A company intranet is a powerful tool that workplaces rely on to operate everyday. Having strong and consistent company intranet ideas is key to an engaged workforce and helps to cultivate success.
Implementing a modern day intranet with news feeds and social hubs is a great step in the right direction, but a conveyor belt of content is crucial to keep employees engaged, productive and connected.
In this blog we will help you populate your intranet with content ideas to help drive employee engagement. You will learn:
- What Makes a Good Intranet?
- Intranet Content Types: The Essentials
- 17 Content Intranet Ideas Guaranteed to Boost Engagement
What Makes a Good Intranet?
What a ‘good’ intranet includes or looks like, varies from business to business. Before deciding on what works for your business, you must first define why your company needs an intranet and what exactly it needs from it.
However, a good intranet will always engage your employees and give them the tools they need to succeed in their role. A good intranet will ensure ease of access to documents, improve communication, processes and productivity as well as helping to create a company culture.
Want to know what features your intranet needs to be successful?
Recommended Reading 📖 : 31 Intranet Features Your Company Needs- A 2021 Checklist
Intranet Content Types: The Essentials
Official- Policies, Documents & Forms
A key aspect of modern day intranet software is a centralised document platform. It is reported that more than 70% of today’s businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a loss of paper-based records, which intensifies the need for cloud storage.
Disparate documents not only carry a great risk, but also waste a lot of time. The 2020 Igloo State of the Digital Workplace found that 51% of employees avoid sharing documents because it takes too long to do so. Policies and official documents may be less glamorous than other areas of content on your intranet, but they are integral to your business nonetheless.
Branded & Digital Assets
Branded and digital assets are incredibly important internally but also in supporting external communication. Consistent branding doesn’t just align employees with the organisation but also helps to standardise communication from staff to customers or prospects.
A brand centre on your intranet can be part of your centralised knowledge platform, with presentation templates, branded documents or guidelines on external interactions. Logos and other branded material can also be part of this. Digital brand assets eliminate the headache of brand continuity.
Social Content
It is important to also focus on the social element of your intranet. Whilst it may not be directly work related, it is vital to keeping employees engaged and keeping hold of your best talent. According to Forbes, 87% of employees are less likely to leave if they’re engaged at work.
Facilitating blogs, community hubs and chat functions can bring about further engagement on your intranet and cultivate a more collaborative team.
Corporate or ‘top-down’ content
Part of a social media type news feed function is that company news and updates can be shared in a way far more engaging than company email. This can be through press releases, company blogs, annual reports and much more.
Employees want to hear the latest news on the organisation, not least because it may impact their position, but also because it makes them feel more part of it. What corporate content also does is promote a culture of transparency in the wider business.
Recognition or Praising content
Harvard Business Review found that 40% of people would put more energy into their work if they were recognised more often. Praising or recognising employees achievements is something so effective, but so easily done on a company intranet.
Everyone likes having their hard work recognised and the rewards of a more engaged workforce makes the simplest of tasks like congratulating an employee, worth its weight in gold and then some.
Recommended Reading 📖 16 Benefits of Intranet You Can’t Ignore in 2021
17 Intranet Ideas to Boost Engagement
Welcome New Employees
Onboarding employees is challenging for both businesses and new starters alike, particularly remotely. Employee announcements give the whole workforce a sneak peek of a new hires’ personality and particular interests.
Every employee deserves a warm welcome when they join a company, so this gives others the opportunity to say hello and drop them a message. Giving a new employee the opportunity to introduce themselves makes the onboarding experience a pleasant one. With featured employee profiles on your company intranet, each member of your workforce is able to do so.
Create News and Announcements
Feeling part of the organisation is vital to an individual feeling connected to their employer. Oak’s news and social feeds allow employees to see relevant content, creating a much more engaging and immersive experience. Whether it’s tailored to an employee’s job, location or preferences, Oak’s intuitive content targeting provides an immersive and engaging experience.
With social intranet software, employees have a space to create bonds and relationships with other colleagues. This drives productivity, collaboration and connectivity. Oak’s trending content feature promotes content to employees that is proving popular elsewhere in the business.
Create a Sense of Community
57% of employees say having friends at work makes them happier in the role and more productive. Community hubs integrated into your intranet can give your employees a sense of belonging and help build employee relationships.
Hubs allow employees to come together and collaborate in a shared space. Whether you need to share content company-wide, show the latest user interface designs with a select group, or simply want a place to talk about the next social event.
Personalise Intranet Content
Monotonous and irregular content posted on your news feed is not going to keep your employees engaged . Delivering relevant and personalised content will provide an incentive for employees to visit their company intranet more often and contribute to a higher adoption rate.
This can be done with trends and search filters built into Oak’s social hub. They allow relevant intranet content to individuals both targeted and organically.
