inTouch: Evaluating Social Features and Employee Engagement in a Mobile Employee Portal

inTouch:

Evaluating Social Features and Employee Engagement in

a Mobile Employee Portal

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF

SCIENCE

Hayat El Bannouhi

10461035

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August 21

, 2015

1st _{Supervisor 2}nd _Supervisor

Dr. Frank Nack Gerben de Vries

inTouch:

Evaluating Social Features and Employee Engagement in

a Mobile Employee Portal

Hayat El Bannouhi

10461035

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the motivation, design and evaluation of inTouch: first mobile App of the employee portal at TomTom.

The goal of this study is to transform the employee portal from an internal communication tool to a means of knowledge sharing and employee interaction. Employees’ responses were used to gain a better understanding of the current employee portal and measure its success factors. Then, an experiment involving a focus group was held within the company to test and evaluate the use of the mobile version of the employee portal. Results have indicated that the mobile employee portal is an improved version of the current inTouch desktop; and the integration of social technologies increase employee engagement and ensure their interaction at all times.

Keywords

Employee Portals, Engagement, Interactive, Knowledge Sharing, Intranet Technology, Knowledge Management

1.

INTRODUCTION

We are living in an increasingly connected world; yet we still feel disconnected at times. This matter is also seen to be happening in the workspace; where employees are still facing some challenges when it comes to communicating with each other in an effective manner. At some point, satisfied employees, content with their work experience, was a good enough formula for success (Sanchez and McCauley, 2006). But those times have changed, and satisfied employees may just meet the work demands; which does not guarantee higher performance (Abraham, 2012).

Companies, more than ever, are trying to

increase their performance in order to be

A number of researchers have pointed out that efficient communication practices include two-way communication channels that facilitate employee input, feedback and knowledge sharing; in addition to a large range of technologies to support communication activities. (Yates, 2006; Willem, Buelens & Scarbrough, 2006; Cutlip, Center & Broom, 2006; and Quirke, 2008)

One way to ensure that is through having an employee portal featuring multiple social tools to use as a collaboration vehicle for sharing knowledge and ensuring employee communication and collaboration at all times. Under these conditions, social employee portals are becoming a strategic tool in knowledge sharing; due to their ability to support the distribution, connectivity and publishing of data and information. They are used by a number of companies worldwide to improve the exchange of information, knowledge sharing, and employee interaction to better support their business processes.

While some companies have started adopting the intranet technology to communicate more effectively with their employees, others are using mobile technology to communicate business critical information through enterprise mobile apps. With the increasing adoption of smartphones globally; companies nowadays are adopting mobile apps as means of internal communication.

In fact, the mobile technology started gaining momentum in many organizations which switched

to enterprise mobile apps as their number one go-to communication go-tool; leaving the former ways of communication behind. In fact, mobile employee communication provides a convenient communication channel for employees and reaches a wider section including those without a direct access to a work computer.

The case of the employee portal at TomTom - inTouch; which will be used as a context for this research, exemplifies the benefits of integrating social features into the intranet; and ultimately adopting a mobile solution.

2.

RELATED WORK

The study and exploration of previous literature is used to get a general understanding of intranets, and how does the integration of social media facilitate knowledge sharing and internal communication. Keeping in mind the objectives of this research paper, this section also investigates the mobile technology adopted by many companies in order to improve the employee portal.

2.1 Employee Portals: Intranet & Intranet

Technology

The definition of intranets has evolved with continuous advances in technology; and the perception of portals has changed as reflected in the different publications in the field (e.g. Shilakes & Tylman 1998, Detlor 2000, Chan & Chung 2002, and Chan & Liu 2007).

According to Cutlip et al. (2006, p.237), an intranet is one of the employee interfaces that play an active role in sharing information and knowledge among employees worldwide. In addition, intranets create opportunities for a two-way communication in order to create employee feedback, in terms of asking questions, seeking comments, conducting surveys and finally reporting results (Cutlip et al., 2007, p.237). Employee portals reduce information overload, decrease organizational costs, improve corporate communication and knowledge management, and enhance employee productivity (Tojib et al., 2006). In some organizations, employee profiles

are the primary tool through which employees do their work (Tojib et al., 2006).

What used to be known as the comfortable interface to information is now called a “single point of access” by enabling the integration of information, communication, knowledge sharing, applications and business processes. (Urbach, Smolnik, and Riempp, 2009).

