User Profiles for Confluence and Structure and Theme by Communardo & Refined
Intergalactic travel isn’t always easy. At some point on the route towards Digital Transformation, many employees experience a sense of disconnection. Suddenly, they find that most of their workplace interactions are online, and, if you’re not careful, they can easily get lost in cyberspace.
In digital workplaces, most employees “meet” each other for the first time online. The problem is that many businesses struggle to keep their user profiles up to date. Pictures are missing. Titles and positions are out of date. Even reporting structures are obsolete. This can make it easy for people to get lost between the ones and zeros. And it’s one of the reasons that 72% of employees say they can’t find the information they need to do their jobs (Deloitte).
This is the problem that SAXOPRINT, one of the largest online printing companies in Europe, struggled with. Previously, all employee contact information, reporting structures, and organization charts were stored as Excel files and maintained by the HR department. If anyone was looking for a colleague‘s contact information, they were dependent on Outlook or information from the HR department, which in turn meant additional effort and manual maintenance of these lists.
SAXOPRINT took a big step forward when the company deployed Confluence. Using the Structure and Themeapp from Refined, project manager Jane Markert and her colleagues in the HR department were able to set up a modern intranet – fitting for an online-company – with the help of templates in just a few simple steps and thus creating a platform for exchange and social collaboration for the whole company.
Next, SAXOPRINT activated User Profiles for Confluence to automatically synchronize employee information with the company’s Active Directory. Now, essential information such as name, telephone number, supervisor, email address, and position is always up-to-date. Additionally, the employees of SAXOPRINT were able to fill in custom fields for information like responsibilities and work location HR might not even keep trace of easily.
User Profiles for Confluence includes several helpful macros that extend the power of employee information. With the Profile Macro, the responsible contact persons for specific topics can now be stored directly on individual wiki pages. Additionally, the Organization Chart macro allows individual departments to easily create their own overviews showing the structure of their teams and departments.
Employees no longer need to contact HR every time they need user information. With User Profiles for Confluence, they can easily search within the People Directory, quickly filter results, and contact colleagues via phone or Skype with a simple click. Or they simply get in touch with them via @mention in comments, directly at the wiki-page. This relieves the HR department from having to manually manage this data, and it eliminates a key speed bump in the road to collaboration.
“The introduction of a well-organized intranet has greatly simplified collaboration,” explained Markert. “With additional information such as profile pictures and employee responsibilities, it is now even easier to find and contact colleagues. Moreover, the synchronization of employee information with Active Directory and powerful capabilities offered by the built-in macros saves time and manual effort for administrators, HR and employees alike.”