‘Build a powerful intranet, and employees will start using it,’ is a common myth organizations tend to believe while making their investment in intranet software. Despite successful deployment, user adoption and user engagement continue to remain a challenge.
For many organizations, an intranet is a place where content goes to die, a virtual graveyard visited by employees less than once per month. On the other hand, organizations have failed to recognize the full potential of an intranet.
“40% of intranet initiatives fail to deliver a return on investment due to inadequate adoption”– Gartner
So what can organizations do to boost intranet adoption rates?
A robust intranet strategy prioritizes employee engagement, timely updates and ease of access. It should also take into considerations aspects such as – why should employees use the intranet? How will it benefit them? etc.
If employees don’t recognize the purpose it serves, chances of them utilizing it are compromised, thereby affecting adoption rates which takes a toll on the investment.
To build an engaging intranet, there arises a constant need for relevant and up to date content. It’s important to also have a set of clear business objectives to help drive overall intranet adoption rates.
An effective intranet solution not only incorporates elements of communication but also provides a unique mix of collaboration and knowledge management tools which help in maximizing productivity.
According to Nielsen Norman Group’s Latest report on Intranets, “organizations are swiftly transforming their intranets as the central hub for content access, collaboration and communication.”
Intranets are entrenched in today’s organizational culture but exploiting it to the full potential is still a far-sighted goal for many organizations. Let’s look at how to address it using effective intranet content ideas:
9 Intranet Content Ideas To Help Boost Intranet Adoption
1. Personalize Intranet Content
One size fits all model is no longer driving employees to intranets. Not all your employees want to view the same content on their portals.
Delivering valuable and personalized content will create an urge among employees to visit the intranet frequently and there will be a high probability of increasing the adoption rates.
Here are a few ways that organizations can enable personalization of intranet usage:
- Personalized content updates
- User prefered content subscriptions
- Personal bookmarks & tools
- View colleagues’ subscriptions
- Employee status updates
Ultimately if you can create a high-value personalized experience for your users, there is more likelihood of employees feeling engaged while using your intranet.
Read More: The Importance of Intranet Personalization and How Chatbots Can Help
2. Employee And Your Brand
An intranet is a integral part of the digital workplace. Appreciating employees by sharing their success story as a form of content will draw the attention of the entire workforce, thereby influencing usage rates.
Modern intranets come with the inbuilt functionality to highlight employee recognition in a separate noticeable section which is visible to the entire organization. Additionally, adding content that highlights how they achieved it, their best practices and values will foster a culture of innovation.
Shape intranet culture by aligning and inspiring employees around your brand’s proposition. Knot your employee story with the perfect brand mix to create a spike in the internal brand metrics.
For example, if an employee had an innovative idea that saved substantial costs for an organization, that would be news worth sharing across the organization.
3. Internal Job Opportunities
Furthermore, posting internal job opportunities to switch to their preferred areas across the organization using the intranet will make employees feel valued. Organisations will also have the added benefit of the crowdsourcing talent pool from within the company.
Employees who are in search of new avenues in their career will visit this section of the intranet frequently for better opportunities, thereby boosting the adoption rate.
Read More: How to leverage Intranet Analytics to measure Intranet Effectiveness
4. Make Organizational Metrics Visible
Sharing organization information with employees can be a huge boon to the workforce. Educating your employees on the organization’s financial health generates a sense of pride for employees and offers a variety of other benefits, as well.
Projecting the YoY change and forecasting the future on the intranet dashboard enables employees to know about the organization’s productivity and analyze departmental achievements.
Frequently sharing organizations metrics can make employees feel engaged and encourage them to visit the intranet frequently in order to receive more updates.
5. Industry Insights
It is often hard to make an intelligent correction without insights. Provide a channel of self-improvement for your employees by dedicating a space in your intranet, detailing industry insights and the current trends.
Disseminate industry information in this way helps increase overall employee efficiency.
Read More: A Guide For Mastering Intranet Content Management and Strategy
6. Organizational Updates
Gallup reported that 74 percent of employees are disconnected and feel that they’re missing out on company information and news.
If you are able to convey a story about the organization in an interactive and engaging way, it is highly likely that there will be improved collaboration and feelings of cohesion, while you get more employees to your intranet.
This technique is typically used in social media strategy to boost engagement. If you can apply the same idea to your social intranet software, you may be able to increase employee engagement. If your content is exciting, and you communicate it well, your employees are bound to keep visiting the intranet.
7. CEO News
Latest content written by CEO will interest all of your intranet users and improve user engagement.
As important as it is for the CEO to share organization updates, but what can be particularly effective is sharing their view on industry information or visits to other branches of the organization.
You can create weekly news post from your CEO, with the latest news and stories, thereby giving your employees interesting content, that they’d want to keep coming back to read.
8. User-Generated Content
Employees are an extremely influential group of people who can generate content about their experiences and subsequently amplify internal branding. Encourage employees to publish user-generated content and distribute among their colleagues. This gives a much more authentic tone to the content posted and can quickly gain credibility among employees.
Contributing in forums, blogs, etc will synthesize their research into more strategic recommendations. This will increase the employee engagement levels, apart from an added advantage of addressing critical business challenges.
9. Make The Intranet Fun!
Organization development events, mid-week parties, casual Fridays and monthly happy hours – all of these can make your workplace more fun.
Your intranet can help you to do this as well – having a specific section or entertainment zone in the intranet can make your work environment more engaging as well.
Few ways to engage people by adding elements of fun in your workplace is by:
- Sharing employee recognition and rewards.
- Celebrating anniversaries, birthdays and displaying these moments on the portal.
- Share employee feeds and client appreciations.
- Buy & sell exchange: an internal Craigslist for your employees.
- Online Gallery: to share organisation events, employee travel photos and more…
Did you know: By changing the tone of its newsletter to a playful one, Domino’s increased its intranet site visitors from 2500 a week to 25000 in the same period! – PR Daily
Learn More: Why Modern Intranets Are The Gateway for A Modern Workplace
A Dynamic Intranet Is Dynamite!
Many organizations consider the intranet a project with a start and end date. Once they launch and make the essential tools available on the intranet, they consider the project completed and move on. However, this defeats the purpose of the investment made into the intranet.
The intranet can be a powerful tool and an essential workspace for your employees to train, learn and develop. Precautionary or corrective measures, including dynamic content on your intranet, will bring you back to the game.
Keeping your intranet content fresh, relevant and dynamic will improve intranet adoption and keep your employees coming back for more.
Looking for the right content management tool for your organization and drive intranet adoption?
Check out Mesh – a next-generation intelligent intranet solution integrated with Workbench, a content authoring module which helps you manage your intranet content, engage employees with the available resources on an intranet and successfully improve adoption rate.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.
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