In our latest
EX Space webinar, we were joined by Alex Graves — Chief Visionary Officer at Silicon Reef and contributor to the upcoming
People-First Internal Communication book — to explore a question many EX, IC, HR and digital workplace teams are wrestling with right now:
How do you design a digital experience that actually works for your people?Not just another site, another tool, another “channel”… but a genuinely connected ecosystem that feels intuitive, human, and future-ready.
Alex took us behind the scenes of the University of Leeds’ multi-year transformation — a shift from a fragmented, hard-to-navigate digital landscape into something coherent, useful, and genuinely people-centred. And while the intranet was the output, the real story was how they got there.
Most organisations send a survey and call it “discovery.” Leeds went further — and it mattered.
Across three months, Silicon Reef brought people together through surveys, focus groups, interviews and, critically, their Envision session — a structured, human-led workshop where staff could talk about their frustrations, aspirations, and needs in a way that data alone simply can’t capture.
This wasn’t about gathering comments.It was about building empathy, spotting patterns, and shaping a shared North Star that everyone could get behind.
The starting point at Leeds is painfully familiar to many EX practitioners:
- 650+ separate web spaces
- Multiple legacy systems
- Hundreds of Teams and SharePoint sites spun up with no governance
- Everyone finding information in completely different ways
A digital workplace cannot succeed when it feels like a maze.
The Leeds team didn’t fix this by launching “more tools” — they fixed it by aligning, simplifying, and designing around real human needs.
One of the webinar’s strongest insights?
People don’t experience your digital environment in channels — they experience it as one ecosystem.
Whether it’s SharePoint, Teams, Viva Engage or third-party tools, consistency matters. Good foundations matter. Governance matters.
You can only introduce exciting things like Copilot, voice search, AI-summarised content, or agent-based navigation oncethe basics are in place.
Alex shared some of the latest developments coming out of Microsoft Ignite — including:
- AI-generated audio summaries of intranet news
- Tools that turn text into video narratives
- Voice-activated search across the digital workplace
- New capabilities that will bring “consumer-grade” behaviours into work
The digital workplace is accelerating fast — but many teams and organisations aren’t yet ready to make the most of what already exists.
This is where EX and IC professionals have a unique opportunity:
We can lead — but only if we build the capability and confidence to do so.
