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

About Proximus

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.

Proximus in a nutshell:

• 10.000+ employees
• Industry: telecommunications

The challenge for Proximus: 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 of the employee experience platform

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.

The solution – 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 feature. 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.

Key Use Cases of the platform

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.

Employee Voices

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

Agile Transformation Program

Supporting major business transformations is done through a distinct subsite that helps employees understand changes and their impact. The site and its dedicated community consolidate all the project communications. According to employee profiles, there are built-in personal action plans to help them follow processes step by step, deadline reminders, progress updates and support documents.

Employee Social Advocacy

The integrated social advocacy tool enables Proximus to create powerful brand ambassadors throughout the lines of their workforce. People are not only able to share corporate news through “WeBuzz”, but they can also propose topics and content to be shared externally through a dedicated “LifeatProximus” community.

The results

The major advantages of the employee experience platform “WAP+ ” (“We are Proximus”)

• 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 Results

Why Proximus chose Devoteam G Cloud & Lumapps