Whether you've been with a company for a week or ten years plus, we're all too familiar with the feeling of despair when you can't find what you need, when you need it.

We worked with financial services company Legal & General to make a tool that’s focused solely on serving people at their moment in need.

Experience and research tells us that end users don’t care how a product is built or where it comes from. The only thing it has to be, really, is Useful. So that's what we called it, and that's what it is. A performance-support resource hub that provides immediate, no-nonsense answers to the questions we know the users have.

The solution

Put employees first

Accessing resources and support should be easy - it should be an intuitive experience, one which is much closer to consumer services experienced in our daily lives.

By providing just-in-time resources on a bespoke site, tailored specifically to serve L&G people, we demonstrate that we care most about what they need to know, as opposed to what the business wants to tell them.

Ideas before technology

Approaching challenges from the point-of-view of a hammer casting around for nails begins with the tools themselves and then attempts to fit the problem to them. When imagining a new, innovative employee experience - why limit ourselves to the tools we already have?

We decided to push against the assumption that we’d build using the common tools of the business, such as Sharepoint. Instead we focussed on solving pain points using common, simple web technologies, allowing us to fit the solution exactly to the problem.

Reach every employee

Everyone needs support but there are some people at L&G who, for technical reasons, are unable to access any. Contractors, for example, often find themselves far removed and excluded from key learning resources.

By offering two clean and concise methods of site access we made sure to reach all communities and allow everyone access to a brand new learning experience.

Streamline the experience

To make Useful even more - well - useful, we wanted to smoothly integrate into the working lives of L&G people. We’re working with L&G's IT team to make our content searchable by their main Intranet search, and to incorporate Useful into Microsoft Teams, putting it at the fingertips of everyone " in the flow of work".

Test, iterate and repeat

Useful is unique, rare and different. It can flex, shift and grow in any direction desired. It can become a native app, it can add new functionality and content, and it can evolve in any way.

We're lucky to have an incredible client at L&G who doesn't just see the value of short, testable iterations, but who really wants to push this approach as much as possible. It allows us to be more agile, to serve the needs of the client and its staff faster, and more specifically. By doing this, we make certain that as the service evolves, it remains what it claims to be: Useful.