Recommended Reading 📖 Keeping Your Employee Intranet Relevant and Engaging
Go Mobile
Accessibility is essential when it comes to engagement on your intranet. Given the remote nature of the modern workforce and deskless or travelling employees, a mobile app is key to establishing engagement with your entire workforce.
The messaging and newsfeeds on the Oak mobile app ensures that employees are not missing out on critical information while they aren’t at their desk. The ease of design and navigation means your workers will never be too far away from the physical office.
Brand your Company Intranet
When it comes to making your intranet more personal to you and your employees, creating a new name is a crucial starting point. A great, often overlooked content idea is to create a unique name that embodies your company culture.
Oak’s branding functionality allows you to brand your intranet, driving consistency in brand awareness and recognition. Five Guys used this to create their Chatty Patty news feed section of their Oak solution to establish a fun company image on their intranet.
Give your Homepage a Design
Imagine what you want your company homepage to look like, then make these intranet ideas a reality. The intranet homepage is the first page that employees see so you want to make it look great to engage your users.
With Oak’s drag and drop page building features, you can customise your homepage to fit with your brand seamlessly. You can also control the layout of your page so important content and features are exactly where you want them to be.
Highlight Employee Achievements
How valued an employee feels in their role is absolutely key to how engaged they are. 40% of workers say they would put more energy into their role if they were recognised more. Oak’s solution makes carrying out employee recognition an incredibly easy task.
A simple thank you message or a post onto the news feed recognising an employee’s achievements, is all it takes to make your workers feel appreciated.
Vacancy Posting
Utilising your intranet news feed, you can post job openings which will help boost engagement and potentially save money. Employees may be alerted to internal vacancies that may be suited to them but also may feel more valued if their recommendations for these positions are noted. This can also help reduce the cost of the recruitment process.
Q&A’s
Inviting your employees to ask questions is a great way of developing two-way communication between all participants in the business. Q&A boards where communication is viewable by all, also helps to create a culture of transparency.
Oak’s Q&A function allows users to ask any question on any work matter including using the company intranet itself.
Feedback and Surveys
A great way of both creating and measuring engagement is through employee surveys. Particularly anonymised surveys help to create an honest perspective of how workers are feeling.
What’s great about Oak’s Pulse Surveys is that you can analyse the data collected from the feedback surveys. This means you can adjust your engagement strategy as an ongoing thing.
Employee Profiles
An employee directory on your intranet will help to humanise the participants of your organisation and put a face to a name. This is particularly true when you have a remote workforce or larger companies whose leadership may not be as visible.
As well as giving employees access to everyone in the business, it is also a chance for people to showcase their personalities by customising profiles. Employees are far more likely to want to interact with colleagues and managers when they’re talking to an actual human.
Multimedia Content
A modern day intranet opens up possibilities for sharing content, facilitating the use of multimedia like videos, images and podcasts. Company news and updates are great, but they can be brought to life and become more engaging. Furthermore, podcasts or video series can form standalone content for your intranet.
Employees may be asked to contribute, perhaps a video segment following a member of staff in each department.
Encourage User Created Content
Employees are centric to your intranet so empowering them by encouraging user created content can have value in engagement but also add value to the intranet itself.
What this also does is build a stronger community and connect your workforce, whilst at the same time empowering them by showcasing their content at the forefront of internal communications.
Tag Your Content
Creating content relevant to your users is great, but tagging your intranet content makes it simpler and easier for them to find it. Add tags to all of your content, by department and subject to further the simplicity of navigation of your intranet.
Departmental or subject tags make navigating blogs, work documents, compliance or any nature of intranet content, a painless process.
Events Calendar
Employee participation has been harder to initiate with remote working. Work and social occasions have been neglected by many organisations in this age, but an events calendar on your intranet can reestablish the social aspect of work.
Promote virtual workplace activities via your intranet and allow your staff to add to it. Employees may feel isolated by the lack of socialising in work, so this is an important engagement tool.
Your Organisation Mission
Your mission is what connects and inspires workers, however, studies show that only half of employees feel connected to their company’s mission. Your intranet provides opportunities to reinforce your company values through content.
Pinning your business’s message to the intranet homepage will ensure it is the first thing your users see when logging on and act as a constant reminder of what they are working for.
FAQ
What should an intranet include?
An intranet should include content and tools that are essential for your employees to carry out their role. It should also contain all relevant company information in accessible locations.
How do you build a good intranet?
To build a good intranet you must:
- Define the purpose of your intranet and define clear goals
- Evaluate and identify which tools will help to achieve your objectives
- Identify the right solution for your intranet and implement it
- Ensure content on your intranet aligns with initial goals
- Continuously improve through employee feedback
