CASE STUDY FES
Digital internal communication without borders: The new FES employee app
About Frankfurter Entsorgungs- und Service GmbH (FES)
The Frankfurter Entsorgungs- und Service GmbH (FES) is a public-private group of companies with six subsidiaries and associated companies and is the largest waste management company in the Rhine-Main region. With around 1,900 employees, FES provides waste disposal and area cleaning services for municipalities, industry, commerce, trade and private customers.
Initial situation & goals
While one-third of the workforce at FES is supplied with information in real time via the intranet, two-thirds are reached exclusively via analog or generally accessible digital formats such as a bulletin board, a cafeteria monitor, the employee newspaper or their immediate superiors on a time-delayed basis. In times when nearly every one of these 1,300 employees has a smartphone in their pocket, the solution was obvious: to create an employee app. The goal was not only to strengthen communication within the company and impart knowledge, but also to improve collaboration among employees. In addition, services and processes such as payslips and time sheets were to be offered digitally, providing real added value for frontline workers. A digital mobile information source tailored to the target group, especially for commercial employees, was to be established within a year, into which parts of the SharePoint-based intranet, such as news, document center, telephone directory and job postings, were to be integrated.
The project
In a preliminary project phase, after a thorough examination of the various technical alternatives and approaches for establishing an employee app, the decision was made to implement it with Microsoft Teams. Especially since both Teams and a SharePoint-based intranet, which can be seamlessly integrated into Teams and thus made available on a mobile basis, were already established at FES. On the one hand, the company benefits from the existing infrastructure (e.g. security, data storage, integration) and user management, while at the same time offering a uniform, equal communication strategy in both the commercial and business areas through the use of the same services. Further reasons for the decision in favor of Microsoft Teams included the future-oriented continuous development on the part of Microsoft as well as the possibility of SAP connection and the ongoing expansion of the platform, including the fast and efficient digitization of processes.
The solution
By integrating the intranet with Viva Connections, the central elements Dashboard and Feed are in the foreground, providing navigation along with resources. The dashboard forms the start screen. The various topics and functions, from classic news on the intranet to personal documents such as digital payslips and timesheets, can be accessed centrally via large tiles featuring images or pictograms.
News
The classic company message is posted online in SharePoint on the intranet and automatically played out in the app. This means that there is no additional effort for internal communications to maintain the employee app. The click rate shows a significant increase in views; since the introduction of the app, news often reaches more than a thousand views.
Personal documents
“Personal Documents” contains payslips and time sheets for the respective employee. Particularly frontline workers now have the possibility to check their working time account at any time and have digital access to their payroll documents. To protect this sensitive data, the user is requested to enter the last four digits of their tax ID before accessing the documents. The “Other” button provides the option of requesting additional forms or documents directly from the HR department, which are then stored in the personal folder. This gives the employee digital access and eliminates the need for inefficient analog routes, such as a trip to the HR office.
Important FES-documents
This tile leads to important FES documents, such as guidelines, directives, or company agreements. Until now, these were only accessible to commercial employees via their respective manager. All employees can now view them at any time via the employee app.
Pool of ideas
Previously, proposals for improvements from employees were submitted in a tedious way via a handwritten form filled out by the relevant manager. The digital idea pool implemented with PowerApps and integrated into the app makes this process much easier and has since led to a significant increase in the number of suggestions. After entering the name and description of the idea, it is sent directly to the supervisor.
Contact HR department / works council
The jump-off points for contacting the HR department or the works council were solved using forms. The employee selects the area to which their request relates. The request is forwarded directly to the responsible staff member via a workflow.
Employee perks & benefits
In this area, employees can find out about the various offers of the FES – which is frequently done, as the click figures show. This is a great advantage, especially for commercial employees, as they previously hardly received any information on this. With the help of a PowerApp, it will soon also be possible to order the job ticket directly via the app under Employee Services.
Challenges
In the commercial sector, FES employs people from around 50 nations. One challenge was to make the employee app as simple and understandable as possible and to use a lot of images. The structure of the three menu items Dashboard, Feed and Resources, which can neither be hidden nor renamed with Viva Connections, therefore initially caused uncertainty. Do the employees intuitively understand what it is? A usability test using a prototype at the beginning of the project settled these doubts.
In a conservative industry such as waste management, it is particularly important to involve employees in the project right from the start and to rely on change measures to provide answers and allay fears. One FES measure in this context that proved to be a complete success was a roadshow. All the sites were visited, and employees were invited to ask questions and find out more about the app.
Outlook & benefits
The employee app based on Microsoft Teams was established in a project period of one year. Together with a flyer describing the procedure, the access data was sent to the employees by letter. Commercial employees now have an FES e-mail address with which they can log into the app using a one-time password. Within just two months, a registration rate of 44 percent was achieved among the commercial employees. This is remarkable, especially since there is no obligation to use the app and it can be used voluntarily on a private smartphone.
To get the most out of the employee app, FES will soon be implementing an integrated process. If employees have not logged into the app with their access data or have not used it for more than three months, the licenses are revoked, thus saving the costs for unused licenses. If the employee decides to use the app after all, they will be reassigned the license.
In addition, the app is to be expanded with further processes and services so that the number of app users continues to rise. To ensure a goal-oriented communication, each employee is assigned to a team in Microsoft Teams automatically via the AD, i.e. all employees of the city cleaning department from site 1 are automatically in the team “City cleaning department site 1” and could, for example, view their daily schedule.
All in all, we can say that the introduction of the employee app with Microsoft Teams at FES was a complete success.