40 Benefits of a Company Intranet & Why It Matters for Your Team

Streamlining work communication and collaboration has never been easier. This is the age of digital transformation. All-day meetings and hours spent in the inbox are no longer necessary.

An employee intranet is a useful software tool for companies and employees. Many people don't know the benefits of an intranet, but it offers many advantages for both the employer and employee.

Let's dive into the benefits of an intranet and what it matters to employees and key stakeholders. 

What is an Intranet?

An intranet is a private, secure network for communication and collaboration among employees of a company. An intranet is a central website for employees to access company information and stay connected with colleagues. The intranet helps businesses communicate, be more productive, collaborate, store documents securely, and stay connected.

The original intranets were used for top-down communication and file storage. But modern employee intranet include many more features and practical uses. 

Modern intranets help employees communicate internally. Additional benefits of an intranet include social features, content publishing, and community connections. These features allow employees to connect with their colleagues. See the intranets that are named in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Intranet Packaged Solutions.

Adapting internal workflows with an intranet solution has never been easier. Native integrations with Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 and more allows teams to transition existing infrastructure seamlessly. Intranets have software integrations, a user-friendly interface, strong security, and open APIs and SDKs for tech-savvy people.

Intranet ROI

Thinking about a new intranet platform? This free whitepaper explains the potential impact of an intranet and how to track ROI. 

1. Increased Employee Productivity

Connecting through a centralized digital workplace, employees have access to an entire suite of utilities and tools. LumApps intranet lets employees easily use the software with one login. It also works with popular business software like Slack, Teams, Box, Jira, and Zendesk. There’s no need to login and run ten different applications to find answers.

 

 

2. Insights into Employee Satisfaction 

Intranets often include advanced analytics that can give you accrued data, trends, and patterns to make hard decisions or quickly pivot. With LumApps analytics, you can monitor sessions, bounce rates, page views, and so much more through data dashboards. Companies can gauge employee interest in a particular topic and test out new engagement campaigns. 

You can use the analytics on your intranet to find out what employees are interested in. Additionally, you can determine if they have any common questions or concerns. Furthermore, you can ask them for feedback before introducing new features. 

3. Improved employee engagement

Employee engagement refers to an employee's level of commitment and connection to their employers. Employee engagement changes over time and an intranet can help employees stay connected at key moments that can impact engagement levels.

Companies use employee intranets to help staff connect with colleagues about non-work topics like dogs, hiking, or birth announcements. Connecting with colleagues on a personal basis helps increase employee engagement because it facilitates a sense of belonging. 

4. Increase employee retention

Employees who are well-informed and connected to company culture and colleagues are more likely to understand their work's impact. They are also more likely to understand its alignment with company goals and feel valuable for achieving success. Employees who feel informed are also more likely to feel confident and satisfied at a company, leading to increased employee retention. 

5. Knowledge Management

Regardless of industry, every company has a lot of information and knowledge to store. An intranet can serve as your central document storage, eliminating the need for documents to be spread across numerous storage platforms. The benefits of using intranet as a central repository for all documentation streamlines information access. Additionally, a robust search functionality helps teams efficiently locate relevant information.

→ Read More: Learning Center Use Case

 

6. Build a Transparent Company Culture

Creating a comfortable space where your employees can share thoughts and opinions brings out everyone’s best. One of the most vital assets of company culture is built around transparency and flexible work principles. When co-workers feel empowered to build stronger relationships with peers, trust levels increase and their connection with the employer becomes stronger. Ultimately, a strong company culture allows each employee can fully contribute their value to the company.

 

 

7. Enhanced Project Management

A new company intranet helps you keep track of your projects, making it easier to monitor progress and solve issues. Project management software is great for tracking progress and meeting deadlines but the intranet gives other teams insight into projects. 

8. Improved Working Processes

Consolidate common business workflows and reduce the need for multiple applications with a modern social intranet platform. All of your marketing, HR, accounting, business management, and so much more can be aggregated into a central digital workspace. This form of efficiency translates to increased profits.

