It’s fair to say that intranets are once again becoming an integral part of every modern workspace. In recent years, they have dramatically evolved from static repositories of information into dynamic and interactive platforms that teams are able to learn from and communicate through. But the rates of intranet engagement vary hugely across companies and industries, and one of the key factors is implementation. Simply put, the more time you spend ensuring that your intranet truly serves the needs of its users - your employees - the more you’ll benefit from it as a company. Here are our top tips for implementation success.
- Build a successful information architecture
Once you’ve selected your intranet platform, it’s important to build effective information architecture and gain stakeholder buy-in from across the business. The architecture should include a taxonomy, which would enable all users to quickly find the pages that they’re looking for. It should also include details on intranet sections and their format - you may, for example, choose to have the same layout for all team pages, or give individual teams the flexibility to manage their own areas as they wish.
- Establish effective governance
Agree who will be responsible for updating each section of the intranet and how often these updates should take place. It’s also important to agree which employees should have access to various parts of the intranet. For example, there will be some HR or management team areas which may have sensitive information that some members of staff should not be able to access.
- Put content guidelines in place
Once you’ve established your broader intranet strategy, you might think about putting content guidelines in place. These are rules that each person posting on the intranet needs to abide by. Your intranet content guidelines might include:
- Templates for specific pages - These would give each author a good idea of the structure and length of particular announcements, summaries or other content pieces.
- Tone of voice guidelines - As you may have many different authors writing and curating content for your intranet, it’s important to give them some guidance about the tone of voice. Most intranets use a friendly and informative tone, avoiding jargon which may not be understood by certain teams.
- Guidelines on the use of different content formats - If you choose to experiment with videos, animations, infographics or other content formats, be sure to include guidance on these too - including the tools to use.
- Guidelines on staff interaction with content - If you’re keen to develop a culture of transparency and open communication, you might choose to give your staff the option to openly comment on announcements. If you do, it’s also important to have guidelines on how they can comment appropriately, without causing offense.
- Customize the structure and interface to suit your needs
The user interface of your intranet plays a huge part in driving engagement, so encourage the teams across your business to put it to use. Each individual team should have the ability to choose layouts, colors, content formats and the frequency of updates. Encourage staff members to share what formats and functionalities have worked for their team.
- Support multiple devices
In our modern working world, employees tend to access their work documents and communication tools across multiple platforms, including tablets, laptops and smartphones. As you would with your company website, make sure that your intranet is optimized across all devices. There’s nothing worse than finding out that entire sections are illegible on mobile.
- Integrate with other commonly-used communication tools
If you use specific instant messenger and video conferencing tools at your business, make sure that your intranet can easily integrate with these. That way your employees’ digital workspace will be entirely synced up, and they won’t have to spend time navigating across different platforms, searching for what they need.
- Encourage feedback and act on it!
Finally - and perhaps most importantly - feedback is king when it comes to effective intranet implementation. Conduct regular surveys of employee satisfaction with your intranet. Ask open questions about what they feel could and should be improved and act on this feedback. The more your employees see that their needs are being listened to, the more satisfied they’ll be at work - which in turn leads to better productivity and staff retention.
Ready to try an intranet that will revolutionize the way you communicate?
Engagy enables you to manage your company content with ease, to trial different formats, including video and animation, and to analyze staff engagement levels. It also allows you to create tailored pages for each team with a distinct interface, which have a highly positive impact on culture.
Take a look today, and start transforming the way you communicate!