Partners Pulse
Connecting Partners Healthcare employees through one portal
The Partners Pulse intranet was designed to centralize internal communications at Partners Healthcare and better engage its 4,500 corporate employees with the mission of the organization. Genuine conducted a complete overhaul of the existing intranets which were segmented by department and office location. The goal was to create a user-friendly platform that consolidated interdepartmental channels to facilitate knowledge sharing, increase efficiencies, and connect people. The Pulse intranet launch coincided with Partners Healthcare moving to its new corporate headquarters in Assembly Row to generate awareness and encourage engagement throughout the organization.
CLIENT
Partners HealthCare is a leading non-profit hospital and physician network, and the largest private employer in Massachusetts. The organization rebranded to Mass General Brigham in 2020 to better represent the community they serve and reflect their founding hospitals - Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MGH.
GENUINE INTERACTIVE TEAM
UX Designer (my role), Director of User Experience, User Experience Manager, Senior Interactive Producer, Account Supervisor, Senior UI Developer, Senior Strategist, SVP - Director of Strategy, Art Director, Creative Director - Copy, VP - Technology
Auditing the Intranets
To create the Partners Pulse intranet, Genuine reviewed, assessed, and categorized thousands of pages of content, creating inventories for each of the 13 unique intranets and evaluating the content to determine which resources should be migrated to the new platform. We observed that 40% of existing Partners Healthcare intranet content was out dated or irrelevant, and could be deleted.
Building the Sitemap
The structure of the new intranet reflected taxonomies we identified in the content assessment. The majority of Pulse content would be dedicated to general Partners HealthCare employee resources with each department getting its own internal resource section. The primary navigation was limited to four sections to ensure that the intranet was easy to navigate.
Primary navigation wireframe
Our Solution
To identify existing challenges across Partners Healthcare’s departments, Genuine conducted stakeholder interviews and sat with employees to observe their daily tasks. The team discovered that employee engagement was down due to too many internal communication channels making cross-departmental collaboration difficult. Each department maintained separate intranets, which were often difficult to navigate and filled with outdated content that was no longer relevant to the organization.
Partners HealthCare and Genuine agreed to develop an inclusive intranet to act as the primary gateway for all internal corporate communications, resources, and information. Genuine held content workshops with department owners to align on strategies for content management, governance, and adoption. The team conducted a series of trainings for internal ambassadors and team leads to encourage adoption of the new Pulse intranet.
UX ACTIVITIES & DELIVERABLES
Site Audits
Content Inventory
Content Assessment
Sitemap
Wireframes
Functional Specifications
Igloo Intranet Platform Implementation
Content Migration
Pulse Homepage, design & wireframe
My Department page, design & wireframe
The Result
The Partners Pulse intranet created meaningful connections between people, processes, knowledge, and culture at Partners Healthcare. The new intranet energized employees and amplified their passion for the Partners mission and values, leading to increased engagement and productivity.
Genuine generated awareness and excitement for the new Pulse intranet through email campaigns, printed physical posters, and digital signage displayed throughout the newly opened Assembly Row office.
Intranet usage notably increased with a massive uptick in page views and sessions since launch. Employees engaged more meaningfully with the content, visiting an average of 2.79 pages per session and spending more than 5:20 minutes on the site.
The new Partners Pulse was such a success that Partners Healthcare returned to Genuine the next year to improve upon the intranet’s initial implementation utilizing employee feedback and behavioral analytics.