Studies have shown that employee collaboration is the best tool for a company to gain competitive advantages and stay in the lead (Rashid et al., 2011); which explains the importance of employee engagement and the construct of a collaborative tool ensuring employee interaction at all times.

In fact, an organization’s knowledge management strategy is based thoroughly on intranets that facilitate knowledge sharing; and provide the technological platform for recording organizational knowledge (Averweg, 2008). However, the extent to which the intranet of some organizations facilitates knowledge sharing depends on the level of technological involvement. Advances in information technology have facilitated the process of acquiring, storing and disseminating knowledge (Averweg, 2008). Additionally, an increasing number of organizations are making use of IT solutions to facilitate the sharing and integration of knowledge (Kankanhalli, Tanudidjaja, Sutanto & Tan, 2003). One of the challenges that many organizations face is the constant improvement in today’s technology; and the understanding of how the intranet should be designed and tailored to enhance their knowledge sharing activities. Long before the portal technology was introduced, the web based intranet was at its peak. Although it had great benefits for organizations, it lacked personalization and good navigation, and could not provide centralized access to information which affected the productive employee time negatively (Tojib et al, 2006). That’s how the portal technology came into play; and organizations started to implement what are known today as employee portals.

According to McConnell (2007, p.24), the employee portal should be the first place where employees look for company information. It is considered to be the hub for information and collaboration of everyday work. However, few organizations have achieved this level of relevance in their employee portals. In fact, results of the study conducted by McConnell in 2006, Intranet Strategies Today and Tomorrow, reveal that intranets are used to distribute information; but do not yet increase productivity nor facilitate employee collaboration.

Thus, in order to increase productivity and enhance efficiency within companies, intranets should support employee engagement and facilitate employee communication.

2.2 Improving the Employee Portal

During the past few years, employee portals have emerged and evolved from low end intranets into highly integrated information systems. They used to be a tool for building workforce commitment; and now they represent a portal that enables the integration of information, communication, applications, and business processes (Benbya et al. 2004).

Furthermore, companies are becoming more and more aware that employees are the real knowledge repositories and to ensure better knowledge management activities; supporting communication and networking among employees is primordial (Ritcher & Koch, 2008).

Today, the trend is towards knowledge management using social software (Krogh, 2012) and integrating social media tools.

Before going any further, we should confirm what is meant by “social media” in the context of this research paper.

The term social media refers to electronic tools, relatively inexpensive and widely accessible, that enable people to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort or build relationships (Jue et al., 2010). Social media is also about participation; which can take the form of simply viewing relevant information as well as communicating, collaborating and connecting with anyone, at anytime and anywhere (Jue et al., 2010). In short, social media enables the swift and easy development, creation, dissemination and

consumption of information by both individuals and organizations (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). In the past couple of years, personalization and social tools have jumped in prevalence in many corporate intranets (Ward, 2012). An increasing number of organizations have started using social media in intranets to foster their internal communication channels; these social media tools include blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, and user-tagging to name a few (Ward, 2012).

In fact, many organizations are actively choosing to incorporate social media into their regular operations (Jue et al.,2010); especially since employees’ use of social media at the workspace has proven to be more advantageous to the organization by gathering information that can be transformed into knowledge and innovation (Jue et al., 2010).

Thus, adopting social media strategies helps employees communicate more effectively, access critical information much faster and collaborate anytime and anywhere.

Another form of intranet improvement is the rise of mobile employee communication which will be discussed in the next section.

2.2 Mobile Employee Communication

Employees often have issues interacting and communicating when working remotely, or being on business trips, or simply by being physically absent from their usual work space (Goodchild, 2014).

To stay in touch and reach today’s on the move and geographically dispersed employees, traditional methods of communicating through in-office meetings, email blasts and conference calls are just not enough. Employees are expecting timely, relevant and customized communication in easily digestible pieces (Goodchild, 2014). The Mobile technology is extending the intranet into the wireless medium, and provides greater flexibility in communication, collaboration and information sharing (Sheng, Nah & Siau, 2005). Early adopters of mobile technologies started experiencing great improvement and impressive

returns on their investments in the form of improved communication with customers, increased employee participation and satisfaction (Sheng, Nah & Siau, 2005), and valuable analytics that drive better decision making and business outcomes (Goodchild, 2014). Thus making mobile employee portals a proactive way that ensures immediate consumption of critical and time sensitive information.

