How Happeo acts as Webrepublic’s pillar for their digital culture

"We wanted into make our communications more dynamic, because we found emails and newsletters limiting. They left information siloed into people's inboxes. Happeo solves that."

- Nicole Hasenkamp, Organization Development Manager at Webrepublic

Streamlining Internal Communications for a growing digital marketing agency

Webrepublic is an innovative digital marketing agency in the DACH region. It’s not just innovation they aim for – team spirit, quality and long-term partnerships are the name of the game. And it shows. Since their inception in 2009, they’ve grown a lot – starting out with a handful of people to over 200 in 2021. That’s why Webrepublic felt it was time to tackle their Internal Communications. That’s where Happeo comes in.

“We wanted to make our communications more dynamic, because we found emails and newsletters limiting. They left information siloed into people’s inboxes. Happeo solves that.”

Webrepublic’s Nicole Hasenkamp walked us through their journey towards reliable internal content, which involved a migration from Confluence, a restructuring of their information and space for a bottom-up approach to communications.

Replacing a legacy system

Before Webrepublic started using Happeo, they were on Confluence. However, it was difficult to find information and to know how reliable it was. Some people would be diligent in searching on Confluence, but the user experience resulted in people bypassing the documentations there and asking questions internally. Answering those questions via mail or in person resulted in a considerable amount of work.

Webrepublic’s ideal solution consists of four main pillars, namely:

• A central place to store all their documents, policies and processes – a single source of truth 
  
  
• A lifecycle-management system so that single source of truth is never out of date
  
  
• A user-friendly experience
  
  
• A true social intranet to reflect their dynamic culture

“We wanted something with a good user experience, something that enables everyone to create nice-looking pages without having a background in graphic design or HTML. We also had the need for more dynamic communication. Before, our top-down communication was done through emails or newsletters which doesn’t allow much interaction. That’s why we wanted a social intranet – a place where you can comment, like or react in other forms like GIFs.”

A structural decision

The migration forced Webrepublic to translate their existing pages, which had grown into a complex structure, into new categories. “Wherever possible, we’ve structured it according to which workflows go together. We now have more cross-functional channels and pages than before.”

The content migration itself was made easier because of the page creation workflow and the flat learning curve in Happeo. 

Happeo as a pillar for remote work and company culture

Webrepublic’s culture is fun, collegial and driven. “Working from home presented a new challenge: transporting our culture into the digital space.”

Happeo is a big part of this for Webrepublic. It acts as a digital harbour where information is shared and interactions take place with a low amount of effort – whether it’s liking or commenting on posts or creating channels.

“We wanted something that would make low-key interaction easier, but also empower people to enter discussions by, for example, opening up their own channels on topics they find relevant.”

At 200 people, it became increasingly difficult to know everyone. The People directory was important for Webrepublic as a way to have an overview of who’s working where or finding people to ask for their expertise.”

The features that changed the game for Webrepublic

• Lifecycle management that helps keep information up-to-date at all times
  
  
• Easy-to-build Pages that structured knowledge around goals and projects rather than departments and disciplines
  
  
• Happeo’s People, an automated employee directory, which helps everyone understand what their colleagues do and which skills they have
  
  
• User-friendly Channels that offer a variety of post-types and rich media 

The future for Webrepublic 

“To meet our clients’ demanding needs, we have to be adaptive - as individuals and as an organization. At the same time, we want to give Webrepublicans the flexibility they desire and expect in their professional and personal lives. When moving into a more flexible working model in the future, Happeo will help us to nurture our culture digitally and we’re curious to see where the journey takes us.”