Training for the World Food Programme’s new intranet

The World Food Programme were designing a new intranet for their staff, based on user needs and following the GDS standards.

The people in HQ writing content for the intranet had no user needs training. They had to create content for 15,000 or so people out in the field - typically in places with little reliable internet connections and on old devices.

As WFP is an international organisation, English is the official language, but not the first language for the majority of people.

The organisation is organised with a hierarchical structure, which can add complexity, plus the organisation did not have any previous experience of digital transformation.

The training plan started out with a training needs analysis to gauge where people identified that they needed help. This was a survey sent out by email - the survey was backed by a senior leader to ensure a high response rate.

Once analysis of this survey had been done - with the internal project team to make sure learning was transferred in-house - we created a training curriculum and delivery plan. This detailed what the course would cover, how and when - including costs as the training had to be delivered outside the UK.

The training consisted of creating a bespoke, one-day course that would be delivered in-house. The face-to-face approach would mean that people could ask questions to the internal project team (who would also attend the training), they would be able to practise writing and get feedback straightaway.

WFP wanted to be able to deliver the course in the future, so both the course and a train-the-trainer course were developed. This made sure that learning was transferred to the organisation meaning they would be self sufficient. Part of the longer-term plan included building a global content community to keep enthusiasm for user-centred content high - and also as a place where people could continue to learn. This was implemented using the proprietary messaging system and managed by the intranet project team.

All 120 people in HQ were trained and learned how to put their users first and how to create content that really met the needs of the audience. The internet was launched on time in 2016, with a vastly reduced number of pages and a lower reading age for all content.

Top level results:

• Search increased by 55%

• 25% of content shared by at least two teams (reduction of duplicated content)

• All content rated as ‘plain English’ according to Flesch reading ease scale from ‘very difficult’, ‘difficult’ or ‘fairly difficult’

• Page load speed reduced by up to 48%

The intranet was named as one of the Nielsen Norman Group 10 Best Intranets of 2018 and the training was cited by the team as one of the crucial elements that ensured success of the project.