OneSkanska is the intranet platform used by all global Skanska employees to house information, documents and media relevant to their employment and life at Skanska. Historically in the US, it was difficult for employees to find information relevant to them as pages would range from global employee information to country specific with a very loose and confusing structure.
In early 2019, the Human Resources group of Skanska USA underwent a dramatic restructuring and one of the first priorities of the new group was to completely overhaul the HR section of Skanska USA’s OneSkanska site. HR felt it necessary to take a look at how they were delivering information to US employees and better the overall employee web experience.
I was the lead designer on this project and partnered with HR and our development team in Sweden to deliver this new web portal by fall of 2019, which would include a refreshed homepage design and subsequent sub pages. In the early stages of development, it was decided that a tree would serve as the graphic and branding for the site, communicating to employees that as the organization grows and thrives they also wanted employees to view their own development as growing and thriving right along with it. The branches or leaves of the tree would represent the eight major categories HR had decided they wanted to focus the new site around. We began with the look and structure of the tree, trying out different design options and ways to incorporate those eight categories of employee information as HR also wanted the tree to be a functional navigation point for the site. This meant interactivity had to be considered as the design moved forward.
I spent the summer of 2019 partnering with HR gathering information for each of the eight categories. We started working with the subject matter experts for each of those categories and wireframing what content they needed to include. We encouraged these experts to further categorize and group their information into sub sections and provide all information, documentation, URLs etc that an employee would need access to. These sections varied from small and relatively easy to structure and wireframe, to large and complex groups of information that we had to spend significant time on to simplify and condense to ultimately ensure a less confusing employee experience.
Once we were confident we had a good start on the information of the site, we partnered with the development team in Sweden to create a more modern and unique web experience on OneSkanska. I created some visual mockups with ideas of how we intended the homepage to look and function within the site’s existing build restrictions and worked virtually with the developers as they built versions of the site that then required testing and feedback. Towards the end of development, we held some virtual focus group testing with groups of Skanska USA employees to see how employees were reacting to the new site and information structure. We took that feedback and incorporated it into the final site design and functionality. It was after this feedback was received that we finalized the eight categories (and in order of popularity of use) to My Time, My Performance, Learning and Development, My Benefits, My Compensation, Our Workplace, Be Skanska’s Ambassador, Our Skanska Community and How Do I…? Within each of these categories were sub pages and links that were also built for this site specifically and housed under the ‘Relevant Links’ section of each category. These pages would use the standard OneSkanska design templates as our timeline did not allow for sub pages to be re-designed to mirror the new homepage’s look.
The site launched in early fall 2019. It is fully responsive and offers a unique and modern full screen experience for all Skanska USA employees that is not available anywhere else on OneSkanska in any other country. It is now possible for Skanska USA employees to find all information relevant to them from benefits, to compensation, to volunteering opportunities at their local office right at their fingertips in one convenient place. The launch was the end of phase 1 of design and implementation. There are plans to continue the development of the site into later phases, adding more functionality and eventually re-designing the sub pages of each category to family better with the new homepage.
