#1 Notes from the implementation side of employee experience

The more employee experience platforms I implement, the less interested I become in comparing them.

If you'd asked me five years ago what made a good employee platform, I'd probably have spent most of the conversation talking about, you guessed it... the platform.

You know, features, user experience, whether it felt familiar, and if your people would actually use it.

Back then, that wasn't a bad way of looking at it. Honestly, it was the world I knew.

Fast forward a few years and I'm now in my thirties, going gray, and I've now personally had the chance to work across Sharepoint/Viva Engage, Workplace from Meta (RIP), Workvivo, Blink, Flip and Haiilo to name a few, implementing them for charities, housing associations, healthcare providers, leisure trusts and plenty of other organisations.

That's a fair few platforms I'd say, but to be brutally honest, the more platforms I've worked with, the less interested I've become in comparing them.

That might sound strange coming from someone whose job revolves around selling and implementing them (again, being brutally honest). But somewhere along the way, my thinking changed.

These days, if someone asks me which platform they should choose, my first question isn't "What's your budget?" or "Do you need a social platform or an intranet?"

It's much simpler than that.

What problem are you actually trying to solve?

• Is it that your leaders aren't visible?

• Do frontline colleagues feel disconnected from the rest of the organisation?

• Are you still sending all-staff emails that somehow end with twenty people hitting "Reply All"? (Massive ick.)

• Does important information disappear into inboxes never to be seen again?

• Or are half your business processes still held together by Word documents with crossed fingers since 2008?

Be real, I don't need to tell you that buying a new employee experience platform doesn't magically fix any of that. It's the people. The platform just simply gives them better tools.

One thing I've lost count of over the last year is sitting in workshops where the wishlist is... ambitious. Every feature. Every integration. Every workflow. Every brilliant idea. Sometimes it feels a bit Everything Everywhere All at Once.

I get it. You've invested in a shiny new platform, so naturally you want to use everything it can do, so do I. BUT, I've found myself saying the same thing more and more. Let's not. Not because the platform can't handle it, but because your people probably shouldn't have to.

Sometimes I think those of us in communications, IT, HR and project delivery forget that what feels like a tiny change to us can feel massive to someone else. Especially if you're asking someone who's on their feet all day, working in a care-home, stocking shelves, pouring pints or leading group workouts to suddenly change how they communicate, find information and complete everyday tasks.

This goes against a lot of marketing concepts, but... Start small. Let people get used to their new climate. Help build confidence. Then grow. You wouldn't walk into a gym for the first time and expect to deadlift your body weight. Why do we expect organisations to digitally transform overnight?

Funny enough, that's also why I don't really enjoy the "which platform is best?" debate anymore. Every employee experience app implementation has taught me something different — not because one platform was necessarily better than another, but because each one made me think about employee communication in a slightly different way.

Workvivo reinforced that ‘community’ can't be forced, but if you find the communities people already want, they'll often build something stronger than anything you could mandate. Blink reminded me that frontline colleagues do want to connect, just on their own terms — with relevant information, useful notifications and less noise. Flip showed me how blurred the line between communication and operations can become, and how some of the smartest ideas aren't about publishing news at all, but making somebody's working day easier. Haiilo, meanwhile, reinforced just how important governance becomes in a large organisation, especially when you're building something that still needs to work properly a year after launch.

Different technologies and different organisations, but every project kept bringing me back to exactly the same conclusion: the common denominator has never been the technology. It's always been the people.

The project teams prepared to challenge each other. The IT teams figuring out SSO one minute, while Comms are planning launch content the next. HR making sure new starters don't get forgotten. Leaders who don't just approve the project but actually show up and use it. Internal champions who quietly become the reason everyone else gets on board.

I've pinched this from Jürgen Klopp over the years, but one of my favourite leadership quotes is about turning doubters into believers. That sums up implementation better than any project methodology I've ever seen. The best moments aren't launch day, they're six months later, when someone who wasn't convinced at the start is showing somebody else how to use the platform.

That's when you know you've built something that lasts.

One thing I'm genuinely grateful for is that this job has let me work alongside organisations doing incredible work. Charities supporting vulnerable communities. Healthcare providers. Housing associations. Leisure trusts helping people live healthier lives.

If helping those organisations communicate a bit better makes someone's working day easier, or ultimately helps them deliver a better service to the people who rely on them, then I can't think of a much better way to spend my time.

So if you're about to start looking for a new employee platform, here's the one thing I'd leave you with:

Don't spend all your energy asking which platform is best. Spend just as much time asking how you're going to bring your people with you.

In my experience, that's the bit that makes all the difference.