Vote live for best intranet homepage award at Unite 21

Have your say at the Unite 21 awards

Unite 21 is kicking off with a bang on Sep 21, spanning 3 half-days of keynotes, roundtables, panels, and more on employee experience and the future of work.

The Unite 21 awards will see finalists from across the world compete for three coveted prizes: Best homepage, best crisis response, and most innovative campaign.

To give you a glimpse of what makes an award-winning employee experience, we’re revealing the finalists for this year’s Unite 21 awards and taking a look at the work behind their entries.

Best homepage award (LIVE vote on Sep 23 at 04:50 PM UTC)

This is your chance to cast your vote live and have your say on the best intranet homepage. Each of our three finalists will have 1-2 minutes to pitch their homepage design and the strategic decisions that make them special. Once we’ve heard about the thinking behind the face of their intranet software, you the audience will vote and we’ll name the winner live at Unite 21.

Meet the finalists

We’ve sorted through all the entries and picked out the three boldest, brightest, and best homepages to be put to the public. Below, you can find a brief summary of each finalist and an exclusive look at their intranet homepage.

WACKER Chemie - WACKER GLOBE

Wacker's old SharePoint platform no longer met the needs of management and employees. Instead of a facelift, WACKER decided to design a completely new and modern intranet with Unily as the main gateway to the digital workplace. The homepage strikes a balance between comms and productivity, offering quick access to tools and resources while surfacing new, unread insights and news. With its 'Panorama' and 'Focus' sections, the content feeds deliver both a company-wide view and granular, personalized view for users based on their interests and followed topics.

Chalhoub - Chalhoub ONE

The ONE Chalhoub homepage is focused on providing a slick user experience alongside elements that drive engagement and adoption. A modern design, backed by data-driven decisions and user research, can be easily navigated to reach tools, resources, targeted content, employee recognition widgets, and Chalhoub’s social media feeds to keep users aware of external activities. The ONE Chalhoub homepage is a practical example of why knowing your employees’ wants and needs, and backing this up with data, can result in outstanding UX.

Caliber Collision - Caliber Family

Caliber Collision’s homepage is designed as a unified and integrated gateway for Caliber's four lines of business. When COVID-19 hit, Caliber stayed open as an essential business for first-line responders, which meant they needed a permanent home for COVID and safety information. They used their new homepage to house this and introduce Caliber All-Stars ‘high-fives’, social channels, a teammate directory, apps and tools, and global search. With a strong sense of Caliber's purpose and culture visible throughout, this homepage is an excellent example of how to convey culture through design.

Best crisis response award

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 saw global enterprises grappling with employee safety, government guidelines, and new modes of remote working all at once. In that time, the intranet stepped up as an invaluable lifeline – a go-to source of trusted information and support.

Meet the finalists

For the Unite 21 Best Crisis Response Award, we’ve selected three of the most effective crisis responses we’ve seen from Unily clients. Each of the three finalists’ approaches helped support employees through a time of turbulent change with reliable access to resources, guidance, information, and support.

Cognizant

Cognizant quickly launched their COVID-19 Hub and Community Resource Center sites on their intranet following the outbreak of the coronavirus. Through these sites they offered localized guidance and access to global resources for all users, including health advice and support for employees and their friends and families, and links to volunteering opportunities to help others throughout the pandemic. Cognizant even offered a portal for employees to request time off to go and get vaccinated against COVID-19.

L'Oréal USA

To support employees throughout the pandemic and offer immediate answers to all their employees’ questions, L’Oreal launched the Safe Together campaign and intranet site, as well as a channel for direct communications from leadership through their CEO Corner page. The sites were built and launched in just 24 hours and remain a vital resource for L’Oreal employees today.

NATS

As a part of NATS’ full communications response to the pandemic, they recognized that their platform must evolve their platform to reflect the changing needs of colleagues and the business. In the midst of a full-scale redesign of their platform, the NATS team managed to build dedicated Hub sites, re-format their homepage, and share frequent video round-ups to keep employees updated. The Hub now plays host to updates from their CEO and Chief Medical Officer, a forum for employee questions to better facilitate hybrid working, and offers wellbeing resources for colleagues who need support during tough times.

Most innovative campaign award

For communications to have an impact, it needs to grab attention and offer value. With the amount of channels and messages employees sift through every day, communicators often have to think outside of the box to cut through all the noise. The Unite 21 Most Innovative Campaign Award is a celebration of the most creative and inventive ways of reaching employees with news and initiatives that we’ve seen from Unily clients.

Meet the finalists

The three finalists for the Most Innovative Campaign Award have all gone above and beyond to connect with employees and offer them real value. Below, you can find the ideas behind their innovative campaigns – and even get some inspiration for your own campaigns!

Aioi Nissay Dowa

Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe, or AND-E for short, have designed their Unily platform around a central character named Mia. For the intranet and Mia’s first “birthday”, the AND-E team launched a campaign to add new features and updates to the platform. They communicated this campaign widely, creating popular guided intranet tours, a curated newsletter announcement with the Unily Broadcast Center, and a series of videos explaining what’s on offer for employees.

ICE Mortgage Technology

ICE Mortgage Technology wanted to generate excitement for the launch of their new Unily intranet, and what better way to do that than to send employees on a ‘top secret’ mission? The Mission campaign was an intranet-wide scavenger hunt to teach employees about the platform’s important features, with users winning a variety of real-world prizes for completing their mission. ICE announced the campaign with a secret agent-themed video starring CEO, Jonathan Corr, during a company Town Hall, which will be available for the Unite 21 audience to watch during the awards.

SCC

Following the pandemic, SCC wanted to support their employees’ physical wellness and make their offices a healthier place. They teamed up with a personal training company, Podium Fitness 23, to introduce a range of activities for employees both in-person and remotely. The campaign offered on-demand fitness classes, running clubs, free health screenings, personalized guidance and more, all available from a newly launched microsite.