In addition, mobile employee portals act as a direct way for employees to communicate feedback and opinions amongst each other as well as to management; easily and in real time and in ways that traditional means of communication can’t:

Push Notifications: Holtz (2008) argues that

many companies are using push notifications in their mobile employee portals in order to send specific messages at the exact time employees need to see them. This ensures critical notifications and company updates are received by all employees; regardless their location. Based on the findings of Sinickas (2005, pp.43-44), there is a higher preference for push notifications that alert employees with case sensitive company updates.

Direct: Mobile employee portals are a huge time

saver in such a way that they don’t require from employees to constantly check and open their emails or go on a website. Employees simply tap the notification on the App which takes them directly to the information to be consumed (Goodchild, 2014).

Cutomized: Customization and personalization

are critical components for a well-designed mobile employee portal (Nielsen et al., 2011). Information overload can overwhelm employees, and portals are capable of integrating loads of sources of information and applications. However, customized portals with personalization features curate what each employee sees, and allow users to control the look and feel of their pages (Nielsen et al., 2011).

People Finder: Mobile employee portals are

evolving into collaboration platforms and help employees locate and can get in contact with fellow colleagues. The mobile employee portal is not only a dashboard that offers enterprise information; but also a tool providing fancy expertise locators (Nielsen et al., 2011).

Gamification: Gamification is defined as the

concept of applying game-design thinking into none-game applications to make them more engaging and change user’s behavior (Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011). This concept is applied in the mobile employee portal as the latter is designed to enhance employee engagement; and thus rewarding employees for engaging and consuming critical content; creates a fun, competitive and social work environment. For some companies, switching from a static desktop-based employee portal to a mobile one is the next logical step, especially since the BYOD trend is sweeping the workplace (Twentyman, 2013). BYOD stands for bring your own device, and many employees are seen nowadays to be using their own smartphones and devices at work. Step Two Design, a consultancy firm specializing in intranet design and content management, carried out a number of studies and research to evaluate the benefits of mobile employee portals. Recent findings showed that mobile traffic is in fact outstripping that of desktops and laptops. According to James Robertson, the managing director of Step Two Design: “Mobile is where people receive their information these days and those who have a device that they enjoy, use it more often for this purpose”(Twentyman, 2013). Therefore, the importance of having a mobile employee portal accessible at all times is obviously very beneficial to both the company’s success and employees’ satisfaction. Organizations have a better opportunity engaging their employees and enhancing common knowledge by delivering company news and announcements to the workforce’s personal mobile devices.

2.3 Design of Mobile Portals

There are several approaches outlined in literature regarding the design of mobile employee portals. The responsive web design (Bridges & Rempel, 2013) is designing intranets and portals in terms

of screen size, platform and orientations in a way that they will respond to the users and their devices. Applying the “responsive design” on intranets makes the web pages render in response to the device viewing them. This way, when employees view their portal either on their desktops, laptops at home or on their smartphones, they are presented with the same look and feel (Robertson, 2010).

Robertson criticized this approach because: “With some intranets, it’s hard enough to locate, for example, details of the company’s annual leave policy on a decent sized PC monitor. This would be completely ridiculous on a mobile phone” (Twentyman, 2013, p.28).

A different approach was introduced to create intranets specifically for mobile devices and scaled down for mobile use; offering a handful of sophisticated features different than what the desktop version does: such as the ability to work offline with no network connectivity (Nielsen, 2013). The motivation for that approach has been that if information can be embedded in employee’s mobile phones, and they get to read it at home before leaving for work, or during their daily commute, then knowledge sharing and employee engagement becomes inclusive.

Another approach to expanding the use of mobile employee portals is injecting social networking into the equation (Twentyman, 2013). Employee collaboration is then fully ensured as the company’s internal communication becomes dialogue driven rather than a one-way broadcast from the company to the employees (Nielsen, 2013).

3.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Based on the literature review and the scope of this research paper, the two research questions were formulated as follows:

 How can the integration of social tools in the employee portal increase employee engagement?

 To what extent does the mobile version of the employee portal enhance common knowledge and increase employee interaction?

