Lethbridge Transforms Employee Engagement with SharePoint Online
A Case Study in empowering employees with a modern intranet
The City of Lethbridge recognized the need to modernize its intranet, CityWise, to maximize its investment in SharePoint Online. Previously built on SharePoint 2013, the outdated intranet suffered from inconsistent design, duplicate content, poor search functionality, and a lack of governance. With 40% of its workforce operating in the field, The City required a centralized, mobile-friendly digital workspace accessible from any device, anywhere.
Stronger Governance
Increased Searchability
Enhanced Collaboration
Why The City of Lethbridge Chose Elantis
After a competitive RFP process, Elantis stood out as the ideal partner due to its customer-first approach, deep expertise in SharePoint solutions, and commitment to delivering scalable digital workplaces. The City valued Elantis’ collaborative approach, ensuring that stakeholder input was incorporated at every stage.
Key reasons for selecting Elantis
- Proven expertise in SharePoint Online and digital workplace transformation
- User-focused design methodology
- Practical approach to user experience, helping drive intranet adoption and ease of use
- Comprehensive training options to support seamless knowledge transfer and adoption
- Hands-on, consultative approach tailored to The City’s unique needs
The City partnered with Elantis to design and implement a modern intranet leveraging SharePoint Online’s out-of-the-box capabilities.
The Solution
Elantis designed a user-friendly, mobile-responsive intranet leveraging SharePoint Online. Using Microsoft 365’s native functionality, rather than custom development, created a future-proof solution, avoiding the potential fragility and performance impacts of third-party add-ins or other customizations. Elantis focused on streamlining operations, enhancing governance, and boosting employee engagement – all while maximizing The City’s existing investment in Microsoft 365.
Key implementation steps:
- Stakeholder Engagement & User-Centred Design: Led interactive workshops to define requirements, gather feedback and design an intuitive intranet. Used gamification methods like card sorting and tree testing to optimize navigation based on employee workflows.
- Governance & Content Strategy: Facilitated governance workshops to establish clear content management guidelines, permissions, and lifecycle policies. Applied best practices to keep content relevant, current, and searchable.
- User Experience & Accessibility: Created a visually appealing, mobile-responsive intranet aligned with The City’s brand identity, ensuring easy access for both office and field staff.
- Integration with the vintage release calendar: The workflow was integrated with the vintage release calendar, automatically initiating workflows based on specific date thresholds and updating relevant data for new vintage releases.
- Migration: Moved content from the legacy intranet and SharePoint on-prem to SharePoint Online. Developed departmental collaboration sites to support teamwork.
- Training & Change Management: Delivered ‘Train the Trainer’ sessions to empower managers and created user guides, videos, and drop-in sessions to support adoption across departments.
The Result
Since launching the new CityWise intranet, leadership – including The City Manager, Directors, and even the Mayor – have recognized the project’s success and its positive impact on employee engagement and productivity.
Highlights:
- Improved Efficiency: Employees can quickly find the information they need, reducing time spent searching for outdated or duplicate content.
- Enhanced Collaboration: A centralized, accessible platform supports seamless teamwork across departments and locations.
- Stronger Governance: Clear policies ensure well-managed, relevant, and organized content.
- High Adoption: Intuitive design and structured training drove strong user engagement across the organization.
- Scalable Solution: Built to evolve with The City’s future needs and digital strategy.
Throughout the project, Elantis maintained proactive, transparent communication — not just providing updates, but continuously checking in to ensure that every stage of development aligned with The City’s needs.
The partnership between the City of Lethbridge and Elantis showcases the power of a well-executed intranet modernization to transform internal communication. Elantis delivered a future-ready solution that meets today’s needs and scales with tomorrow’s vision.
Technologies Used
SharePoint Online
SharePoint On-Prem
What the Client Has to Say
Elantis didn’t just build us an intranet; they partnered with us every step of the way. Their expertise, structured approach, and commitment to doing what’s right for the client made this a seamless experience.
This was a massive project, and Elantis’ hard work, attention to detail, creativity, and problem-solving made it a success. The new intranet is a huge step forward, and it wouldn’t have been possible without their commitment.
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Get in touch with Elantis today
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