Modern intranet - Building an Award-Winning Intranet: The Right Structure

Let us discover together a more technical side of the process of intranet platform building, focusing on the right structure of an intranet.

First steps towards the right structure

To be able to push the right content, you need to have the right structure. This architecture must respect the overall structure of the enterprise. To start building your intranet you must appoint a small team, usually from the IT, HR, Internal or Employee Communications departments. Don’t forget that training this team is of crucial importance! For instance, you must take the time to properly introduce all the features, in order for them to have full comprehension and freedom to govern.

The second step is to define employee roles. You need to agree on a workflow that will allow content authors to publish in the right place and to target the right employees. There can be some level of restriction for certain individuals, but access should be restricted mostly around content creation, without hindering information searchability.

After building your army of publishers you are now ready to create the right structure for a vibrant digital workplace. Here are three keywords that you should always have in mind when building the intranet:

Communicate
Connect
Create

Your intranet is the place where employees can communicate, connect and create in order to be more efficient in their work. To do this, they must easily navigate their intranet and quickly reach the information they need.

Therefore the two next words are:

Ease
Ergonomy

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4 functions for better information structure

Important – Always think from the user point of view

Navigation Menu – Allowing fast access to all intranet tools. Menu items should be clear and should follow the corporate structure.
Search – Speed identification of resources (people, document, news, etc). Search bar and Menu should be located where people normally expect to find them.
Keywords and Tags – Include clearly defined tags to allow quick filtering and sorting of information. Highlight the list of main keywords and tags, when people search or create content.
User Directory – Easy way to find people according to their profile information.

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A landing page that will land you an award

To ensure the fast adoption of your intranet, we’ve already seen that Design plays an important role. But after creating a nice first impression, it’s time to keep users’ attention and make sure they don’t get lost.

Main Sections To Include On The Landing Page - LumApps Intranet

When you create the landing page think about the users first. Everyone wishes to see the most relevant information for them. You don’t have to personalize the widgets or colors according to each user. Simply add sections which will bring the user directly to the most pertinent information, for example, according to their team or interests.

After ensuring that employees see the latest news in their branch, city or team, you should also provide a global area where they can find everything.

3 Dashboards you need to have:

1. Groups and Communities dashboards

Users can explore all available groups and decide if they want to join. This will give them the liberty to choose which informational stream they want to follow.

Groups and Communities dashboards - LumApps Intranet

2. Newsroom

After reading the latest and most relevant news, users should also be able to browse all news, for a global view of company culture, strategy and vision.

3. Office Directory

If you have multiple office locations this will allow users to connect faster and to stay up-to-date with their colleagues abroad.

Employee and Office Directory - LumApps Intranet

2 ways to grow adoption

Lastly, we want to bring your attention to two features of the digital workplace that are essential for the fast adoption and future growth of your digital workplace.

1. Analytics

In order to improve your intranet, you must understand how your users actually use it. There is where KPIs can come in handy, such as daily and monthly active users, average engagement rate, most read content, CTR and more. These statistics must show up on your analytics dashboard so that you can make informed decisions about where to take your intranet.

2. Gamification

People like to play and compete, so a gamification tool is a given. Trust us, giving badges for reached goals – the number of likes, publications or participation to communities – will bring more engagement than you think. And it’s just one example of what you can do… As for drumming up team spirit, the rest is up to the intranet community managers!

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Building an Award-Winning Intranet: The Right Structure

First steps towards the right structure

Looking for Intranet Design Best Practices?

4 functions for better information structure

A landing page that will land you an award

3 Dashboards you need to have:

1. Groups and Communities dashboards

2. Newsroom

3. Office Directory

2 ways to grow adoption

1. Analytics

2. Gamification

Looking for Intranet Design Best Practices?

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