9. Scalable Documentation Management

Every business's backbone is a knowledgeable and passionate staff and efficient internal communication. As your company expands and scales, your intranet follows suit. Each month brings new policies, information, documentation, and lessons are communicated. Your intranet acts as your company's digital library that updates in real-time with each of these changes.

10. Increased Alignment

An intranet can help increase employee alignment because employees have immediate access to important company updates and information in one source of truth. You can also create employee journeys to set up a streamlined onboarding process to ensure all employees are taught the same protocols for how to work and similar employee expectations.  

 

1. Saved Time and Money for Your IT Department

IT departments can organize and make company tools, knowledge, applications, and information accessible from a single workspace. Instead of tracking down resources, IT teams can rely on robust search features to enable self-serve searches. Regardless of where employees are working, IT departments can support workers without having to worry about server management or troubleshooting connections.

 

2. Simplified, reliable security

One of the advantages of intranet in business is they are designed to adapt and expand. As a secure cloud-based platform, intranets are built to scale and grow with a business so IT departments can plan and allocate resources accordingly. They can also provide employees with flexibility and a secure connection point. A cloud-based intranet is accessible from any location, providing on-the-go tools, resources and information.

3. Streamlined User Management & Governance

Enterprise user governance is no easy task. With an employee experience platform like LumApps, IT teams can create groups based on intranet personas and roles. This manages content permissions and visibility for users. Backend features like this facilitate collaboration and engagement on the frontend. Lastly, IT teams can track analytics on these groups to identify trends and problem areas.

4. Advanced Security and Permission Settings

Data breaches, malware, and ransomware can cripple any business. Protective security features further reinforce the importance of intranet in business. IT departments take the blame if confidential and sensitive information is stored somewhere where security protocols are lacking. LumApps takes this responsibility away and delivers enterprise-grade security.

 

1. Strengthened HR Management

From a human resources perspective, intranet solutions redefine hiring internally and improve the onboarding process with automation and self-training resources. The best and brightest internal talent won’t miss out on internal opportunities.

They can routinely check the intranet job board which features positions not listed on the website. The management team can recruit internally by searching through employee directory profiles and identifying relevant talent. By hiring from within, HR teams save time and money by reducing recruitment costs and cutting down on onboarding responsibilities.

→ Read more: 22 Intranet Engagement Ideas to Enhance User Adoption

 

2. Simplify Employee Onboarding

Speaking of onboarding, the institutional knowledge developed and shared in a central location is one of the most significant benefits of an intranet, especially for new employees. These quick-access resources substantially reduce the time it takes to onboard new employees. On day one, they have access to a vast amount of knowledge and expertise from past and current employees. Armed with the information they need for their role, employees work faster and feel more confident in what they produce.

3. Internal Recruiting

Hiring is labor intensive and costly. Anytime an HR team can identify qualified internal candidates it’s a win-win. Recruiting specialists can create an internal job board where employees can review open job postings. Unlike the company website, HR teams can instantly update and modify the information so employees know it’s a source of truth. It’s also an opportunity to give employees “first dibs” at coveted positions before opening them up externally.

 

1. Increased Employee Social Advocacy

Communication teams strive to get important messages out to the public. One of the most powerful ways to do so is through employee social advocacy. With built-in social advocacy features, intranets give communication teams access to the aggregated social networks of their workforce. They can rely on employees to share press releases, open positions, event information and more. These social media posts are delivered with a personal appeal, and often do better in terms of engagement.

 

2. Information Sharing and Accessibility

Sending out information and company-wide announcements is streamlined through the company intranet. Internal news posts give teams the means to respond and interact, opposed to mass emails where reply-all threads are nightmare fuel. This sharing of information facilitates internal discussion as people share their points of view and expertise. Creating space for open dialogue with your company instills trust between employees.

 

3. Improved Internal Communication

When everyone can share information, articles, make comments and provide feedback, it empowers individuals with a voice and streamlines communication by bringing it into one place. This improved communication system is essential for completing work, but also for innovation.

→ Read more: How to Build a Successful Internal Communication Strategy?

One of the advantages of intranet in business is facilitating collaboration with accessibility to relevant workspaces and tools.Collaboration comes in the form of project workspaces, internal groups, or cooperation with clients. This ability to hash out ideas and speed up go-to-market processes adds to the importance of an employee intranet.

