As your company looks to move forward with an efficient new intranet system, you need to understand that a user-friendly experience is defined by more than just access. Poor intranet content leads to a poor intranet experience. To start you need to make sure your employees understand your intranet’s features and how to use them. After employees have adapted to using the intranet system, you need to make sure content planning is maintained to increase and sustain engagement at all levels of use. When employees don't find the content relevant or up to date, they cannot rely on your intranet and do not take advantage of all it has to offer.
Focus on Content Planning
What is the most common complaint that employees bring up about their company's intranet platform? It is the inability to find relevant content. If you have found several in your organization lodging this complaint, or if you had your intranet thrown together in a hurry, it's time you conducted an intranet content audit. An audit allows you to re-evaluate what your employees are accessing. Review content by defining its value according to your company's goals, culture, and desired user experience.
When you don't have a plan for content management, you hurt your employees and your bottom line. The average workday for employees consists of dozens of emails, conference calls, announcements, file requests, collaboration requests, and meetings. Your content strategy needs to take this into account. Planning content needs to be a natural part of the work schedule. When done correctly, relevant content can end the need for avoidable communication. Content planning helps to ensure employee time is never wasted. By considering the benefits of relevant intranet content, it is clear this role has significant importance, especially in large organizations with many departments. Keep your content to the point, interactive, and instant. Employees retreat from utilizing your intranet when they find it irrelevant or discouraging, jeopardizing their engagement, productivity, and retention.
Put Together an Audit Team
As you contemplate your content management process, devise your audit plan. Make a note of which team members are subject matter experts, and make them responsible for reviewing intranet content. Alongside subject matter experts who review the content, identify content authors responsible for updating content webparts with videos, images, and links. Review the different areas of responsibility and establish expectations for content moving forward.
Identify Existing Content
Establish project teams that can help assess and create a master list of all the content published on your intranet platform. This master list will make it easier to decide whether to update the content, scrap it altogether, change it into a different format, archive it or rewrite it Keeping a content audit spreadsheet will add organization to this monumental but crucial task. The audit will shed light on existing content that can already be classified as high value and show you areas where changes should be made.
Also, look for other areas of operations that could be migrated over to your intranet platform. Emails, file sharing, or instant messaging are vital parts of company communication that can be streamlined and made more efficient through an intranet.
Lay Out a Content Plan
Once you have completed the content audit, it is time to prepare a formal plan for your intranet. You may not have to toss everything to the side. You will have found the content authors who had the most relevant and engaging materials through the audit. You should rely on the insight they bring and consider their perspective and knowledge — craft content around essential and relevant topics. Make your content authors responsible for updating their intranet content and establish guidelines for how often information should be reviewed and updated.
Encourage Use
It doesn't do any good to perform an audit, update content, and establish a great intranet if your employees still don't use it. Make sure you inform employees of all the options and benefits of the intranet. Encourage communications and file sharing. Post company messages and celebrate remarkable events or employee milestones. Encourage social engagement on company-wide or departmental posts. Creative content that is fresh and inviting encourages employees to make the best use of your intranet system.
hubley's intranet is user-friendly, completely customized to your business, and capable of
handling your communication, document, and content needs. Not to mention, new features are continuously added with GREEN and our customer success team is eager to assist you. Those are not things that all intranets provide. With hubley, you won't struggle with implementing a functional and engaging intranet. With many features designed to encourage use, hubley brings your company what it needs to be productive in a digital world.
