As a company with a combination of office-based and building site-based staff, leading UK homebuilder Miller Homes has worked with Oak to create a platform that has improved business communication. Their intranet, ’MPower’, enables them to easily alert staff to company news.
Industry: Construction | No. of users: 1,500-2,000 | Area: England & Scotland
Miller Homes has 10 permanent offices, but the nature of the construction industry means that their deskless staff are based at building sites which come and go as developments are completed. They needed to find a way to keep a consistent message whilst effectively communicating news, policies and procedures efficiently to their dispersed teams.
Empowering colleagues to share their own team updates with the wider company was also a key factor.
The partnership between Miller Homes and Oak started way back with the first iteration of our product almost 20 years ago. As our product has developed, so have the capabilities that we have been able to support Miller Homes with.
"When Oak showed us their new product, we didn’t assess any other vendors because the company was so good. They showed us it and we thought ‘bingo’ - that’s even better than what we’ve got. It was a natural progression for us. It’s like when you use a builder for your extension, if they did it well the first time I’ll use them again 10 years later. That’s how we feel about Oak."
Miller Homes’ intranet has always been called MPower, which has become its own internally recognised brand since its first iteration in 2000. The accompanying branded employee app also features an MPower logo to maintain uniformity. Everyone at all levels of the business knows about MPower and it truly has become the one-stop shop for all important information and company updates.
"If you asked anyone at Miller Homes where to get information, I can guarantee they would say ‘I get it on MPower’. They won’t have any other answers for you. If you asked: is it good, is it easy to use, they’d say yes. It’s got everything they need. It has stood the test of time for us, everybody knows it, uses it, that’s it."
MPower’s intuitive simplicity and user-friendliness means that the comms team can give people the capability to share their own updates. No developers or technical specialisms are required. The Oak platform is so easy to use that super-users are able to put together pages themselves without the comms leaders having to hand-hold them.
"We've seen examples recently where even we have been surprised at what people have done on Oak without training. It’s great, it’s intuitive. We no longer have to ask IT to sort something for us because we can easily build pages and create or edit content ourselves. We’ve got more people using it and more interaction with comments and likes. It's a lot more dynamic than just posting a new bit of news every week."
The success and impact in engaging the deskless workforce is clear. The teams based on the building sites tend to use it the most, both for sharing their own updates and for checking processes and procedures for each site and property that they work on.
"In building the house itself there's a lot to do; you've got to look at a lot of drawings, you've got to look at a lot of documents, you've got to follow processes, we've got to build it on time, you’ve got to build it safely. There's a lot of compliance measures to adhere to. How people accomplish them are mostly done through Oak to ensure the operational building part of the projects is completed effectively and safely."
Working in an industry with a high turnover of site staff means that onboarding needs to be as straightforward and informative as possible. Bringing in new people and showcasing that all of the resources and information are in one place is invaluable to get them up to speed.
The next phase is to launch a dedicated onboarding homepage for newcomers to introduce a consistent new starter process while demonstrating all they can find on MPower.
The MPower app has been instrumental in reaching deskless colleagues, rather than relying on word of mouth dissemination of information.
Features like push-notifications and notices can alert users to important updates or events, ensuring the whole team or workforce is kept in the loop. These always get extremely strong engagement and viewer figures, proving they are being read and understood by the right people.
"When we have a new release to share or a key milestone for a certain project coming up, we’ll create a news article and push it out to the crew on the building sites using a notice. These notices are sent to targeted audiences of over two hundred people each. The engagement is always really high and we always get readership into the two hundreds. Because of these engagement statistics, we know that the message has been seen and understood."
Within MPower, Miller Homes’ people are able to use Oak’s advanced search functionality to find exactly what they need as quickly as possible. Streamlining the time it takes to access valuable resources and revisit important information is key, especially for deskless workers who are short on time while working on-site.
It is clear that the search function is useful for employees, with over 1,400 monthly searches and over 8,200 monthly content views.
In Miller Homes’ annual IT survey, colleague feedback showed an impressive 97% employee satisfaction rate of Oak and its functionality.
"It’s the best product we’ve ever bought. The best. Oak Engage is a great company with great people. The product does everything it says it's going to do. It gets what we need out to people and we see the results of it."
The extensive features of Oak paired with our unparalleled customer support and ongoing product development has kept our relationship strong all these years. Our Customer Success Manager Katy Mogra has monthly meetings with the Miller Homes team and showcases our product roadmap to them every year, working together to ensure they continue to get the most out of Oak.
Graeme, who has been with Miller Homes for the duration of their time using Oak so far, commented: “It's been a great experience across the board. Oak are head and shoulders above many of our other suppliers. When we do have questions, the support team is really good. They always action and solve things really quickly. Our Customer Success Manager Katy is amazing at what she does. Every month when we have our catch ups, there’s never really any problems. We’re really impressed with the continuous enhancements that Oak are making to the product and are excited for what’s to come.”
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