AMA optimizes workplace culture for the digital age

The Challenge

To transform its culture for the digital age, the AMA needed an integrated online workplace that would align the team to strategic objectives and enhance employee communications to fuel collaboration and improve the employee experience. With an updated intranet site, AMA leadership looked to increase employee engagement, regularly share information on organization initiatives and relevant medical news, better connect employees and enable self-service on workplace issues.

Together, the AMA and West Monroe designed a platform, AMAtoday, that supports collaborative functions and knowledge sharing. AMAtoday introduced modern communications tools, search capabilities, digital forms and business process automation tools. It serves as a one-screen information gateway for employees and, perhaps most importantly, it infuses AMA’s culture and systems with digital agility.

An Undeniable Different Approach 

Through a multidisciplinary team of workplace designers, technologists, and healthcare experts, West Monroe took a customer-first approach and started with an understanding of employees needs and challenges. We conducted an association-wide employee survey and qualitative interviews on the state of the workplace to gather customer feedback to help improve internal processes, communications, and collaboration to gather feedback and inform the platform’s design.

Using the data collected from the survey and interviews, the team created four personas that represented the motivations, behaviors, interactions, needs, and goals of typical intranet users. The team used personas in every aspect of the project, from design to rollout, to make decisions about visual layout, information architecture, security, and permissions.

Real Results

The resulting AMAtoday intranet site had an immediate impact on the AMA’s workplace. The award-winning platform was named one of the Nielsen Norman Group’s 10 Best Intranets of the Year, affirming the site’s innovative approach to employee engagement and demonstrating its critical contribution to ushering the AMA’s workplace into the modern digital age.

Through use of a modern cloud-based intranet, a collaboration platform (including Office 365 and SharePoint Online) and the latest responsive web design technologies and principles, AMAtoday successfully reduced email traffic, decreased time spent completing manual employment forms and increased employee engagement.

Digital capabilities on the site, led to an increase in employees’ daily intranet use from 4% to 54%, while calls and emails to AMA’s IT Support Center decreased by 37%, indicating an engaged workforce empowered by self-service.

The intranet quickly established itself as an information gateway and workforce connector, too, with a 9,898% increase in visits to its business unit pages and a 32% increase in click-through rate from AMAtoday to other AMA business tools.