4.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section will cover the methodology and approach used to evaluate the level of employee engagement in TomTom using their current intranet, the factors that need to be improved to increase the employee engagement and enhance common knowledge, and finally, the benefits of adopting a mobile employee portal.

4.1 Research Methods

The data collection used for the purpose of this paper was achieved through questionnaires and a small experiment that took place inside the company TomTom. Thus, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in the scope of this study.

To investigate the current employee portal -inTouch- and to measure the level of employee engagement; quantitative research methods were used; namely online survey questionnaires. This quantitative data approach was used to measure the level of engagement of employees to TomTom’s current employee portal. The choice for adopting a quantitative approach was based solely on the fact that it presents results in the form of numbers; which is highly applicable in this case. Another reason for using quantitative research was the need for brief, straightforward and standardized information, and the social setting at TomTom happened to be open enough to allow full and honest answers from participants.

According to Denscombe (2001), in such situations, it is recommended to use questionnaires as a method of research.

So, to address the first research question, a survey was sent out to employees to measure their level of engagement towards the current employee portal – inTouch; hence the use of quantitative study.

In addition, the survey questionnaire was also meant to collect feedback and gain new insight about using new technology and benchmarking social media; making the second part of the questionnaire a qualitative one.

The first part of the questionnaire consisted of 12 multiple choice questions that targeted the daily use of the employee portal and the integration of social media. As for the second part, it consisted of 3 open questions where participants had to give their meaning on what is considered useful on the portal.

The objectives of the survey were to find out how often do employees visit the portal, why they visit it, and how satisfied they are with the current intranet. Employees were also asked to give their opinion about integrating social media into the portal. And finally, a section about suggestions and areas of improvements of the intranet was presented. This online survey questionnaire is discussed in section 5.2.

The second research method used for the purpose of this study was the qualitative research; that tends to be flexible with an emphasis on gaining insight and constructing theories (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2006). To answer the second research question, qualitative research was used to gain insights and construct theories on how employees at TomTom would use the mobile employee portal on a daily basis.

Qualitative research is “interested in the perspectives of the participants, in everyday practices and every day knowledge referring to the issue under study”(Flick, 2008, p.2).

In fact, an experimental setup took place where a focus group consisting of 10 employees were asked to make use and evaluate the mobile version on the employee portal. The findings of this experiment are further discussed in the section 6.3.

5 ANALYSIS

5.1 Set-up

For the purpose of this first research question, data was collected through online survey questionnaires sent out to the internal community

at TomTom; including employees and management.

The intranet survey (see Appendix B) was sent out to employees through emails with a link to the survey questionnaire and was available for a period of two weeks; namely from May,12th to May,16th. A reminder from management followed encouraging employee participation and ensuring that all responses will be processed confidentially and anonymously.

The survey was intended to measure the following:

 Measure employees’ engagement level towards the current employee portal inTouch.

 Factors that need to be addressed in order to improve employee engagement such as including social media as a new feature.

The type used in the surveys was self-administered questionnaires that do not require the presence of the researcher, and include instructions on how to respond. The questionnaires were sent out via emails with a short summary about the purpose of the research. The advantages of such surveys are: low cost, and the ability to cover all participants and ensure their privacy and confidentiality (Blumberg et al., 2005).

To avoid any limitations, the likelihood of having a situation with low response rates was omitted, and specific measures were taken such as a follow-up letter sent to all participants as a reminder to complete the questionnaire. As stated in (Blumberg et al., 2005), there is a potential for a respondent to set the questionnaire aside and forget to complete it; hence, the reminder that was sent. Furthermore, lengthy questionnaires can cause low amounts of responses (Blumberg et al., 2005), and therefore the questionnaire that was sent to TomTom’s employees was kept short and precise, containing the necessary inquiries for analysis questions.

There are three types of data variables that can be collected through questionnaires: opinion, behavior, and attribute (Dillman, 2007), and these variables were taken into consideration when building the questionnaire.

Opinion variables measure how participants feel about a subject and how they respond to it, and what they believe is true or false. These variables are important to measure the level of engagement of employees towards the current TomTom employee portal: inTouch.

Behavioral variables on the other hand record what participants do or did in the past (Dillman, 2007). This type of variables is used to study the behavior of participants in the past and how they will perform differently with the inclusion of social media in the employee portal.

