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The municipality of Midden-Drenthe was looking for a way to accelerate and simplify the transfer of knowledge to new employees. With a small IT and HR team, a large number of software applications and a regular influx of new employees, creating and maintaining manuals and work instructions was a time-consuming task. Implementing SelfGuide radically simplified this process: creating instructions now only takes minutes instead of hours. The onboarding of new employees is smoother and the municipality has a better overview of all available knowledge.
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Midden-Drenthe is a rural municipality located in the heart of Drenthe with more than 33,000 inhabitants. The municipality is committed to sustainability in many areas, creating an attractive business climate and being able to live comfortably in Midden-Drenthe, where everything in the field of well-being and care is well organized.
The municipality has a wide application landscape. Getting new employees to know all these systems was a huge job.
“What we did first was cut and paste screenshots into a Word document. That took an awful lot of time per manual,” says Bart de Roos, functional manager at the municipality.
He continues: “The problem was not only in the amount of time it took to create a manual, but also in maintaining it. When an application was updated, the entire manual had to be changed manually. The threshold for doing that was high, so documentation was too often left behind.”
In addition, there was a capacity issue. The Municipality of Midden-Drenthe is a relatively small municipality with a limited IT and HR workforce. It was simply not feasible to transfer all knowledge face-to-face. “We don't have enough people to go to all colleagues and explain everything personally. Then you have to use the resources you have in a smarter way,” explains Bart.
During the search for a suitable solution, the municipality came into contact with SelfGuide through the Government 360° grant. The condition was that the software met the municipal security requirements (including GIBIT) and was hosted in the Netherlands.
The municipality started a pilot, where existing manuals were recreated in SelfGuide and updated where necessary. A wider rollout soon followed. Specific content was developed for onboarding new employees and the service desk started using SelfGuide to create and share targeted instructions.
“For example, if you master PowerPoint, you can also control SelfGuide. The system is so accessible that we were able to roll it out almost completely independently,” says Bart.
“For a municipality, privacy and data security are really an absolute precondition. SelfGuide is a Dutch party that meets exactly those requirements.”
Bart de Roos, Sr. Functional Administrator
The impact of SelfGuide was immediately noticeable within the municipality. The most eye-catching is the huge time savings. Where it used to take hours to create a manual, it now only takes a few minutes. Bart explains enthusiastically: “During a session of one and a half hour, we created 20 to 25 instructions with the team. That was previously unthinkable.”
In addition, SelfGuide provides a central knowledge base. All guides are now in one place, including information about who created the content and when it was last updated. As a result, there is not only an overview, but also a grip on the topicality of the documentation.
It also ease of use plays a major role. Previously, creating work instructions was seen as a time-consuming task; now functional administrators almost enjoy creating instructions. The intuitive way of working lowers the threshold for keeping documentation up to date.
The effects are also felt by new colleagues. “New employees experience the onboarding now as much more pleasant. They can go through modules at their own pace and are less dependent on their colleagues to get everything explained,” says Ilse Wolf, Recruitment & Selection employee at the municipality.
The collaboration with SelfGuide is smooth. The tool is so intuitive that hardly any support has been required. However, Midden-Drenthe sees opportunities to make the solution even more powerful, for example by developing an integrated knowledge portal.
For the municipality of Midden-Drenthe, the switch to SelfGuide meant a big leap forward. Creating and maintaining manuals and work instructions now takes a fraction of the time, new employees find their way around the organization faster, and administrators have more fun creating and updating manuals. Even without full integration with other systems such as an intranet or service portal, SelfGuide provides clear value.
Do you also want to transfer and safeguard knowledge smartly and effectively? Learn how SelfGuide helps you do this. Plan today a demo with one of our experts!
