Digital White Papers

CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL CLIENT-FACING KNOWLEDGE WEBSITE modern, innovative presentation of the Alliance's knowledge and expertise. GLOBAL HR LAW GUIDE The working party also was asked to make recommendations on a proposed new Ius Laboris knowledge product. For some time, the IPGs had been discussing the idea of creating a comprehensive reference guide to employment law in all the countries covered by the Alliance, with a broader scope than our existing, single-topic international HR law guides. If this were to provide detailed and encyclopedic analysis, it would be a huge, unwieldy and time-consuming undertaking. The working party decided a more achievable and better option would be to develop an online product that offered information and guidance on national employment law systems in a Q-and-A format at a fairly high, strategic level. Feedback from the main target audience of HR practitioners and in-house counsel for companies with international operations consistently suggested this type of analysis was required: a practical overview of how employment and pensions law operates in all the different jurisdictions. Like our existing international guides, the contributions to the Global Guide from all jurisdictions would have to be written exclusively in English (the official language of the Alliance). However, we would need to engage technical legal editors to ensure consistency of approach, terminology and style, which obviously would add significantly to the time and cost of the project. OUR CONCLUSIONS The working party concluded the optimum solution to the issues identified would be to create a dedicated client-facing knowledge website that was linked to the Alliance's corporate website but with its own separate identity and domain name. This would provide an integrated, searchable platform for the full range of existing Ius Laboris knowledge publications and products and, in particular, a permanent "home" for our email communications such as newsflashes and global alerts. At the Alliance's annual congress in May 2011, the working party formally presented its proposal to the IPGs. The knowledge managers had prepared a mock-up of what was envisaged: a state-of-the-art website hosting the existing international HR law guides, the planned new Global Guide and other types of fresh online content (e.g., podcasts and webinars). This attractive visual demonstration of the proposal was probably a factor in generating broad support among the IPGs and consensus to move the project forward. But, most important, it was developed from the careful deliberations of a small, functional group of Alliance professionals over several months, creating a coherent and cogent focus around knowledge strategy that previous IPG discussions had lacked. The next step was for the IPGs to gain approval from the Alliance's executive committee and board for the proposal and a commensurate budget for implementing it — a process not to be underestimated in a multinational organization like Ius Laboris. DESIGNING THE SITE At the same time, a decision had been made to revamp comprehensively the Alliance's corporate website. In view of this, it seemed a natural step to commission a digital marketing agency to help design and construct both that site and our proposed new knowledge base (KB). Having spoken to various potential partners, we decided to engage Pancentric Digital, a London-based agency. A key step in Pancentric's process was the prototyping of the KB on an interactive wireframe — a rapid way of getting a working model of the site in front of the project team. It meant we could "feel" how the site was going to work before it was built and ensure it would satisfy the demands of our target audience.

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