Attribute variables contain data about the characteristics of participants (Dillman, 2007). These variables were used to collect data representative of the total population within TomTom, and measure their knowledge about the subject matter; i.e. the employees’ affinity with mobile apps and IT related solutions.

5.2 Results and discussion

This section presents the results and findings gathered from the online survey questionnaire. It starts with the details of the participants’ demographics; followed by the main reasons of visiting the employee portal, the frequency of these visits, the most visited pages, and lastly the social features to be included. And finally, the last part highlights the opinions on what the employees considered useful and unnecessary on the current portal.

5.2.1 Demographic of Participants

The survey questionnaire was filled in by 807 participants (M = 41.18; SD = 13.45); where 32% were female and 64% were male (4% did not specify). The age of the participants was divided as follows: 8% under 25 years, 22% between the ages of 25 and 35, 38% between 35 and 49 years, 28% between 49 and 59, and 4% over 59 years.

5.2.2 Use of Current Employee Portal

The participants were asked to report how often they used inTouch (figure 1) and what were the main reasons for the visit. These can be summarized as described in Table 1.

Reasons of using inTouch Percentage To find the latest companies

news and upcoming events

38% To find the contact

information of colleagues

12%

To inquire about the latest learning and career

development opportunities

16%

To stay up to date on the latest brand guidelines and

approved templates

25%

To submit service requests and tickets (HR, OTS, Finance and Facilities)

9%

Table 1: Reasons of using inTouch

The next series of questions were about the most visited pages of the employee portal, and the results were correlated with the previous set of questions about “the reasons of using inTouch”. Results showed that more than half (58%) were visiting the “Latest News” section, and the remainder was divided between “Spotlight on” (12%), “Press Releases” (9%) and “Current Vacancies” (21%).

As for the “integrating social features” part, the responses gathered from the question “Which of the following interactive features and internal social media would be beneficial in your daily work”; can be summarized as follows:

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Usage Frequency Daily 2-3 times a week once a week once a week 2-3 times a month once a month

 Discussion Forums: 7%

 Blogs: 11%

 Wikis: 18%

 Interactive Tools on employees profile pages: 22%

 Internal Social Network (with functionalities similar to Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter): 32%

 News Commenting: 10%

5.2.3 Open Questions

The last part of the survey questionnaire consisted of three open questions that required participants’ feedback on what they considered most useful on inTouch, what was unnecessary and what needed improvement. The results can be summarized as follows:

 Most useful: “News”, “Information about employees” and “career opportunities”.

 Unnecessary: Old material, outdated information and information overload.

 Improvements: in terms of “visual content”, “user experience” (a more interactive portal) and personalization of the employee profile page.

5.3 Discussion

The results gathered from the survey questionnaire indicate that the current employee portal inTouch is mainly used as an information distribution channel and a data repository. Employees are somehow pleased with having one single location where they can find all work related documents and tools. Furthermore, they appreciate reading about internal news and company updates, as well as having the possibility to find details of other offices and colleagues. However, the survey results also clearly indicate that the current portal still needs further improvements; in terms of information sharing, accessibility, employee collaboration and site navigation.

From the survey results the following requirements for the mobile inTouch can be derived:

 inTouch must be an upgrade from the current employee portal in terms of design, usability and content areas.

 inTouch should be more widely accessible to employees regardless their location, hence it needs to be mobile.

 inTouch should ensure employee collaboration and knowledge sharing at all times, hence it has to have social media components.

 inTouch should provide a socially expanded experience and an improved user functionality.

 inTouch should offer a sound framework to support knowledge management within the organization.

6. INTOUCH MOBILE

To address and tackle the second research question, we developed a prototype of the inTouch App; based on the findings of the survey described in section 5 and additional findings from the literature as discussed in section 2.

6.2. Prototype Design

The design of the mobile inTouch was solely based on the survey findings and research about the mobile portal trend. The common thread was that in order to create an intranet experience that engages employees and insures their connectivity and facilitates internal and external communication; it was important to replace the static portal by a social one through introducing cutting edge technology, and interactive tools and features.

We then decided to develop the adaptive version of the intranet; where the most challenging part in terms of structure and design was to include the most important information as mobile devices allow minimum information to be displayed due to screen size.

The mobile inTouch (see Appendix A) is divided into 5 major components that constitute the menu:  Home: this section was designed to have a

landing page of inTouch, just like the one in the desktop version, only more customized

and displaying the necessary information as per employees’ requests.