How did we go from intranet to employee experience platform? 

Download our free guide to understand today's modern intranet and how it can help your business succeed.

 

 

1. Quick problem solving with self-serve Digital Assistant

Employees improve productivity when all the tools and information they need are in one location. The struggle of having an overload of tabs and applications is real. Whether you are accessing Outlook, Google Calendar, SharePoint, or other business applications, employees access them from a single, personalized dashboard.

2. Boosts Recognition and Rewards

Showing appreciation by congratulating employees can do wonders to motivation, satisfaction, and so much more. Use the platform for sharing success stories, goal achievements, or just saying, “Thank you for a job well done.” For tasks large and small, recognition goes a long way to boost morale.

 

 

3. Improved Collaboration and Feedback

Motivation is easier when the same tools and resources are being used by your teammates. Add this with the ability to use social features such as liking, commenting, mentioning, document sharing, etc., and working together becomes much easier. This form of communication makes it easier to connect with coworkers and across teams.

→ Read More: How to Boost Intranet Engagement: Ideas, Strategies and Tools

 

4. Brings Your Workplace Culture to Life

An engaging and welcoming corporate culture brings a sense of belonging and fellowship between your co-workers. The employee benefits intranet is the perfect tool for fostering meaningful company culture as employees are encouraged to connect and collaborate. The importance of an employee intranet solution promotes teamwork to drive lasting results.

Build meaningful employee networks by facilitating the growth of communities and groups. Professional groups can be created around any expertise, company branch, localization, etc. Additionally, you can build social communities around similar interests. For example, put together an art appreciation group, book club, bicycling group. Unleash your imagination.

 

 

5. Provides a Personalized Experience

The new digital experience is built around personalization, even in the workplace. Unique or personalized information means relevant content is delivered to each individual. Get instant access to pertinent work information. Use this information to improve individual performance. Lastly, the personalized user dashboard is curated to your needs and should make the start of the work day more enjoyable.

 

6. Information Accessibility

Without needing to open multiple tabs or log into various apps, you can search across all Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 applications from your intranet platform. Consolidating all your company knowledge into one location is one of the many benefits of using intranet solutions.

7. Reduce Meeting and Inbox Time

Trying to sift through an overly cluttered email inbox or a calendar that is stuffed with double-booked meetings is both time-consuming and daunting. Employees benefit from an intranet that is integrated with chat features and empowers peers to collaborate and communicate efficiently without needing to email or schedule meetings constantly. Stay informed and receive prompt feedback.

 

8. Human Resources Accessibility

If communication with your human resources department is a one-way street, it’s inefficient for employees and managers. Foster a relationship between employees and management where they treat each other with a high level of respect. Empowered HR departments can play a significant role in improving this mutual respect by facilitating a chance for feedback, and a modern social intranet makes this possible.

9. Improved Satisfaction

Of the many benefits of intranet platforms, significantly improving engagement in multiple ways is but one. As business values and culture flourish on your intranet, it is easier to visualize the larger picture and feel a part of something. Use this to remain connected to their team and to receive feedback from managers.

→ Read more: Top 10 Ways to Improve Employee Satisfaction

 

10. Organizational Clarity

Companies are ever-changing, and having a clear definition of the organization's structure is difficult to understand. One of the advantages of intranet in business is creating dynamic organization charts that provide visibility on your company's architecture and hierarchy. Adding rich layers to this, additional features like individual profiles help employees understand peer roles and responsibilities throughout your business.

 

11. Answer Travel, PTO & Policy Questions

It is always difficult for employees and companies to coordinate on paid time off and unexpected absences. Enter the employee benefits intranet. When someone is unable to make their shift, having a system where it is easy to reallocate someone else's work is critical to each project's success. Companies have virtual spaces where you can collaborate and request time off as needed. Having an intranet solution with documentation and a process for these scenarios makes things easier for the employee and the employer.

Intranet ROI

Thinking about a new intranet platform? This free whitepaper explains the potential impact of an intranet and how to track ROI. 

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