickly informed of important announcements
The VNZ holds regular intranet meetings to systematically analyze its goals and means, and to ensure that everyone is aligned. In order to gain a better understanding of how end-users are utilizing the intranet and to analyze what is effective and what is not, the VNZ plans to further leverage the analytics functionalities within Involv in the future
I can say that the intranet has definitely been a success story for us, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. The main objective was to create a digital workplace for all our employees. We have succeeded in achieving this and have accelerated the speed of information flow. Moreover, our knowledge portal is also offered in a modern and contemporary design. This has made our mission a success. No matter where you are, you can stay up-to-date with changes within the organization, and the intranet supports collaboration in a continuous dialogue.”
Who creates intranet content?
For the creation and management of content on the intranet, VNZ has developed and implemented a new governance structure. Instead of opting for centralized management by a communication service, a team of four super users has been supplemented with intranet service managers from each department within the organization.
“Super users” are users who have more rights and responsibilities for editing, adding, and removing content. One super user is responsible for the main page of the organization, while another super user is responsible for answering technical question.
Three out of the four super users are experts in content creation, while the fourth super user has an IT background.
On each department, there is an intranet responsible person who is in charge of updating and maintaining their department’s page. They also have extra privileges that allow them to create content on the department page.
In addition, every employee has access to the bulletin board on the intranet, where they can post messages about events, offers, and other social matters.
Collaboration
The entire duration of this project spanned over a period of 1 year and the client found the different workshops to be very useful. The implementation was done in a big bang scenario with a full setup and functioning of all service pages from day one. During the Involv meetings, specific requirements and wishes were well mapped out. Technical workshops were organized for superusers to explore and learn to use the product. In addition, specific workshops were organized on the use of the intranet. VNZ used the teach-the-teacher method to further spread knowledge and usage within the organization
“To this day, we still maintain contact with Involv to discuss future changes and developments. We then jointly consider whether certain new requirements can be achieved within our environment. We are currently satisfied with the stable and robust intranet that Involv has developed for us.”
– Tom David Van Meel, Operational Director.-
Launch
The launch took place at the end of September during a staff meeting in the UGC hall in Mechelen. A large cinema screen counted down to the launch of the new intranet. To ensure that the excitement after the launch did not stop, a contest was launched shortly afterwards. Services could win fruit baskets as a reward for their achievements on their service page and to further facilitate engagement in keeping it up to date. A great example of how to create more adoption and interaction on the intranet.