An intranet has the potential to be a robust business tool. If planned well, it can catalyze collaboration and communication within your organization.
Unauthorized users can’t access your intranet. Businesses looking to keep communication and company documents secure will consider intranet options. But the primary function of intranets is to streamline the workday. An intranet can make employees’ lives simpler by integrating business functions and applications.
One thing you may not know about intranets is that many have social features to promote engagement, too. These social features improve company culture by allowing users to have their voices heard.
Follow these tips to guarantee you get the most out of your intranet.
Use Straightforward Technology
Choosing an easy-to-use platform is a significant first step in creating your dream intranet. Partnering with an intranet provider like hubley with years of SharePoint and Microsoft 365 expertise means you have experts at your disposal. A painless user experience is invaluable, so save yourself the daily headaches of trying to do it all yourself.
Design with Your Business Goals in Mind
Most businesses have goals in mind already for their intranet project. When designing, a business needs to know how an intranet can make those goals easier to accomplish.
During the planning phase, all designers should view the internet’s potential functions through the lens of those business goals and ask how potential design options impact those business goals or make them easier to achieve.
Any intranet functions that make those goals harder to reach should be avoided, and any goals that don’t contribute waste time and resources. A thorough plan records these business goals and a list of things the business wants to accomplish with the intranet, which keeps development tight and focused.
Plan Around the User Experience
Business goals are important to keep in mind, but your users’ experience will determine whether your intranet succeeds or fails. Staff will at least need to be able to use your intranet and find what they are looking for on it.
A practical layout and instinctive navigation contribute to a positive user experience. With an intranet like hubley, adding or editing webparts is a breeze, as well.
During your planning stage, consider the needs of all future users based on their job functions. An effective search feature goes a long way in ensuring the longevity and success of your intranet.
Adopt Your Intranet in Stages
Don’t throw your employees into the deep end before they are familiar with the basics of your intranet. Adoption of new software and training in new functions takes time. Asking employees to take everything on at once keeps them from engaging with the new intranet, and they’ll do their best to avoid it.
Introduce your intranet gradually. Take the intimidation out of user adoption with training sessions and low-effort additions. Starting with the basics allows users time to understand how the environment will operate. Make measured improvements over time to make the process much easier for everyone.
If your goal is complete organizational adoption of your new intranet, avoid overloading users with many features from the very beginning.
Integrate Other Processes
Above all, an intranet shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. A great intranet interacts with the materials and software that you already have, supplementing them and how your employees interact with them, rather than creating something new.
Gather Feedback for Your Custom Intranet
Throughout the design process, consider first the employees that will use the new system the most. Design for the needs of the users, not the desires of the designers. Ask employees about what capabilities they want, and after implementation, how they feel about changes made.
Learn from the way users are interacting with the new platform. Use analytics and feedback from users to find out what is working and what users wish worked differently. Take this into account and make educated decisions about what functions to add in the future. This data and feedback guides future development and improvements.
Assign a Governance Team
Growth and development don’t happen by accident. Your intranet needs a team that’s intentional about continuous content creation.
This governance team also handles establishing user guidelines for posting on your intranet, in addition to other content management tasks.
Write Content for the Intranet
Writing for your intranet presents unique challenges. When writing, it is always critical to think about your audience. Your coworkers will consume this information differently than they would a physical document. How so? In general, online content is scanned rather than read closely.
To grab attention, format your content with colorful headers and focus on the most important information using bullet points. Incorporate other forms of media like photos and videos as well.
Encourage Community Building
Your intranet is for your entire organization, which can include a lot of people. A little personalization and an invitation to contribute will go a long way. This level of inclusion is a great place to start so that users feel comfortable accessing and contributing to their company intranet.
Invest in Employee Training
Without effective admins, your intranet project won’t get very far. There are many ways to go about training your users. With hubley, training is part of the implementation process.
Due to the intranet experience differing from department to department, group your users by their departments for their training sessions. This way, their specific needs are addressed. Also, you can avoid spending time on information that is not relevant to certain groups.
Mobile Accessibility
With more access, users will learn to rely on their intranet as the source of corporate truth within the organization. Some of your users may work from home while others are in the field or on-premises.
Being able to access internal resources from anywhere on any device makes an intranet an invaluable asset for many users.
Keep it Secure
With all your most important documents and assets located on your intranet, the security of the network will be a primary concern.
Take advantage of multi-factor authentication and zero-trust features for more security. These security features apply to your SharePoint intranet and the rest of your Office 365 business apps.
Whether your employees are on-premises, remote, or a hybrid of the two, hubley intranet ensures compliance and security when accessing company resources.
How hubley Makes It Easy to Create an Intranet
With our expertise in Microsoft 365 and intranet development, we know what to expect. Obstacles that would roadblock a less experienced team hubley can overcome.
As your priorities change, we help build specialized hub site pages for specific departments and job functions, such as human resources. No matter your goals hubley is here to build you the quality intranet that you need.
Request a demo today to see how many of your business functions hubley can bring together with our custom intranet solution tailored to your organization.