 My Profile: unlike the desktop version, where the employee profile page was a simple contact page displaying generic information about employees; such as their names, job title and department, the mobile inTouch is introducing an upgraded and more interactive version of the employee profile page. The mobile inTouch is now allowing employees to customize their information pages and make them more personal (updating the status for example); based on their needs and preferences. This way, they can control what is being displayed and how it being displayed.

 My Team: this feature presents a chart that allows employees to locate themselves within the organization and display how they are connected to each other. This chart is an interactive one; where one employee can connect to another and land on their profile page simply by clicking on their icon. The idea behind designing this feature was to make the pages interactive, accessible and easy to use. Another aspect presented in this feature is the knowledge sharing and employee collaboration by having blogs and group forums being part of “My Team” page.  News: company updates and company news

scored the highest on most visited pages on inTouch; therefore, we have decided to integrate these pages and make them part of the mobile App as they are what employees refer to on a daily basis. This section of the mobile portal is meant to display all updates released by internal coms; to keep employees up to date and informed about what is going on in the company regardless the time and location.

 Service Portal: since the idea behind designing the app was to somehow mirror what was already presented on the employee portal, this section of the app is meant to replace the ticketing tool on the old inTouch. With having a mobile service portal, employees can now benefit from a 24/7

self-service when it comes to submitting tickets, or getting feedback on IT related issues.

6.3. Experiment

The idea behind running a pilot study was to get some awareness about the current design of the mobile App, and get feedback on the interaction design for further improvement.

6.3.1 Participants

A focus group of 10 participants (5 females and 5 males) aged between 21 and 45 years (M = 33.7 and SD = 7.9) were recruited through convenience sampling. This sampling technique was chosen because it was fast,

inexpensive

and

participants are readily available (Bryman,

2012). In all forms of research, testing the

entire population would be ideal; however,

the latter is usually too large that it becomes

impossible to include every individual

(Convenience Sampling, 2009).

The subjects were selected due to proximity

and availability; and the experiment took

place long time after the online survey

questionnaires were handed over; namely by

the end of August 2014.

That way, the participants taking part of the

experimental group will not be biased from

the survey’s results.

6.3.2 Procedure

Before starting the experiment, the participants were presented with a small introductory session explaining the main goals behind this experiment and what was expected from them. Participants were also asked to indicate their familiarity with using mobile Apps, the type of their personal mobile device (Android or iPhone) and their technical background and affinity.

The experiment was conducted in groups of 2; having a total of five groups, and was performed over 5 test sessions; where each of the sessions took approximately half an hour making the total time of this experiment around 200 minutes. The physical setting took place in one of TomTom’s meeting rooms, and a large printed version of the mobile prototype was attached to a white board. The reason behind using paper design was to

allow participants to have a first glimpse of what they will be experimenting with, and introducing the main components of the mobile employee portal. That way, participants will get the chance to get familiar with the App on their own, interact with it without providing them with enough visuals that could affect their performance. All recruited participants were invited to choose a session that was scheduled for almost 35 minutes: the first 10 minutes were meant for the general introduction and the form filling, the next 20 minutes were for the test session itself, and finally 10 additional minutes to get feedback about the App.

At the start of each session, a general introduction to the study was given and the prototype design was presented. Participants were then asked to fill in a one page form for general consent and additional background information (such as affinity with technology). Next, the participants were presented with the mobile App and were asked to interact with it and make use of its features; especially the social tool.

Finally, to gain deeper insight on the subject matter, participants received a semi-structured group interview where they provided feedback on using the mobile version of the employee portal, in terms of: Ease of use, Employee collaboration, Knowledge sharing and User experience.

Once the participants finished the experiment they were thanked but not reimbursed.

6.3.3 Results & Discussion

The mobile app experiment revealed interesting results:

In terms of functionality, 2/3 of participants strongly agreed that having personalized features integrated into the mobile inTouch leads to an increase in engagement levels. It is important to target specific content to employees; the more engaged they are, the more productive they become.

In terms of efficiency, the mobile employee portal ensures employees stay informed about the latest company news and updates through Real Time Updates and Notifications. Results from the experiment showed that 58% preferred having a

News section displayed on their phone to having a News Letter email sent to their inbox.

