A digital hub for all employees.
Manulife connects the dots between employee and customer experiences with an enhanced intranet.
25%
Increase in intranet visits for higher employee engagement
Objectives
Retain and attract top talent to improve customer experiences
Encourage employees to more deeply engage with Manulife and its service ethos
Deliver information accessible to all
Improve site experiences to best support employees as they focus on delivering exceptional services
Results
Freed employees to focus more time on supporting customers within their roles
25% increase in visits to the intranet for higher employee engagement
Near 100% compliance with accessibility regulations to reach all employees
Reduced costs and accelerated access to information with 50% faster site development
Setting employees up for success
Matt Morley understands people. His multi-cultural awareness from living and working in Australia, the Philippines, and now Canada informs his work as AVP of HR Technology at financial services company Manulife. Just as each of the company’s customers has different needs, so does each of its employees. Morley believes that responding to these differences is what makes it possible for people to achieve their potential.
At an organization the size of Manulife, this can be challenging. With 40,000 global employees at various career stages and with diverse personal needs, creating employee experiences as unique as each person depends on adopting progressive strategies and tools. For example, a new hire just a few years out of university might want training to grow in their career, while another employee may need information on adding a dependent to a healthcare plan or tapping into retirement benefits. At the same time, others might want to learn more about company initiatives and viewpoints from executive leadership.
“Manulife does an excellent job of delivering highly personalized customer experiences on our public websites to enhance services and drive growth,” says Morley. “I looked to that site for inspiration for what we could achieve on our employee intranet.”
Supporting employees, enhancing customer service
Manulife’s homegrown intranet, MFCentral, wasn’t designed to support Morley’s vision for employee experience. Built using complex, proprietary code, developers had to be involved when publishing any content, leading to slow updates and no means of adding personalization.
Based on the web team’s strategic relationship with Adobe and success using Adobe Experience Manager Sites for the company’s public sites, Morley chose the same content management system (CMS) to transform MFCentral. To eliminate the cost and hassle of upgrades and enable the HR technology team to focus on employee experiences rather than maintenance, Manulife implemented Experience Manager Sites as a Cloud Service.
Morley and his team set out to recreate the site as a one-stop spot where employees can easily find news about what’s happening at their office, learn about changing industry regulations, hear from executives, access career development resources, look up corporate policies and procedures, review benefits and compensation information, and more.
“We see much greater intranet engagement, including more than a 25% increase in visits to the site. It’s a sign that employees enjoy their experiences and rely more on the site to support their own everyday interests and needs.”
Matt Morley, AVP HR Technology, Manulife
Resources at employee fingertips
Morley envisioned a consistent digital experience, from Manulife’s public sites to its intranet. The HR technology team borrowed the company’s connected design system — a collection of branded components and templates used as building blocks to securely deliver consistent, on-brand experiences across digital environments. This approach accelerated the MFCentral transformation since content creators didn’t need to start from scratch and enabled the same level of security as the public websites.
Using the updated MFCentral site, each Manulife employee can now access information and services tailored to their roles and location as soon as they log on. An employee in the Philippines can read about finance trends in Asia or submit a request to the local IT team without scrolling past updates about events at the Toronto headquarters.
“We see much greater intranet engagement, including more than a 25% increase in visits to the site,” says Morley. “It’s a sign that employees enjoy their experiences and rely more on the site to support their own everyday interests and needs.”
Keeping people informed and prepared
Marketers working on Manulife public websites know that without ongoing updates customers won’t keep coming back. Morley and team apply this same rigor to MFCentral. Regular site updates encourage more frequent visits, helping employees stay current and connected to the company and its values.
When news happens, whether it’s sudden changes in financial markets, updates from executives, or unplanned maintenance in an office building, employees can access information without delay. Rapid site updates are possible because HR and other content teams worldwide use a pre-built library of templates and components to create well-designed, on-brand content up to 50% faster than before.
Adobe Professional Services supported the Manulife team during implementation to take advantage of the power and scalability of the cloud environment. The Adobe Ultimate Success team also assisted with enablement that included a dedicated technical account manager to further ensure a successful launch.
The benefits of this speed and scale for the HR team and employees are evident. For example, in the past, if an HR manager wanted a banner highlighting the company’s recognition by Mediacorp Canada Inc. as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers, it would take developers up to four weeks to code and test it. Now, it can be turned around in about a week.
“It’s about showing every employee that we value them and want to help them perform their best.”
Matt Morley, AVP HR Technology, Manulife
Reaching for 100% accessibility
Just as employees require different information from the intranet, some require different accessibility features. Outside of work, Morley supports a local camp for children with disabilities, so he recognizes the need to provide accessible experiences for all employees. While some people working with screen readers need content tagged and organized for clear navigation, others need specific colors, contrast, or fonts to make information easier to read.
With the intranet’s move to Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, the site’s accessibility score is now close to 100% compliance with North American and international accessibility regulations, which Morley takes great pride in. His team constantly tests and validates every aspect of the intranet, including incorporating direct feedback from employees. They bake any accessibility changes into templates so that employees anywhere in the world get the same quality experiences.
“It’s huge for me when employees say that the intranet works great with their screen reader,” says Morley. “It’s more than just making something easier to read. It’s about showing every employee that we value them and want to help them perform their best.”
“With much higher employee satisfaction and engagement, we can better support our teams as they focus on enabling our customers to achieve their financial goals.”
Matt Morley, AVP HR Technology, Manulife
A strong foundation to grow experiences
Today, MFCentral delivers on Morley’s top priority of making sure employees worldwide have reliable, anytime access to useful information and services. The cloud service implementation also removed limitations related to capacity, infrastructure, and resources.
“Working with Adobe gave us the tools and expertise to take the learnings gained from our public website and apply those to transforming employee experiences on our intranet,” says Morley. “With much higher employee satisfaction and engagement, we can better support our teams as they focus on enabling our customers to achieve their financial goals.”
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