The global situation we are all facing is very unusual. In this exceptional context of the global crisis, companies need to prioritize crisis communications. To help our Powell Software customers, we have released a crisis communications site template that can easily be launched into any of the Powell Software products, like your Powell 365 intranet or your personalized productivity hub, Powell Hub. Powell Software is committed to helping our customers install clear continuous communication and cope with the urgency of these kinds of situations.
A ready-build crisis communications site template
In response to the crisis, many companies are trying to implement a crisis communication plan: a standard of internal communications to keep open lines of communication while controlling the stream of information as the workforce moves into remote work. Communication needs to flow quickly and information around the situation should be updated frequently to keep employees informed. Office 365 is a tool that gives companies the means to communicate digitally by combining unique features and sharing different sources of information.
If you are a Powell Software customer, this new template is the perfect way to gather news, consolidate resources and centralized any crisis-related Q&A into one single site within your digital workplace. Our Crisis Communications site template is a pre-built site template, already available inside of Powell Manager.
Focus on your crisis management strategy, not site creation
During a crisis situation, time is valuable. Powell Manager, the design, management, and provisioning engine behind the Powell Software suite, accelerates the creation of any site on top of Office 365, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. With Powell Manager, you don’t need to create sites from scratch and no coding is needed. Our ready-made templates even include pre-built web parts to facilitate a fast site launch.
The Crisis Communication site template is already fitted with web parts commonly defined within a crisis communications plan such as news alters, targeted news, RSS news, people finders, social media feeds embedded yammer chats, FAQs, and company events. It is more important to focus on your crisis management strategy instead of the concept and creation of an urgent SharePoint site. Still, if you ever want to go back in and update the site, you can easily drag the right communication channels, change information libraries and update collaboration tools, to be more in line with your branding or plan, at any time.
How to effectively roll out your new site
Once the communication site is live within your digital workplace, make it easy for an employee to find. We have a few different features that can help you promote the news site.
1. Share an announcement via our global alert feature. This feature allows you to highlight important messages under the menu bar. With global alerts, you have the capacity to communicate very important information on a topic broadly across the company. An alert includes a title, short description and level of importance (important, medium, high) to inform all employees with urgency.
2. Highlight the new site via the Homepage Banner- The banner web part works well to highlight information in modern pages. The full-width banner includes a title, description, and URL laid onto an image of your choice to illustrate company information and highlight news directly below the main site menu. Add an eye-catching image and an informative title tied to your crisis communication strategy and make sure the communication site is highlighted on the homepage.
3. Pin the site as a favorite for all employees. To make it easy to find, label the communication site as a “favorite” within the portal panel. Employees will not have to go searching for the information and find everyone in one centralized place.
4. Push notifications via Powell Apps. All Powell Software customers have access to Powell Apps and can create business applications to tie to their digital workplace. Share important information to all employees, including deskless workers, via push notifications on their mobile device via the company app. Notify them with a short message that informs everyone a new site has been published and how to access it. All employees can easily download the app for Android and IOS.
Powell Software is here to help
The Crisis Communications Site template is just one way to help employees to cope with remote working during this trying time. Check out our tips and tricks for remote working productivity for more ideas.
Everyone at Powell Software wants to assure our customers have the best digital workplace experience available for their employees. Our customer Success Management, Support and Sales teams are at your disposal at any time to ensure continued excellent service for our platforms. We are here to help you launch the Crisis Communications site template quickly and efficiently. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
