The Best Intranets Today Are Swiss Army Knives
The intranet is not dead. Rather, it’s doing more than it’s ever done. Modern intranets now serve as everything from a communications platform, engagement tool, knowledge repository to much more.
According to the 2022 State of the Digital Workplace survey, a staggering 92% of respondents ranked employee intranets or portals as an important digital workplace technology. With new platforms and technology enabling creative uses of employee intranets, how can companies avoid distractions and make sure they use these platforms to truly elevate employee experience (EX)?
Intranets Gain a New Kind of Importance
Chris Radcliffe, digital workplace advisor at Habanero Consulting Group, said intranets are alive and well.
“Every two or three years, there's a wave of questions asking if the intranet is dead,” he said. “But from what we’ve seen, intranets are actually just as important, if not more important today than they’re ever been with so many employees working remotely or hybrid.”
Indeed, the pandemic and related uptick in remote work made it critical for companies to democratize access to information, which ostensibly raised the profile of intranets. Yet concurrently, new communication and collaboration tools have also taken over some functions of an intranet.
Emily Kirchner, senior manager, communications at Whirlpool has worked in the field for nearly 10 years. She agreed that organizations are now taking a more omnichannel approach to internal communications.
“In the past, the intranet was one website, accessible only by computer with limited content and a heavier focus as a repository of resources more so than company news” Kirchner said. "Corporate communications is now more likely to reach people through multiple avenues — intranet or newsreader by way of website, mobile app, digital signage and push email.”
However, she noted that while comms leaders may have to toggle between different systems, integrating them for users can help them focus more on the message rather than the tool that brought it to them.
Related Article: Your Intranet Is the Core of Employee Experience. Build it Right
Many Roles, Many Considerations
Cristian Salanti, digital employee experience architect at Zenify.net, has been developing intranets for over 20 years and believes there are two general perspectives towards intranets. In one case, the intranet serves as a connector between an employee with a request or task with the correct individual to complete it.
“There might be several experts on the topic but there’s someone who actually owns that responsibility,” Salanti said. “You have to consider how well connected these people are. At a slightly larger organization, they might not know each other.”
Alternatively, Salanti believes that an intranet can also serve as a support system for each and every task within a company. In this intranet design, important resources are structured in a “Why, How and What” model that serves to motivate employees, teach them processes and support task management.
However, Radcliffe noted that intranets now also play a role as drivers of engagement with more employees working remotely.
“Employees are not experiencing the culture in the same way anymore,” he said. “The whole social dynamic, whether it's grabbing a quick coffee or lunch or something more structured that connects you to the culture is gone for many, or at the very least quite different. Companies are starting to take a much closer look at how an intranet can help connect employees, create conversations, experience the culture and engage with the underlying purpose."
Kirchner said that communicators ultimately need to separate business-critical information from that which is “nice-to-know” and determine what goes into an intranet or other channels accordingly.
“There’s a lot of potential for noise in internal communications and our job is to cut through that noise,” she said.
Related Article: Employee Communications Management Platforms May Be Coming, But They're Not What We Need
Learning Opportunities
How Much of a Voice Should Employees Get in Their Intranet?
According to Radcliffe, making guesses about what employees want instead of asking them can lead to all kinds of usability and design issues, and this results in an intranet that doesn’t serve a purpose.
“A lot of companies make assumptions about what employees want or need from an intranet. Often we see a lack of investment in simple activities like end-user research, because there's a sense that we should know what people want, or maybe there's an underlying nervousness about a conversation being a distraction,” Radcliffe said. “But the truth is, people want to contribute and make their digital workplace better.”
Radcliffe said that while employees might not have an idea of everything an intranet is capable of, they know their pain points, and these can shape the direction of an intranet.
However, Salanti noted that employee viewpoints can be highly subjective and change over time. Instead of focusing on employee “wants,” companies should work with select leaders to find out how to connect employee needs with the right people and resources.
According to Kirchner, there needs to be a balance between customization at the hands of employees and curation by leaders. At Whirlpool, the company’s current reader allows users to choose different channels to create a custom news feed. However, many don’t understand the function well enough to take advantage of it.
“I’d like to see us move more toward owning our regional and functional audiences and creating that experience for them,” Kirchner said. “Having the ability to customize is nice, but the baseline experience should be somewhat curated, in my opinion.”
Related Article: Your Intranet Should Be a Little Messy
What the Best Intranets Do
Ultimately, while there’s nothing wrong with fostering engagement via intranets, it doesn’t have to be a critical priority, said Salanti.
"The number one task of an intranet is to help people to do their work," he said. "You can’t really be engaged if you’re supplying your customers with the wrong information, or you don’t know how to do your job."
Radcliffe said the best intranets balance providing value to employees through communications, engagement and task process automation.
"The best intranets blend many different types of use cases together in a way that's usable, intuitive and informative. When there is a mix of value, people seem to enjoy that the most," Radcliffe said.
About the Author
Nidhi Madhavan is a research editor at Simpler Media Group, where she creates data-driven content and research for SMG and their clients. Nidhi received her B.A. in Journalism from Loyola University Chicago.
Connect with Nidhi Madhavan:
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