Launching a new Company Intranet without alienating your members.

How is it that, you post notices on the notice board for days as to the lobby lift of your premises may go under maintenance from so and so date? And no one notices or looks over it even after reading it. Until when the lobby area gets shut for maintenance, catching many by surprise. This is the exact feeling when one launches a new intranet for the company members.

So the question that arises is What’s happening? Why aren’t people reading important information?

Companies spend a large amount of time and money to introduce new digital tools to boost employee engagement and collaboration and keep everyone up-to-date. The tools are all designed with modern app tech but still lack adoption.

After deploying multiple intranet software to various organizations, we have realized that an intranet’s best day is often its first day, the launch day. When a company intranet is launched there is a buzz in the office about the same, and people check a few main pages and then just log off. From the first day to the second, and third, their interest in the new intranet fizzles out. Employees are busy with their daily tasks and then the new intranet turns out to be just an unimportant add-on task that stays in the last row of their checklist.

What should be done to sustain employee interest in company intranets?

With new features introduced every day with a new intranet software online, companies get carried away with new features and rarely account for how users are currently interacting with information: Which feature is highly used or what would lessen their usage of emails?

Here are some examples:

1) Daily, Weekly Announcements

Introducing the company intranet with an online announcement feature whereby intranet administrators can share your company news, employee-generated posts, break room posts, and an option to sign up for weekly news feeds with links to the actual content. Employees click on fresh content when they receive an alert rather than by logging in and checking for updates manually.

2) Employee Recognition

Employee recognition and shout-outs about employee achievements boost engagement within the organization. Initially, employees used to get paper cards from their boss acknowledging them for a job well done. Introducing features like employee recognition and rewards in the company intranet whereby employees or managers and leaders can share peer-to-peer recognitions on the intranet with badges like the best employee, the best team, etc. These recognitions are displayed on company leaderboards as well as employee profiles.

3) Manuals, Policies, and Procedures

I have seen offices having a notice board pinned with employee manuals, policies, and procedures. Providing a separate section for company manuals, and policies on the intranet dashboard will help let employees know where the content would be when they actually want to read it. This will provide a much smoother transition to the company process.

4) Daily, Weekly Announcements

Introducing the company intranet with an online announcement feature whereby intranet administrators can share your company news, employee-generated posts, breakroom posts, and an option to sign up for weekly news feeds with links to the actual content. Employees click on fresh content when they receive an alert rather than by logging in and checking for updates manually.

5) Forms and Workflows

Sending or receiving PDF forms to be filled in and emailed back happens very often. Company intranet should have e-forms / web forms online where people can reach with just one click and fill in necessary inputs and submit there.

6) Introducing AI to Employee Questions with Automated answers

This intranet’s latest feature is a boon to companies whereby they can automate common helpdesk questions. With company data, you can get a list of commonly asked questions and can use their automated responses for expense form requests, vacation forms, and other manually requested forms. If your automated response includes a link to that form on an intranet, your employees can get into the habit of going there first, while still being able to request it via email.

Introducing these features will definitely sustain employee interest in your company intranet and thus boost internal communication and engagement.