Count On Coffey

By Sherilee Coffey, VP of Client Experience

Your employees shouldn’t have to dig through emails, shared drives and outdated intranet pages to find what they need. But in many hospitals and health systems, that’s exactly what’s happening—and the people feeling it most aren’t just the employees trying to find a cafeteria menu or a policy update. They’re the marketing and communications teams quietly managing the chaos behind the scenes.

If internal communication has landed on your plate alongside everything else, you’re not alone. Increasingly, hospital marketing directors and vice presidents of communication are being asked to own the employee experience from a content perspective—even when the tools available to support that work are fragmented, outdated or just plain hard to use.

An employee portal can change that. And if you’re already working with a healthcare web partner you trust, building one may be more straightforward than you think.

A better solution

Many hospitals have a version of an intranet—but that isn’t the same as having one that actually works. Here are some signs it may be time for a better approach:

• Employees complain they can’t find basic information.
• HR, marketing and operations each maintain their own content in different places.
• Your current intranet is difficult to update, so it rarely gets updated.
• Important announcements get buried in email.
• No one is sure who owns the intranet or who’s responsible for keeping it current.
• Staff are using workarounds (group texts, paper flyers, word of mouth) to fill the gaps.

If any of these sound familiar, the problem likely isn’t effort. It’s infrastructure.

What a well-built portal can do

At its core, an employee portal is a centralized hub: one place where your workforce can find what they need without having to ask someone or search three different systems.

For hospitals and health systems, that might include:

• Event calendars and internal announcements.
• Policy documents and training materials.
• Staff directories.
• Cafeteria menus.
• Leadership updates and organization news.
• Staff recognition and awards.
• Links to the external platforms and tools employees already use.

When that content lives in one organized, easy-to-navigate space, something shifts. Employees spend less time looking and more time doing. Internal communications feel less like noise and more like connection. And the marketing or communications team managing the portal has a tool that’s actually built to support their work, not fight against it.

Internal tools deserve a smooth UX

One of the most common mistakes organizations make with employee portals is treating them like a back-office project: functional, maybe, but not worth investing in from a design or user experience (UX) perspective.

That’s a missed opportunity. Your employees interact with your internal tools every day. When those tools are confusing or outdated, that sends a message—and not a good one.

A well-designed portal should feel as intuitive and polished as your public-facing website. That means clear navigation, a logical content structure, and a visual identity that either aligns with your brand or gives employees their own distinct space. A search function that actually works and a layout that makes sense on day one, without a training session, are also must-haves.

An extension of your web presence

If Coffey already builds and supports your public website, adding an employee portal is a natural next step, not a separate project with a separate learning curve. We understand your brand, your content structure and the operational realities of healthcare organizations. We bring that same foundation to your internal communications.

If you’re interested in working with Coffey, an employee portal can be the starting point for a broader web relationship, one where your private and public presence are built on the same trusted platform and supported by the same team.

The maintenance problem, and why it matters

A portal no one updates is a portal no one trusts. One of the most consistent concerns we hear from marketing and communications leaders is this: We built something once, and then it became someone’s second job to keep it current. Now it’s a mess.

The right content management system (CMS) makes all the difference here. Coffey’s employee portals are built on a CMS designed specifically for healthcare organizations—the same platform many of our clients already use to manage their public-facing websites. That means the editing experience is familiar, intuitive and fast, without requiring technical expertise to make updates.

Built-in modules extend what the portal can do without adding complexity. One Coffey client uses a form-building feature in their portal to let employees submit work requests and contact internal departments directly, replacing a process that had previously relied on email chains and manual follow-up. Other organizations use an integrated calendar to keep staff informed about internal events without managing a separate system.

Categories: Digital