Severfield upgrades their communication process with Oak Engage

The challenge

Leading structural steel company, Severfield, spent over a year developing a SharePoint intranet which brought more challenges than triumphs. Previously, they relied heavily on notice boards and emails, and they needed a better solution; something intuitive, user friendly and one that kept their IT team satisfied by integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365. With around half of Severfield’s workforce being remote, based in either factories or on construction sites,, Severfield needed an intranet that would enable them to connect instantly with everyone across the group, no matter their location, or whether or not they had a company device. In particular, during the pandemic, Severfield needed to develop a better way to communicate and engage with their workforce, whether it be in manufacturing, construction, or with those working from home.

“We didn’t get along with SharePoint. We came across many challenges and it was really limited. We needed an intranet and a colleague app to cater to our dispersed workforce. We shortlisted Oak and one other provider, but once we had spoken to the team at Oak, we knew straight away they were the right partner to help us achieve our goals. We signed on the dotted line a week later.” 

Charlie Joy, Creative Communications Manager at Severfield plc

The solution

Connect

The relationship between Severfield and Oak Engage is a true partnership. They have given Severfield a more engaging way to share news with their people, as well as a central hub to provide colleagues with easy and instant access to important information, such as payslips and company policies. 

Severfield took an iterative approach to launch which allowed the team to debut new branding and a whole host of new pages and areas for different departments to explore. It also gave the team at Severfield an opportunity to listen to colleague feedback and develop something their people actually wanted and would use. 

Charlie commented: “We launched phase one as the ‘Coronavirus Hub’ but it has developed so much since then. We love the flexibility and the intuitiveness of the drag-and-drop functionality, the customisation and how easy it was to integrate with all of our other tools. Oak Engage is a really seamless system!” 

Distributing important company updates

Gone are the days of posters on notice boards and email overload. Internal comms got a mighty upgrade with the opportunity to make it fun, engaging and interactive for colleagues at all ends of the business. 

Charlie added: “We have had really good feedback, especially from our executive team, who all see the value in what Connect offers, compared to where we were five years ago.”

Severfield uses the latest news to ensure urgent updates reach their widespread colleague base quickly, making sure they keep their teams well informed and connected.

Spotlight campaign: The Severfield Way

In 2024 Severfield launched ‘The Severfield Way’, its biggest internal campaign in recent years, bringing to life the company’s purpose, values and behaviours.

Severfield’s campaign was launched to align external and internal communications with a unified brand and allows colleagues to recognise each other for demonstrating one or more of the company values. Oak’s personalisation and customisation features enabled Severfield to create a campaign that authentically represented their brand identity and values. 

They created custom keyrings for colleagues across the Group. The keyrings had charms attached to signify each of the four new values that together make ‘The Severfield Way’. Each keyring had a QR code on it to direct staff straight to the employee recognition area on the intranet, demonstrating how through the use of QR codes, Severfield’s non-computer-based colleagues could easily access the intranet, and nominate colleagues, in an easy, interactive way.

As each note of recognition is sent, it populates an intranet page where everyone can see what their colleagues have been acknowledged for, and the corresponding company value, each of which has its own allocated colour. The more that each value is recognised, the more colourful the page becomes without the team having to do anything extra, which is brilliant! The Severfield Way initiative launched in May 2024 and within four months had received over 70 nominations.

Andreas Pavlou, Internal Communications Manager at Severfield said: “Oak has given us a place where we can celebrate our brand as a business, ensuring it’s consistent. This allows us to recognise our colleagues for demonstrating our values. This just wasn’t possible before. It has given us so many benefits that change the way we communicate with our colleagues. When people are tagged in articles or receive recognition for their achievements, they are notified, which then builds a bridge between whoever recognised them, further strengthening connections right across the business.”

Personalised homepages

The communications team at Severfield has won over their colleagues by showcasing the capabilities of Oak through personalised homepages. They have since been able to create a template for new department areas so that department heads can visualise how their areas will look, and the content that will go within it. This streamlines not only the user experience once the area is built, but the time in which it takes for the internal comms team to create the homepages for their colleagues.