In terms of design and user experience, 65% indicated that the mobile inTouch was easy to use and felt more like an employee portal. The initial design of the employee portal received positive feedback from participants; especially “My Profile” section, and navigating through the pages was not a hurdle anymore. Almost all participants agreed that the design was aligned with TomTom’s brand pillars: Easy, Smart and Engaging.

In terms of content and structure, 76% claimed that information was easy to find compared to the desktop version, and was accessible within 3 clicks or less.

In terms of interactivity, 32 % enjoyed the social aspect and the possibility to interact; one the feedback received after the experiment was the following: “having social tools integrated into the App is a great way to ensure employee collaboration even outside working hours”. Moreover, 59% showed great interest in having blogs and forums integrated into “My Team” section where one can inform and be informed.

7. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK

The aim of this study was to analyze the current employee portal at TomTom and increase the engagement of its employees through integrating new social features into the platform, and ultimately switching to a mobile solution. To get an overview of the usage of the employee portal-inTouch, an online survey questionnaire has been conducted. The results and findings (both qualitative and quantitative) along with their implications have been presented. Conclusive evidence was found supporting the first research question that the integration of social technologies increases the employee’s engagement towards the portal. On the other hand, the mobile experiment revealed interesting facts that backed up the second research question and theories behind it: the mobile employee portal is an improved version of the intranet, and facilitates knowledge sharing by allowing employees to stay connected at all times.

This research is limited in terms of results being based on empirical data collected in only one office location; namely TomTom Amsterdam. Thus, the results are at least valid for this office; making the generalizability of the results possible. This research is further limited in terms of sampling technique; as stated before, convenience sampling was used for data collection. A random sample from different TomTom offices would have increased the generalizability of the results, but was not possible due to time limitation and proximity.

Future work should be in the direction of deploying the mobile employee portal in a real world context (other offices of TomTom; i.e. TomTom worldwide) for further experimentation in the wild. From a design perspective, the gamification feature would be very interesting to implement as employee recognition (only available on the desktop version so far) is a key ingredient of strong employee engagement.

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to use this opportunity to thank

everyone who supported me throughout this

master program and master thesis. I express

my warm thanks to Dr. Frank Nack for his

valuable feedback and ongoing support as

supervisor of this study. I would also like to

thank Mr. Xavi Martinez, my former

supervisor at TomTom for his continuous

guidance, and all the participants that took the

time and effort to partake in this experiment.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my

family and anyone who supported me

throughout this journey.

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Appendix B

1. What is your age group:

< 25 years 35 – 49 years

25 – 35 years 49 – 59 years

> 59 years

2. What is your gender:

Male Female

3. How long have you been working at TomTom:

- Please specify the exact period This is my first month Less than 6 months 1-2 years

3 or more years 3-5 years 5 or more years

4. How many times do you use inTouch:

- Please select one

Daily 2-3 times a month

2-3 times a week Once a month

Once a week Once every 3 months

Rarely

5. To what extent do you make use of inTouch:

- Please select a number between 1 and 5

← Lower Higher →

To no extent 1 2 3 4 5 To a large extent

5.1 To find the latest company news 5.2 To find contact information of colleagues

5.3 To inquire about the latest learning & career development opportunities 5.4 To stay up to date on the latest brand guidelines & approved templates

5.5 To submit service requests and tickets

6. Which of the following tools you want to see integrated in inTouch:

- Please select one or more of these new social features 6.1 Wikis

6.2 Interactive Tools 6.3 Blogs

6.5 Internal Social Network 6.6 News Commenting

7. Do you use inTouch outside working hours:

Yes No

8. How would you rate the overall employee collaboration on inTouch

Excellent Fair

Very Good Poor

Good Very Poor

9. How would you rate knowledge sharing on inTouch:

Excellent Fair

Very Good Poor

Good Very Poor

10. Have you used other employee portals in the past:

Yes No

11. If your answer was Yes to the previous question, how would you rate inTouch:

-Please rate inTouch compared to previous employee portals you have used in the past

Much better Somewhat worse

Somehow better Much worse About the same Don't know

12. Overall, how satisfied are you with inTouch:

Very satisfied Unsatisfied

Satisfied Very unsatisfied

Neutral

13. What do you like about inTouch?

-Please specify what you consider most useful on inTouch

14. What do you dislike about inTouch?

-Please specify what you consider unnecessary on inTouch