CIPD Community Supports 145,000 Members with Verint

The not-for-profit organisation champions better work and working lives and has been setting the benchmark for excellence in people and organisation development for more than 100 years.

The results

200k
Over 200,000 unique visitors have visited the Community at least once.
35%
35% of visits made using a mobile device.
1 Million
Over one million visits to the blogs in 2017

About CIPD

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the professional body for HR and people development. The not-for-profit organization champions better work and working lives and has been setting the benchmark for excellence in people and organizational development for more than 100 years. It has a community of more than 145,000 members across the world, provides thought leadership through independent research on the world of work, and offers professional training and accreditation for those working in HR and Learning & Development (L&D).

With the use of social media and collaborative tools in the business world increasing, the CIPD saw an opportunity to bring members together across the world, giving them an online forum to learn, debate, and connect with other HR and L&D professionals. “We wanted an online forum to bring a greater sense of unity and camaraderie to both existing and new members,” explains Steve Bridger, Community Manager at the CIPD. “That was a pioneering step and represented the cutting-edge of communications and engagement”. The community has grown year on year and now has over 30,000 visitors every month.

Solution: Elevate member and employee experiences with Verint Community

The CIPD deployed Verint Community, an online community platform designed to help elevate member and employee experiences. It quickly became popular. Since it’s unveiling, it has grown to support tens of thousands of users and become part of the organization’s activities. The CIPD Community is now a highly valued community environment hosted on the CIPD website. It brings together a variety of groups – from open groups to member-only and invite-only groups – in forums and CIPD blogs.

One third of discussions fall under the broad area of “employment law, policies, and procedures” while a further 20 percent take place in the “Careers Clinic,” where students and those entering the profession can receive career development advice.

Closed and private groups reflect the highly sensitive and confidential nature of many HR discussions on the Community, including topics such as redundancy and staff disciplinary hearings. Invite-only groups are aimed at specific teams involved in private programs, such as assessing the CIPD Code of Conduct or managing regional branches.

The popular CIPD blogs sit alongside the Community and are managed by the social media team. The blogs cover hundreds of topics. Topics range from gender pay gap reporting and mental health awareness to potential skills shortages post-Brexit and the impact of Uber and other organizations on employment.

The CIPD Community relaunched two years ago, with the upgrade to a modern release of Verint Community technology. “We looked at other community platforms and concluded that Verint Community continues to offer a robust and reliable platform to accommodate a very large community of users,” says Bridger. “It also offers a very good mix of functionality and ease of use, including a mobile-friendly experience. The platform offers a space for members to discover each other and develop a deep sense of engagement.”

Benefits: Better engagement, lower support costs and higher sales

At a qualitative level, Verint Community plays a key role in building member engagement, increasing the opportunity for collaboration and networking among team members. The Cranfield Institute of Management has referred to the “CIPD Community as a “golden benchmark” of online”

“We’re very pleased with the Verint Community solution. It makes connections between people who, before now, would not have crossed paths without significant effort.”
Steve Bridger Community Manager at the CIPD

These are just some of the many examples of anecdotal feedback captured by Bridger and his team:

Following the re-launch
“This forum is such a great place for me to seek opinions from fellow professionals, and a safe place, too. There are other HR groups out there in the virtual world but this one stands apart for the quality of the debate.”
For students
“I learn something new every day. It’s one of the websites I make a point of visiting every day!”
For learning
“The discussion forum is a lifeline for me as our MD looks to me to make HR-related decisions.”
Sense of community
“I have been a member of many forums and communities, and this is light years ahead in terms of community feel than 99% of the rest.”

The success of the CIPD Community can also be quantified, as follows:

• Over 200,000 unique visitors (members and non-members) visited the hosted CIPD Community at least once in 2017.

• The Community continues to go from strength to strength. In 2015, the site averaged 6,000 unique visitors every month. Following a Verint Community upgrade, it now averages a steady 35,000 visitors every month.

• 190,000 page views a month.

• Four in every five visitors are based in the UK and members spend on average 11 minutes reading discussion threads on each visit.

• The blogs were viewed over one million times in 2017.

• Over one third of visits are now made using a mobile device – up from one in 20 visits in 2015.