Proximus: Keeping its promise of the best communication experience for its customers and employees

The Proximus Group is active as a provider of digital services and communication solutions in the Belgian and international markets. The group opens up a world of digital opportunities, so people live better and work smarter. They do this by: building the best open gigabit network, offering products and services tailored to the needs of every customer, by being the trusted digital evolution partner for companies and the Belgian society, and by contributing to a greener world.

Employees:

10,000+

Services:

Internal Communications

Information Technology

Industries:

Telecommunication

Placing Employees at the Heart of the Business

Proximus offers customers a world of digital opportunities so that they can live better and work smarter.

This business ambition is reflected in their mindset toward internal stakeholders. Talent and career development are highly valued at Proximus in the pursuit of business objectives. They aim to create a culture in which employees develop, make a difference, contribute to business results and be the best brand ambassadors.

Achieving this goal means working towards providing the best possible conditions for employees to do their jobs. At the end of 2020, Proximus introduced their new fully multilingual collaborative intranet platform #WAP+ (standing for “We are Proximus”), to communicate, facilitate connections among employees, promote informal cross-team collaboration and improve knowledge sharing.

The Challenge

Stimulating interaction

Proximus had extensive objectives requiring a solution that goes beyond traditional internal communication tools. Interaction and collaboration are at the core of their corporate culture along with a commitment to positive employee-employer relationships. Therefore, they wanted to provide a digital workspace where every employee can create, share, and interact across the business.

Speaking the local language

As a leader in the Belgian market, the use of multiple languages is key to Proximus’ communication strategy. Proximus communicates in 3 languages – Dutch, French, and English. Previously, multi-language communication was a time-consuming process, and employees’ feeds were overlapped with duplicating content.

All functions matter

At Proximus, a considerable percentage of the workforce are non-office workers, like technicians and customer-facing teams that work from various locations without daily access to a desktop computer. Proximus needed a mobile, on-the-go solution to ensure those employees are just as involved in the organization as office workers.

Building a Multilingual and Collaborative Platform

Starting their transformation project in the midst of a global pandemic increased the importance of finding a suitable solution. The stable and secure transition was a key to ensuring the continuity of business operation.

To support their needs and address its challenges, Proximus trusted LumApps to be their new employee experience platform. To set the project for success and ensure local support, the internal teams decided to rely on one of LumApps’s trusted partners, Devoteam G Cloud Benelux for the implementation and deployment of the platform.

A major deciding factor for Proximus was the multitude of communication flows between collaborators and the goal of breaking through language barriers. The ease of creating content in multiple languages and the flexibility to target it to the right people is a key features. Employees interact in various social and professional communities. The automatic translation of posts and comments allow for effective collaboration because employees can interact in their own language and reach everyone across the organization.

The major advantages of WAP+

Structured homepage ensuring clarity and relevance
Greater personalization of the content
Fully multilingual solution (both on content and comments)
Enhanced search capabilities based on metadata
Flexibility and ease of publishing any type of content via templates

Key Use Cases

Using communities to empower employees

Proximus has a strong sharing culture between entities and currently counts 436 active WAP+/LumApps communities. As Microsoft Teams is used to collaborate on shared deliverables, WAP+ communities are focused on sharing knowledge, giving support and creating a sense of belonging. Every employee can take the initiative to start a community, as long as there is a need, a clear objective and interest to manage it.

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“We all go the extra mile” - a community of interest that allows employees to exchange ideas on how to improve customer experiences. Finding best practices that work, raising suggestions, and letting others upvote their proposals in the name of a common goal - bringing a smile to customers!

“Splicers” community - a community of practice, for and from the field technicians, responsible for the installation and repair of the fiber cable network in the field. They are on the road daily building the installation network. Through this community, they get access to the most important tools, work-related instructions, updates, peer support, and experience sharing.

“Learning at Proximus” - is a typical support community, an extension of the Proximus Learning Management System. It’s used to promote new learning initiatives, communicate last course vacancies, and provide support for users' learning questions.

#WAP+ Support - is a support community to optimize the use of #WAP+, including direct access to knowledge documents and updates. It serves as a help desk and supports two specialized communities, one for WAP+ publishers and one for #WAP+ community managers.

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Employee Voices

Every employee in the organization can share experiences, stories, or lessons learned through blog posts. Support materials and guidelines are provided to empower employees from different backgrounds to participate. It’s a simple blog at first glance, but it’s a powerful tool for setting company-wide trends, empowering people, and facilitating knowledge flow across teams.

Smart Inter-Linking

The platform guides employees through their workday. Along with well-defined business unit pages and communities, employees have personalized and quick access to relevant business tools. The platform provides a centralized catalogue of useful links sorted and targeted by business units.

Agile Transformation Program

Supporting major business transformations is facilitated through a dedicated subsite that helps employees understand changes and their impact. This site and its community consolidate all project communications, including personal action plans for employees, step-by-step guidance, deadline reminders, progress updates, and support documents.

Employee Social Advocacy

The integrated social advocacy tool enables Proximus to create brand ambassadors across the workforce. Employees can share corporate news through “WeBuzz” and propose topics for external sharing via a dedicated “LifeatProximus” community.

Mobile App

Employees can connect to their workspaces no matter where they are thanks to the LumApps for Intune mobile application. It’s particularly useful for technicians and field representatives that receive company and team updates through a personalized news feed, but also for leaders and everyone that works in a hybrid way and seeks maximum flexibility. Everyone has instant access to Proximus News, a complete employee directory and can contact colleagues on the go or find support in one of their professional communities.

Discover All Mobile Use Cases

The Need

At Proximus, technicians, customer-facing teams, and other non-desktop workers represent a considerable amount of the workforce. Employees in the field have strict schedules and no daily access to desktop computers, but still need to ensure they are delivering the best possible customer service. To avoid the perception that looking for resources and information is time-consuming, the company wanted a solution that would make communications accessible and practical for all employees.

The Solution

With the LumApps for Intune mobile application, Proximus has built a mobile experience for all its employees that provides continuous access to knowledge at their fingertips. The on-the-go solution enables employees to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and connect no matter their location or work device. As hybrid work environments become more common, the mobile app offers maximum flexibility without compromising work efficiency.