So you’ve been tasked with building an intranet site from scratch or overhauling an existing one. If you’ve done this before, you know how daunting it can seem. Intranet sites are often essential to making sure employees and leaders have the information they need throughout the day. A good place to start is to consider your organization’s goals and objectives. A well-designed intranet site build saves employee time while keeping them aligned and engaged.
Next, read “Office collaboration: Share the right information”
Below are some of the benefits that our clients have found and tips and tricks for how to achieve them:
Reduce the time it takes for employees to find critical information
Take a step back and look at all of the resources employees use every day to do their jobs. Many times, accessing the information they need involves multiple channels, platforms, and systems. In larger organizations, this can be a complex process and a major time sink.
Offer a list of quick links on your site
This is a simple way to consolidate access points to many of the resources, apps, and platforms employees need in one convenient place. If many of these systems require unique usernames and passwords, you can save employee time by using a platform that allows a single sign-on (SSO) setup.
Configure user access permissions and user dashboards
To make the most of an intranet site, users need to have access content that’s relevant and necessary to their roles. It’s also important that the right people are only able to access the appropriate levels of information. Curating content can help reduce information overload. Click here for tips on curating information for your intranet site and beyond. Additionally, for a truly tailored approach to content, enable customizable dashboards that individual users can modify in order to prioritize the information and reports they need.
Promote corporate communication to keep employees aligned
Internal communication can cover a broad range of topics—from simply broadcasting big wins to unpacking complex change management initiatives. Build your intranet site as an ideal vehicle for sharing ideas and bringing greater visibility to key messages.
Create a prominent space for company news
Likely, your external web site has a frequently updated landing page devoted to your company’s news and press releases. However, sometimes the value of providing the same experience for an internal audience can be overlooked. So, reserve a similar space on your intranet site for corporate news and press releases. As a result, employees and other stakeholders will gain exposure to the great things happening within your organization.
Emails, posters, town-hall meetings and other forms of communication are great to get the word out about internal campaigns. But they will quickly fade from memory or get lost in the shuffle. Displaying messages that come from leadership, as promoted articles or in a consistent section of the home page, will increase your internal reach and keep information top of mind.
Support employee engagement
An intranet site can be great for connecting employees with information and messages about your organization. They can also be a forum for productive interaction between content, colleagues, and the company at large.
Make employee profiles searchable
Searchable user profiles are especially helpful for new employees to get up-to-speed and learn more about their colleagues’ roles, understand who they can turn to with questions, and encourage cross-department communication.
Plug in your company social media
Nearly everyone is on social media. Including your company. So, make engagement with your company social media posts easy by integrating a social media aggregate that pulls your recent posts from various channels directly into your site. Use these plug-ins for a customizable and inexpensive solution that allows you to control when posts are pulled in to your intranet feed and which content to feature. As an added bonus, higher engagement on these social accounts will make them more visible to the public. This helps to attract more talent and acquire more business.
Add a “Wall-of-Fame”
Many organizations have employee recognition programs to shine the spotlight on those who are setting an example in their roles. Similarly, reserve a space on your intranet site to highlight employee achievements.
In conclusion, a well-designed intranet site can streamline your internal communication efforts and become an invaluable asset to your employees. How many of the aspects highlighted above does your company’s intranet site incorporate?