Intranet useful for all employees: evaluation criteria

It’s more than just internal communication.

The potential of personalized, mobile, and intelligent intranets has driven the innovation of various tools over the past decade. However, many employees still find their intranets falling short of these ideals, unable to keep up with technological advancements. Below, we’ll investigate the critical features an intranet should possess to truly create a digital workspace that proves advantageous for every staff member.

Optimizing user experiences

Currently, the SharePoint platform stands as the most popular intranet solution, undoubtedly offering numerous functions and capabilities beneficial for any organization. Yet, it’s clear not all employees can or wish to utilize these features. Not everyone receives what they need. Organizations looking to engage all employees in the communication process should ensure the intranet’s usability across all roles and teams. A functional intranet, perhaps merely an extension of the Microsoft 365 environment, can dissolve these mentioned issues and barriers, allowing vital content to reach employees faster, easier, and more precisely.

While another article addresses the technological side of expanding the intranet, let’s focus on employee expectations. What should be considered for creating an intranet that fits an organization’s unique nature and meets employees’ diverse needs?

1. Ease of navigation

The ease of navigation is critical for employee satisfaction with the intranet. According to a Harris Poll study, employees spend an average of at least 2 hours daily searching for documents, information, or people necessary for their work.

This inefficiency is often attributed to SharePoint, seen by many as a complex and challenging platform to navigate, especially for those not familiar with Microsoft tools. A complicated user interface can make finding essential information difficult, discouraging active use. Fortunately, this can be easily improved.

For example, customized dashboards, personalized content recommendations, and streamlined search functionalities can greatly improve the user experience. Moreover, an integration of SharePoint with other productivity tools and workflows will create a cohesive digital ecosystem and eliminate information silos. When transfused with user-centric design, this solution can become a powerful driver of digital transformation.

A user-friendly intranet, with its intuitive interface and clear structure, enables quick access to needed information, resources, and tools, acting as a single access point even in multi-cloud environments and minimizing the time spent searching. Just by accessing the intranet, an employee can get what’s important to his or her job on the screen right away.

2. Information accessibility

Numerous analyses confirm that engaging and easily accessible information significantly increases employee productivity. For example, according to CSO Insights, 83% of respondents say they have trouble accessing the data they need to do their jobs.

An effective intranet should address this by guaranteeing all company information is readily available from the homepage, making it easy for users to find what they need without any inconveniences. Meeting these expectations translates into a long list of benefits, including increased productivity, greater profits, improved job stability, higher employee engagement, and inspiring teamwork.

Even in an intranet integrated with various applications and systems across multiple cloud platforms, all company content can be aggregated on a landing page. This provides the opportunity to bring together information from disparate multicloud sources into one unified view. In a complex puzzle of personalized experiences, everyone will find content tailored to their unique roles, responsibilities, and interests on this aggregated landing page that pulls data from multiple clouds.

3. Interactive contact and remote collaboration

A modern intranet is where employees not only seek information but also create it. This means they can easily communicate, exchange information, plan, collaborate on projects, and share resources. Tools such as chats, discussion forums, and spaces for organizing meetings and co-creating documents strengthen the organization from within.

For an increasing number of employees, interactive contact and remote collaboration from anywhere and on any device have become standard. According to Zapier, 16% of Gen Z and millennial employees have left jobs because they felt the technology provided by their employer was inadequate.

The best intranet platforms should be something like a smartphone, which we intuitively reach for whenever we want to learn something or facilitate a task. This affects not only internal communication but also productivity, quality of customer service, employee engagement, morale, and the acquisition of new talent. This is confirmed, among other things, by a McKinsey report, which shows that better communication and collaboration through social technologies can increase the productivity of interacting employees by 20-25%. 

4. Personalization

A modern intranet supports users in performing tasks and staying connected. However, with targeting functions and Artificial Intelligence capabilities, it can tailor the experience for each user, reducing information overload and displaying only what’s relevant for the individual. This personalized communication ensures that messages and updates are aligned with the unique roles, responsibilities, and interests of each employee, making the intranet a tool for individual dialogue rather than a top-down communication channel.

The best intranet solutions guarantee that users benefit from a personalized interface, settings, widgets, views and individually configured access to various resources. On a general level, the intranet is customized to match the visual identity of a particular organization: branding, colors, fonts, icons. Even employees working remotely can then feel that they are part of a unique organization.

Notably, a personalized intranet is a much more effective internal communication tool than email. Studies show that employees are overwhelmed by the daily management of their email correspondence, which means that very often important information does not reach them at all.

5. Mobility

Following the pandemic-induced shift, a McKinsey’s “The State of Organizations” report shows that 90% of organizations have adopted various hybrid work models. Most employees in hybrid models wish to maintain them, highlighting the importance of a “digital workspace” that accommodates task execution, both formal and informal communication, knowledge bases, and culture building.

Employees expect the intranet to provide easy access to information and tools on mobile devices. Their satisfaction depends on the interface’s responsiveness, the functionalities available remotely, and the overall experience of the intranet across different devices. For organizations, the priority lies in ensuring that the connection of company resources with employees, who may be anywhere at any time, is secure.

6. Strategic sense

IBM Watson Media’s research revealed that over two-thirds of employees don’t fully understand their company’s strategy, and Gallup found an even larger number lacking corporate information and messages. Employees aren’t asking for more information just for the sake of it, they want content that aids in understanding strategic company goals and the reasoning behind decisions. The intranet plays a crucial role in promoting this awareness.

The vast majority of employees desire better technology that aids in communication, daily work, implementation, and training. However, even the most advanced solutions are insufficient without user training, support, and knowledge of the intranet’s possibilities. Workvivo’s research supports this, showing that 57% of employees see no purpose in their company’s intranet.

Awareness of the direction in which the organization is heading encourages employees to share thoughts and experiences that can help achieve set goals. This can’t be achieved without a well-configured, integrated, and implemented intranet.

7. Feedback and analytics

Most employees would like to share their feedback and ideas for improvements within the company. An organization with two-way communication becomes stronger, more informed, and better prepared for collective development.

Built-in access to analytical tools within the intranet allows management to monitor resource use and assess communication and collaboration effectiveness. Surveys can be added to news items to gauge reception, gather comments, or field additional questions.

Integrating the intranet with other business systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) facilitates easy data and resource sharing, streamlining internal information management and processes. This also contributes to a more cohesive presentation of information and resource consolidation.

Conclusion

As technology, communication, and work methods evolve, so too should the intranet. It needs to change along with the company and its employees and requires continuous improvement, enhanced functionality, and integration with other digital solutions to support business activities and improve work efficiency. Employees thrive and companies excel when they have the advantage of a well-developed intranet solution.

If you want to learn what we can do to turn the intranet into a tool supporting your company’s growth, contact Avenga.