A better way to present core procedures for induction and training

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A large Irish engineering company Mercury Engineering with over 3,000 people working across 10 regions was looking for an innovative way to increase employee engagement through their project life cycles using visually enriched technologies. Their policy and procedure documents were all stored in SharePoint folders spread across project sites, managed by ad-hoc communications to employees. There wasn’t a standard way of managing these core company procedures for purposes such as induction, compliance and training. Mercury was looking for a solution that could provide a central starting point and be visually appealing to users so that all project teams could follow the same path without moving away from SharePoint.

Mercury Engineering engaged with TeraDev to help them to build an innovative way of increasing employee engagement through project life cycles using visually enriched technologies. This new solution “The Mercury Way” was to play a key role in their induction process helping new hires to understand how Mercury do things and also to help current employees as they grow into new roles.

A visually enriched interface built on existing SharePoint investment

TeraDev built an innovative enterprise solution to solve this challenge, delivering a creative user interface on SharePoint Online that led to a better way of presenting Mercury’s existing procedures and policies stored in their current SharePoint investment without re-locating all these files and folders to somewhere else. With this beautiful UI integrated with SharePoint’s capabilities, Mercury now has a seemingly faster and smarter way to guide their employees through company standards.

Key challenges:

• Our key challenge was to design a new kind of user interface that transformed what is by nature something boring into something that can be seen as a delightful experience while maintaining focus on delivering the critical functions required by the customer.
• Using the newest web development technologies like HTML5, CSS3, Velocity.js and powered by the Microsoft Azure Cloud we were able to build a smooth and engaging interface on SharePoint Online enriched with visuals, smooth animations and instant search capabilities. Working through flexible CSS patterns with the help of modern JavaScript libraries and the power of Azure we were able to produce a seamless integration with SharePoint Online achieving instant performance and native like mobile experience.
• Ensuring a high degree of system performance so that users would be able to access documents in a fast manner. To achieve this, we used latest browser caching technologies and Azure CDN.
• With 90+ procedures, 500+ documents, from 15 business areas – a lot of procedures sitting in SharePoint, Windows Explorer, hard drives, not laid out in an integrated way, it was challenging for new hires and existing staff to follow company procedures.

Result – A Unique SharePoint Solution

• A visually enriched UI sitting on our clients’ SharePoint Intranet, centralising the access of these documents in one place, presented as a path to follow and most importantly allowing users start and end their journey seamlessly in the same place without moving out of SharePoint.
• Employees are guided through a project pathway of core procedures using a beautifully designed interface on SharePoint Online.
• A solution that Mercury can share with their leading multinational clients whose own values align with process, standardisation and innovation.
• Mercury saved hundreds of man hours across induction, training and compliance, responding a lot faster to audits or compliance requests.
• At any one-time Mercury Engineering have 3,000 employees delivering up to 100 construction projects across 10 different countries operating out of Dublin headquarters who need to access The Mercury Way seamlessly from any region, anytime. Mercury having one of the most mobile workforces in industry, our solution harnesses the benefits of O365 cloud based mobile technology.

By pursuing this standardisation strategy, Mercury now has a seemingly faster and easier way to guide their employees through company standards. The more employees engage, the faster they operate saving time and costs. Furthermore, avoid ad-hoc employee communications and regulation failures.

“Most important goal of The Mercury Way is as we follow the same path when new innovations arise we all benefit.”

Mercury’s Head of Innovation and Change Gary E. Widger championed the idea behind this initiative. He was aware of the need for a standard way of communicating to employees, guiding them through an effective way to follow company core procedures.

“The Mercury Way’s mission is to make it easy for our construction teams across many countries to follow the right operational procedures. The Mercury Way plays a central role in onboarding new hires and educating employees as they grow and aligns with our audits to ensure we are disciplined. But the most important goal of The Mercury Way is as we follow the same path when new innovations arise we all benefit.
Mercury collaborated with TeraDev to develop The Mercury Way, our relationship was based on challenge and trust which ensured we delivered a better solution together. TeraDev helped translate our vision into a great user experience.”

Gary E. Widger

To find out more about the solution please go to www.teradev.ie