Meet the winners of our inaugural Best Employee Portal Contest
As the leading employee experience platform provider, we at ServiceNow felt it was time to recognize and share the creativity, methods, and results of our most advanced customers’ employee portals built on the Now Platform using Employee Center Professional. So, we kicked off the inaugural Best Employee Portal Contest and are excited to share the results.
Why invest in employee experience?
Customers invest in great employee experiences to realize dramatic employee engagement and productivity gains. A large U.S. bank, for example, saved $2.4 million in one year in employee productivity using Employee Center Pro for its MyTech IT portal.
To enter the contest, customers had to submit a live employee portal. A panel of nine judges narrowed down the submissions based on portal strategy, user experience, and continuous improvement. The top 10 finalists were asked to submit a pitch video to explain what differentiated their portal strategy and how it made an impact on their organization.
Portal submissions generally fit into three classes:
- Single-department service portals
- Multi-departmental, unified service portals
- Modern intranet portals
Designs ranged from nearly out of the box to completely custom. Regardless of class, every finalist prioritized user experience research with employees, emphasized personalization with proactive targeted communications and content, and made decisions based on analytics and employee feedback for continuous improvement.
Top employee portals
The grand prize of $3,000 and a team trophy goes to Vertex Pharmaceuticals for its exceptional commitment to user experience (UX) research. During extensive UX research with employees, the company realized “one size fits none,” explains Kimberly Rose, executive director of people experience, analytics, and digital innovation at Vertex.
In addition to personalized experiences, the company built Career Hub, Manager Hub, and new-hire “Go” experiences for employee journeys.
“Career Hub resulted in increased manager effectiveness, internal mobility, talent retention, and multimillion-dollar cost avoidance,” says Patty Anand, senior director of enterprise systems at Vertex.
Rocket Companies took the No. 2 spot. “We didn’t want a traditional intranet,” explains Chris Smith, director of internal communications at Rocket. “We wanted a digital workplace with powerful search, service workflows, flexibility, extensibility, and integrations.”
Rocket Companies realized a tenfold increase in self-service rates after creating its modern intranet, RockWorld, using Employee Center Pro.
Coming in third, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) created myBMS, a unified services portal for IT, HR, facilities, and other areas of the organization. BMS used mostly out-of-the-box standard features, such as news center, app launcher, microsites, and taxonomy. But the company tailored the experience and even developed a custom facilities site directory.
“We’re respected and viewed as the central hub of information within our company,” says Ken Meisch, senior manager of workforce portal experience at BMS. “Value is recognized by the various groups partnering with the portal team to generate traffic and promote awareness for their projects and services.”
Rounding out the contest finalists are these eight companies (listed alphabetically), as we had a tie for 10th place:
- Arrow Electronics
- Australia-based bank
- Baker Hughes
- NASCAR
- Paramount
- Stanford Health Care
- U.S.-based bank
- Visa
Want to see and learn more?
If you aspire to boost employee experience at your organization to increase engagement and productivity, see contest graphics and videos on the ServiceNow community.
Find out more about how ServiceNow helps organizations create a unified employee experience.