Employee Intranets — What Makes the Great Ones Great?

Engage Your Workforce with a Modern Employee Intranet Solution

The employee intranet has changed significantly since it was first introduced in the early 1990s. What started as HTML-based static portals have now evolved into intuitive communication tools complete with search engines, user profiles, blogs, event planners, and more. Today, many organizations are taking a second look at employee intranets to bridge gaps between teams, build company culture, centralize information, increase productivity, and improve workflow.

While many modern intranets promise dynamic features and a source of truth for employee communication, no two intranets are the same. In this article, we will clear up what an employee intranet is, why there is a growing need to invest in one, and what makes some intranets superior to others.


An image of an intranet featured on a laptop and mobile device.

What Is an Employee Intranet?


The intranet is a private computer network that shares information services and systems within an organization. It can either be cloud-based or on-premises and accessed by local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

Typically, employers purchase intranet software from a third-party supplier to provide a platform where employees can access company information such as policies, procedures, staff directory, and department info. However, with a recent rise in remote work and cloud computing, employee intranets are being sought more for their collaboration tools, which allow them to function more like a social network than a data repository.


5 Reasons to Invest in an Employee Intranet


In addition to creating a stronger, more engaged company culture, employee intranets offer several distinct qualities that make life easier for both you and your employees

Here are the top five reasons we believe investing in an employee intranet solution will pay for itself in the long run:

An image of an intranet featured on a laptop and mobile device.

Project Management

It is a given that when you invest in an employee intranet, you are investing in a project management platform. Every good intranet software should accomplish the following:

  • Keep updated task lists
  • Track schedules
  • Provide quick file sharing
  • Open lines of communication
  • Offer a steady flow of reporting

While most modern employee intranets offer these capabilities, you should ask yourself the following questions: Are the project management tools intuitive enough so that your employees will prefer them over preexisting applications? If so, will this allow you to remove other third-party project management platforms to save on costs?

Solves Communication Problems

No company can say they are perfect at communication. However, employee intranets can help open lines of communication that were previously blocked, disconnected, or did not exist with legacy applications.

With an effective employee intranet solution, everyone is more aware of what is taking place, updates become enterprise-wide notifications, and departments such as marketing and sales can stay better connected. In other words, employee intranets can help bridge the gap between departments by removing the barriers that would previously rely on department heads to relay information to the correct channels.

Creates a Stronger Company Culture

As previously mentioned, a good employee intranet helps to create stronger, more engaged company culture. The intranet should be a place where your employees are not only relieved to find information in one centralized location, but act as a portal where they feel free to engage and share ideas. This will facilitate a healthier, less stressful employee experience for current employees, while also creating an environment for easier onboarding and training of new hires.

Moreover, by having all your employees on one platform, you can improve employee recognition by broadcasting achievements and milestones, thus improving employee engagement, participation, and creating a greater sense of community.

Security

A secure employee intranet should offer end-to-end encryption and multi-factor authentication, solid layers of protection that offer employees confidence in the communications that occur there. The intranet is also a valuable tool to ensure that your organization meets health and safety requirements, as stays up to date with regulatory compliance.

While intranets are not open to anyone outside of employees, they are still susceptible to hackers and malicious software such as worms, viruses, and malware. However, a good employee intranet should provide the best-in-class security along with the ability to notify the entire enterprise of a potential threat, reducing downtime in the event of a breach.

Centralize Data

A good employee intranet should do what it was originally designed for - help employees find information in one centralized location. Intranets can come with all the bells and whistles, but if they do not make company information more easily accessible, then they have failed to serve their purpose. Having a central knowledge base with vast technical artifacts, white papers, process documentation, and training material also helps in the personal growth of employees, and in turn, the organization.

Unfortunately, many enterprises are finding employee intranets do not make workflows simpler and more efficient, so they fall back on their previous lines of communication. In fact, a study by Gartner reports that 90% of intranets fail to achieve their goals. Though a disproportionate number of intranets fail, we have found that the ones that succeed do so for one reason: simplicity.


What Makes Some Employee Intranets Superior?


Besides making life easier for every department, your employee intranet solution should be intelligent and location-independent. It should act as a virtual space where people, information, and technology connect seamlessly. It should also deliver an endearing experience while ensuring business continuity and valuable business outcomes with far-reaching impact.

An effective employee intranet solution should enable:

  • Consistent communication

  • A collaborative culture

  • Employee engagement

  • Employee health and safety

  • Other regulatory compliance

  • Increased employee retention rates

  • Central repository of knowledge base

  • Organizational hierarchy

We believe an effective intranet solution should act as a transformative collaborative portal; a place where employees are happy to socialize and share information, as well as ideas, so that businesses can improve internal communication.

For this reason, we have developed PULSE — our intranet software that improves employee satisfaction and productivity, creating a happier, healthier workplace environment. With Pulse, you can equip your employees with a next generation intuitive digital workplace that enables seamless communication, value-centric collaboration, and employee engagement, while adhering to information security and compliance requirements.

To learn more about our state-of-the-art platform that enables company-wide collaboration, we encourage you to watch the following video:

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Trianz enables digital transformations through effective strategies and excellence in execution. Collaborating with business and technology leaders, we help formulate and execute operational strategies to achieve intended business outcomes by bringing the best of consulting, technology expertise, and execution models.

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