Adding personalized newsfeeds to the institution's existing Microsoft 365 setup reduced information overload for 9,000 staff.
-- The University of Leeds is improving staff engagement through a novel mechanism by changing the internal news that its more than 9,000 employees read when engaging with their feeds. Figures from the educational institution show that it was able to increase staff news engagement by 20% by building a personalized news experience inside its existing Microsoft 365 environment. This change has allowed its internal communications team to save around 4 hours per week, or half a day, on newsletter curation.
The university decided to undertake this project because of the wider problem in today's society: information overload. Large organizations that devote a lot to communication often require employees to respond to hundreds of messages and emails per day. Unfortunately, this often leads workers to wonder which communications really matter and which don't, especially as communication becomes more devolved and more teams publish their own updates.
At the university, faculties and departments often publish their own news. An interesting story: the university found that interesting stories and updates were not reaching the right people frequently enough, and staff often had to check several SharePoint sites to find stories relevant to them.
Silicon Reef, a people-first Microsoft 365 consultancy, worked with Leeds University's internal communications and IT teams. Their SharePoint intranet specialists enhanced the tools' existing offering instead of adding a new platform, enabling the news curation process to succeed.
The SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 system uses Beacon News, Silicon Reef's news product. It allows staff to follow any topic they want, so their news reflects their choices and brings together all sources from the university into a central hub. Departments can still publish their own news using shared templates and editorial governance. Headline news stories stand out and ensure that priority messages reach all staff members.
The change has caused staff news engagement to rise by 20% and has also saved the university's internal communications team around 4 hours per week that used to go into curating newsletters. The system makes it far easier for staff to find relevant stories, including specialist updates and news from across the university, while also improving editorial oversight and ensuring that only quality information reaches people who can benefit from it.
This experience has practical implications for other universities, since staff at Leeds said they would be more likely to visit the intranet regularly when its content reflected topics they had chosen to follow. If they want to boost staff engagement, they must make sure that the stories reaching their staff are relevant, which means personalizing the news people receive rather than adding more channels.
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