Case Study Kingswood School: Reducing reliance on email and targeting comms with Involv

Kingswood School is a large independent school in Bath with over 1,300 students enrolled, ranging from nine months to 18 years. The school continues to be successful and has grown over the years to its current size – set in over 130 acres across multiple sites and employing over 400 support and academic staff.

As M365 users, the organisation was keen to find an intranet solution that would work within the Microsoft ecosystem. And with the aim of keeping costs low, they favoured an out-of-the-box solution, avoiding costly custom development.

Challenges

An internal staff survey identified two main challenges relating to internal communications. Firstly, reliance on email was too great: staff felt overwhelmed by the volume of emails they were receiving and unable to keep up with important news. Secondly, communication was untargeted, with all staff receiving all emails, which added to the overload.

Despite all working for the same school, the needs of staff are very different depending on their job role, department and location. And although the school had an existing intranet, it was essentially a link farm for workplace tools, with no functionality for collaboration or communication.

Solutions

A central space for targeted comms

Reducing reliance on email and targeting communications were the two key motivators for the project – and with Involv, Kingswood achieved both. With Involv's news feature, they publish formal, targeted news stories so staff only see news relevant to their role. The comment functionality allows for two-way communication where staff want to engage. Using Yammer via their Community forums, more informal communication is possible – recommendations, lost-and-found notices and even an internal marketplace.

Versatile features, tailored to the use case

As a highly customisable SharePoint intranet, Involv enabled Kingswood to create a range of useful features, including the Period Clock. Rather than a standard time frame, Kingswood's school day is split into 7 periods, and the Period Clock lets everyone – including non-academic staff – work to this timetable. The New Starter feature helps staff stay informed about new employees, linked to the Who Is Who feature: a customisable profile page for each staff member with pronouns, site location, contact information and car badge (for parking). Staff can also use Privacy Mode to blur email and calendars – especially useful for academic staff using whiteboards for teaching.

Customisable Quick Links

With staff working across nursery, primary and secondary education, the range of apps used is vast – which is why Involv's Quick Links feature has been so useful. Rather than giving everyone access to all apps, the IT team differentiates which apps are available to which staff depending on their role, and individuals can choose which apps they want to see. The school has also licensed Involv for their students, for a forthcoming student intranet, based on the usefulness of this feature.

“Quick links are really important for us. We've got an incredible number of apps.”

Andrew FrancombDirector of IT, Kingswood School

Involv team support: ‘a massive plus'

The support from the Involv team was instrumental in the successful launch. The process began with internal focus groups to determine the needs of each department. The decision was then taken to start with support-staff requirements, followed by academic staff, then the student intranet. With project-management support from Involv, tasks and deliverables were well communicated – resulting in meeting the three-month deadline for launch.

“The project management support we received from Jonas and the rest of the Involv team was a massive plus.”

Andrew FrancombDirector of IT, Kingswood School

The Kingswood intranet in pictures

A look at the platform staff use every day – from the homepage and department areas to the “Who Is Who” directory and the community noticeboard. Click any image to enlarge.