Cambrian Credit Union

Here’s how Cambrian worked with ThoughtFarmer to develop an intranet that would empower their employees to easily review important company information – and have fun while doing it.

Cambrian Credit Union company background

Serving customers since 1959, Cambrian Credit Union is a Manitoba-based financial cooperative. With a focus on involvement within local communities, Cambrian grew through a series of mergers and acquisitions, becoming one of the largest credit unions in the Winnipeg area. 

Cambrian’s relationship-based approach helps them stand out from traditional banks and deliver a member-focused experience the community trusts.

Building an engaging and informational intranet with ThoughtFarmer

Cambrian’s newly formed communications team needed a new intranet to support its work with the marketing department. The previous intranet was built in-house and outdated. Its function was limited. It served as a basic document repository and staff directory, and facilitated basic communications and onboarding. The communications team knew they could do better.

Cambrian searched for a new intranet platform that would allow their team to organize company information in an accessible way and keep up with the demands of the changing financial industry, like evolving industry news, company policies, procedures, and product details.

To do this, not only would they need great organization capabilities, but the content management system would need to be easy to update and allow for eye-catching design details that keep staff engaged. 

The top priorities for the Cambrian team as they set out in search of a new intranet solution were:

• Page organization features that would make company and departmental information readily available.
• Content management abilities that could empower teams to update their own content, and feel represented across the intranet.
• Visible communication lines for providing staff with company and people news.
• Culture-building opportunities that reflect Cambrian’s strengths.
  

Cambrian decided to partner with ThoughtFarmer to make this vision a reality. They named their new intranet MILO, which stands for Mountains of Information Logically Organized. The name is a perfect description of both the challenge the team was facing and their approach to fixing it. The intranet was given its very own mascot and site logo, a bison, paying homage to the local wildlife of Manitoba.

Here are a few of Cambrian’s favorite ways they’ve used ThoughtFarmer features within their intranet. 

MILO’s homepage helps staff find the most current information first

The homepage forms the roots of any solid intranet. Cambrian wanted to build a homepage that served as a central hub and was carefully curated to help employees easily discover and review key information each week. 

Before ThoughtFarmer, memos and forms got lost in the staff email inbox abyss. Now, Cambrian updates the MILO homepage to strategically display the most relevant information at the top. By pairing that with eye-catching custom graphics, the content is sure to grab attention. 

These changes delivered the team excellent results. Within the first two years, Cambrian reached an incredible 96% adoption rate. Not only were employees accessing the intranet, they were engaging with it too! Engagement per employee increased by 22%.

Custom design elements keep things fresh

Fresh visuals and graphics can make all the difference in turning a boring intranet into an engaging one. ThoughtFarmer’s flexible design and theming functionality and content management system (CMS) makes it easy for the team to regularly update graphics in just a few clicks. 

Cambrian’s graphic designer creates custom thumbnail images for memos to make them stand out. They even update the intranet’s design, like their mascot MILO, based on upcoming holidays. 

Community content helps Cambrian showcase its culture across branches 

With a dispersed staff, Cambrian needed an intranet solution that would help them cultivate culture and celebrate community across all their branches.

After MILO, the team could showcase community involvement, share the story of who Cambrian is, and build culture. MILO’s design played an impactful role in helping Cambrian express their culture effectively.

Building an award-winning intranet with ThoughtFarmer

Cambrian Credit Union’s implementation of ThoughtFarmer was not only successful, but also award-winning.

Cambrian submitted their intranet for ThoughFarmer’s best intranet awards. With categories like Design, Impact, and Innovation, the awards give our clients the opportunity to show off their amazing ideas for solving workplace challenges.

Cambrian’s intranet, MILO, tied for first place for best design, perfectly blending information and imagination. Check out all the intranet award winners here.

Learn more about how a ThoughtFarmer intranet can help your credit union connect, communicate, and thrive.

Discover more success stories of banks and credit unions partnering with ThoughtFarmer.

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